Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine was acting like a little crybaby when he stepped up to a podium and told Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican he endorsed for governor, to pull an ad featuring the estranged mother of Democrat Amy Acton. That’s a sentence that probably nobody had on their bingo card this week.
The ad in question, backed by a $4 million statewide buy, features Donna Arthur calling her daughter a “liar” and urging Ohioans not to vote for her. Acton has spoken publicly about being sexually abused as a child by her mother’s husband. Her brother Philip Stearns backed that account in a video for Acton’s campaign, saying their “birth mother stayed married to Amy’s rapist until he died.” Acton says she hasn’t seen or spoken to her mother in nearly 50 years. The ad itself does not mention the abuse claims.
DeWine, who earlier in his career prosecuted sexual assault cases, said knowing the family history made the ad worse, not better. When you know the rest of the story, when you know the backstory, when you know that the husband of the mom was indicted by a grand jury after hearing testimony and that he took off along with the mother,” he said, “it just to me makes it more serious. It makes it just more wrong.” He added that his wife Fran had seen the ad run that morning and he urged the Ramaswamy campaign to take it down, even at this late stage of the race. You can learn more about the Ohio governor’s race ad dispute and the back-and-forth it has triggered inside the GOP.
President Trump saw things differently. He went to Truth Social and hit DeWine hard, calling the Ramaswamy spot a “very powerful Ad” and suggesting a double standard was being applied to Republicans. If my mother, the legendary Mary MacLeod Trump, said anything bad about me, the Fake News would play it up,” Trump wrote. “The Dumocrats would be totally supportive, and it would go down as the Ad of the Decade, Maybe the Century!” He then said DeWine “was, as usual, disloyal to the Republican Party” and suggested DeWine “probably wants a Dumocrat to win.”
DeWine didn’t flinch on his endorsement when reporters pressed him. “Look, today is about the ad, but I’m not, no, I’m not changing my endorsement,” he said at the Ohio Statehouse. “I endorse the whole ticket, as you know. I’m a Republican.” So he’s keeping Ramaswamy on his list while also publicly telling Ramaswamy he’s wrong. That’s a fun tightrope to walk.
Vice President JD Vance took the Trump side of the argument Wednesday, telling reporters in Cincinnati, “Politics is a tough business, and my message to my fellow elected Republicans is if you actually believe in the things you say you believe in, stop whining about an advertisement and go win the race in 13 days.” Asked about that, DeWine politely declined to engage. “I mean, this is Mike DeWine, with my life experiences, saying what I think about this ad,” he said.
For his part, Ramaswamy spokesperson Connie Luck pointed out that “the first and only candidate to attack the mother of her opponent in this race was Amy Acton,” arguing Democrats have used family members of Republicans in ads for years and the media applies a double standard. With 13 days to go in a race this hot, expect the volume to keep climbing, because apparently nobody in Ohio politics got the memo about a quiet closing stretch.
How about DeWine stop being a little crybaby? Democrats play dirty all the time, so step it up and bring out the arsenal. This is about winning elections, not caring about someone’s feelings like a little safe space twerp.
