Ohio Democratic gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton is condemning a new ad circulating online featuring her estranged mother. NBC News national politics reporter Henry Gomez discusses how close the race between Acton and Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has become in the campaign's final two weeks.
Page A217From§Eachthe afternoon edition — 20 October 2026
Ramaswamy ad asks Acton's estranged mother to call her a liar, unites her brother and McCain's daughter.
As it ran on the front
Donna Arthur appears on screen and tells Ohio her daughter is a liar. Donna Arthur is Amy Acton's estranged mother. The ad does not dispute the abuse. It puts the woman named inside that story on camera and lets her call her daughter a liar about a tent.
Acton's brother, Philip Stearns, answered with his own ad the same day. He did not take up the tent. He took up the method: campaigning on his sister's sexual abuse, he said, is "a despicable low." Acton answered separately, in her own words, and called what Ramaswamy's campaign had done a "lifelong pattern" of personal attacks. A brother on the method, a sister on the pattern — two different people, two different sentences, both aimed at the same sixty seconds of tape.…
…(cont) Then the file widened past the family. Meghan McCain, a Republican senator's daughter, called the ad "dastardly" and said shame on whatever consultant firm made it. She is not on the Ohio ballot and owes nobody in this race an opinion. She gave one anyway. By Tuesday, a Democrat's brother, the Democrat herself, and a Republican senator's daughter were on record against the same ad inside the same week.
It landed on a tight race, not a settled one. A Bowling Green State University/YouGov poll from mid-September had Acton ahead of Ramaswamy, 48 percent to 45, with weeks still on the clock. Ten days before that poll, an armed individual lunged at Acton at the Canfield Fair near Youngstown and injured multiple people, her campaign said. The ad didn't do that. But it is the same three-point race, two weeks from closing, and this week the candidate's family is in the ad copy instead of at the fair.
Nobody in this file disputes that the abuse happened. Nobody in the ad disputes the tent story on the merits, either — they put a mother on camera next to the word liar and let the pairing do the work. Ohio votes in two weeks. Whatever the ad was built to move, what it has produced so far is agreement, left to right, that a campaign for governor should not be run through a survivor's childhood.
“They didn't need a poll to tell them this race is close; they could've just watched how many sides lined up against one ad. When a Democrat's brother, Amy Acton herself, and a Republican senator's daughter all call out the same sixty seconds in one week, that's not a coincidence, that's the floor showing through the carpet. The lesson keeps coming back the same way: a kid's worst year makes cheap ad copy if it's worth three points on a poll.”
“Nobody at the campaign cut that ad, her own mother said those words, we just — well, we did put it up, but that's not the same as writing it. Did I say "we put it up"? That's not what I meant. Look, voters deserve to hear every side of a family, even the side a campaign happens to air two weeks before an election.”
The receipts
Meghan McCain, former Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) daughter, decried what she called a “dastardly” political ad featuring Ohio gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton’s (D) estranged mother.
With just two weeks left until Election Day, Republican Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is drawing criticism from across the political spectrum over a vicious attack video featuring his Democratic opponent Amy Acton's estranged mother, whom she has accused of abandoning her after she was sexually abused as a child. The…
The brother of Amy Acton, the Democrat running in Ohio’s gubernatorial race, denounced GOP nominee Vivek Ramaswamy after a new video circulated online featuring Acton's estranged mother calling her a liar and urging Ohioans to vote against her daughter. In a new ad for Actor, Philip Stearns blamed GOP candidate Vivek Ramaswamy for the…
Amy Acton’s brother calls campaigning on his sister’s sexual abuse from their mother’s husband ‘a despicable low’ The family of Amy Acton, the Democratic candidate for governor of Ohio, is criticizing her Republican opponent Vivek Ramaswamy for using Acton’s estranged mother in a recently released campaign ad. In the ad, which has…
Ohio gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton (D) accused Republican rival Vivek Ramaswamy of a “lifelong pattern” of personal attacks after a political ad surfaced online in which her estranged mother called her a “liar.” Acton, who has publicly discussed suffering abuse as a child, suggested Ramaswamy’s campaign was behind the video and…
· Amy Acton attacked by ‘armed individual’ at campaign stop in Ohio from the morgue, 6 Sep 2026
· Acton ahead of Ramaswamy in latest Ohio gubernatorial polling from the morgue, 16 Sep 2026
· Huckabee Sanders slammed for ad featuring white man on welfare from the morgue, 28 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.