Former president Barack Obama said Saturday that Ohio Republican Vivek Ramaswamy showed desperation for the spotlight and a lack of decency by airing a campaign ad that featured the long-estranged mother of his Democratic rival Amy Acton.
“We’ve seen there’s no line he won’t cross, no low he won’t sink to, to try to get in the limelight,” Obama said of Ramaswamy at a Cleveland rally where he was campaigning with Acton, the Democratic nominee for governor, and Ohio Democratic Senate nominee Sherrod Brown.
“I don’t know what’s happened where the standards of behavior have gotten so low that someone can run an ad like that. There’s got to be something inside you where you say no office is worth stooping that low,” he said.
Ramaswamy has faced scathing criticism, including from some Republicans, for the ad that shows Amy Acton’s mother, Donna Arthur, calling her daughter “a liar.” Arthur and her daughter have not had contact since 1978, when Arthur’s second husband, Cledith Arthur, was indicted and charged with raping his 12-year-old stepdaughter. Acton and her brother were removed from the couple’s home.
The Ramaswamy campaign has said it planned to spend $4 million to promote the ad in the state. President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance have both backed the decision to run the ad.
On Saturday, the Ramaswamy campaign began airing a shorter version of the ad, cutting it down to 30 seconds after initially running it at 60 seconds.
“It’s not easy for a mother to say this, but Amy has a serious problem. She is a liar. She lies about her past. She says she grew up living in a tent. None of that is true. She’s lied her entire life,” Arthur says in the initial, 60-second version of the ad.
“My daughter needs help, and she can’t help you if she needs help herself. People can change, but first they have to tell the truth, and my daughter still isn’t doing that,” Arthur says.
The trimmed-down ad cuts out the mother saying that Acton “needs help” and that Acton lied about growing up living in a tent.
In the 30-second version, Arthur says, “I saw her lying about her opponent. That’s why I’m speaking up to you now.”
Acton’s campaign previously provideddocumentation, including court records and contemporary media reports corroborating her account that she and her brother were removed from their mother’s home after Cledith Arthur was arrested and indicted in 1978 and charged with rape of a child less than 13 years old. The arrest came after Acton’s biological father, Gerald Stearns, made a report to police.
At the Cleveland rally, Acton said that as a child, she and her brother “experienced a lot of child abuse and neglect,” moving “countless times” and, at one point, were “living in a tent in the middle of winter.” Ramaswamy, she said, had chosen to exploit her childhood with the ad in an attempt “to save his struggling campaign.”
In his remarks, Obama called Ramaswamy “thirsty” and someone who was “willing to do anything.”
He praised Acton as a person who has “spoken movingly about her painful childhood and all she’s experienced, the abuse, neglect and homelessness.”
“And she’s never forgotten the people who looked out for her, who refused to look the other way when she needed a helping hand,” he said.
The appearance of Obama, a VIP campaigner, comes as Acton is leading Ramaswamy within the margin of error in polls.
A win for Acton would be an upset for a state that has moved strongly toward Republicans over the last decade, with President Donald Trump winning Ohio in 2016, 2020 and 2024. In the most recent presidential election, Trump won the Buckeye State by more than 11 points.
Ohio has not elected a Democratic governor since Ted Strickland in 2006, although Obama won the state during both his 2008 presidential run and his reelection bid in 2012.
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