Vivek Ramaswamy was warned not to air ‘liar’ ad and now staff want to resign days before election: report

Vivek Ramaswamy was reportedly warned by Ohio Republicans and campaign staffers not to run the controversial attack ad on Democratic opponent Amy Acton that featured her estranged mother – but went ahead anyway.

Some campaign staffers are so incensed by the decision to run the ad – which featured Acton’s 82-year-old mother, Donna Arthur smearing her daughter as a “liar” over child sex abuse she suffered – that they have considered resigning, according to Zeteo. Arthur lost custody of her children after her late husband, Cledith Arthur, was indicted for raping Acton when she was a child. She stood by her husband, who died in 2004.

Several Ohio Republican and Trump-world figures privately described the ad as a “self-inflicted wound” to Zeteo as the polls with Acton have narrowed.

An unnamed Trump adviser told Zeteo that the ad positioned Ramaswamy as “siding with the rapist protector mom” and was “never a good idea.”

Even Robert McColley, Ohio’s GOP lieutenant governor candidate, had reservations about the ad but has had to publicly defend it, according to the outlet.

The ad was created by The Strategy Group, according to Zeteo, the same conservative Ohio-based agency that had a hand in ousted Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem’s controversial $220 million campaign. The agency, which touts itself on social media as “on a mission to elect good men and women to public office,” tracked down Arthur after traveling to rural Pennsylvania with Ramaswamy staff.

It was not immediately clear how they located Arthur but she was “in bad shape” when the ad was filmed and some campaign staffers had concerns about her mental state, according to Zeteo. It follows a New York Times report that Arthur had been living in her car with cats in a parking lot.

Some staffers wanted to vet the mother’s story more thoroughly but Ramaswamy reportedly wanted to forge ahead.

The Independent has contacted Ramaswamy’s campaign for comment.

Ramaswamy has doubled down on the ad despite bipartisan backlash, including from Ohio’s outgoing Republican Governor Mike DeWine who called for it to be taken down.

“It is an ad from our campaign, and the thing that I want to say is that I would love for this race and this election to be about the substantive issues that impact Ohioans, and unfortunately, Amy Acton has been hiding from those issues,” Ramaswamy told reporters last week.

President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance have also come to Ramaswamy’s defense. “The mother looks like she’s totally lucid. She looks very smart, actually,” Trump said last week. “And she felt that she had an obligation to Ohio voters to tell them that her daughter is a liar.”

Ohio’s largest newspaper, The Plain Dealer, broke with its policy of not endorsing candidates in major races to back Acton for governor in light of the ad. Ramaswamy has also lost major endorsements as a result.

Acton issued a forceful condemnation of the ad last week.

“I won’t normalize somebody who has said that my childhood is just something I’m complaining about, who today just released an ad using my birth mother, who I was removed from at the age of 12 for severe abuse and neglect, and sexual abuse,” she said.