Ohio’s governor’s race is getting ugly, and the latest attack is dragging one of the darkest chapters of Democratic candidate Amy Acton’s childhood into the campaign.
A controversial video featuring Acton’s own mother calling her a “liar” and urging Ohioans not to vote for her has surfaced as Republican Vivek Ramaswamy continues to attack Acton over her public comments about surviving childhood sexual abuse.
But there’s a massive piece of history the video leaves out: Acton’s mother, Donna Arthur, stayed with the man accused of raping her daughter, fled Ohio with him as he faced criminal charges, and left Acton and her brother behind.
The ad is raising serious questions about how far the Republican campaign is willing to go in its effort to defeat Acton — and whether a candidate’s childhood trauma should be turned into political ammunition.
The video, which runs a little over a minute, features Donna Arthur disputing her daughter’s descriptions of a difficult childhood and accusing her of lying. Arthur also challenges Acton’s account of experiencing homelessness and living in a tent.
The video does not appear to have aired on television, and it was not listed in Meta’s or Google’s political advertising archives at the time of reporting. It also lacks the “paid for” disclaimer typically required on political advertising, leaving its origins unclear.
Acton’s campaign, however, directly blamed Ramaswamy.
“It’s not surprising that Vivek Ramaswamy has stooped to such a despicable low as to attempt to turn the sexual abuse Amy endured at twelve years old from our birth mother’s husband into a political talking point,” Acton’s brother, Philip Stearns, said in a statement provided by her campaign.
Stearns said their mother remained married to the man who abused Acton until his death, even after the children were removed from their custody.
“This desperate, disgusting attack reveals exactly who Vivek Ramaswamy is at his core,” Stearns said, accusing the Republican of being willing to hurt anyone to get what he wants.
The Ramaswamy campaign did not take responsibility for the ad, but it also did not distance itself from the video.
“We don’t know what happened between Amy and her mother, who first spoke out about Amy in 2020, but we know that Amy Acton is a serial fabulist who has some serious problems with the truth that the public needs to be aware of before deciding who to entrust as governor,” Connie Luck, a Ramaswamy campaign spokesperson, said.
Luck went on to accuse Acton of repeatedly lying and refusing to debate Ramaswamy. She cited the criticism from Acton’s mother as further ammunition against the Democratic candidate.
“Everyone who knows her best — her former boss, her former state colleagues, her fellow physicians, and now her own mother — are clearly warning Ohioans not to vote for her,” Luck said.
The story behind the ad goes back decades, to a childhood Acton has described as marked by poverty, instability and abuse.
After her parents divorced, Acton has said, her family struggled financially, moved frequently and at times experienced homelessness. Her mother had several partners before marrying Cledith “Bud” Arthur.
According to court records and newspaper reports, Arthur had previously faced an incest charge in 1974 involving allegations that he raped his own daughter.
Acton has said her stepfather sexually abused her between the ages of 9 and 12. In 1978, when she was 12, she filed charges against him.
Cledith Arthur was arrested and charged with rape on July 14, 1978. He pleaded not guilty, and Acton testified in the case.
But before the allegations could proceed to trial, Arthur fled Ohio with Donna Arthur in October 1978.
Mahoning County subsequently classified him as a fugitive and ordered a warrant for his arrest. Another warrant was issued in 1981, and court records show authorities were still looking for him as late as 1983.
Acton and her brother were taken into protective custody and placed in foster care. They ultimately went to live permanently with their father.
Acton has described a final, painful encounter with her mother at the courthouse after testifying against her stepfather.
“In the courthouse after they were charged, I went to give her a kiss, and she just turned her cheek away,” Acton told the Youngstown Vindicator in 2019. “That was the last time I ever saw her.”
The new ad is not the first time Donna Arthur has publicly challenged her daughter’s account of their family history.
In a 2020 interview with the anti-abortion organization Operation Rescue, Arthur disputed Acton’s descriptions of her childhood and claimed her husband had never been charged with raping her daughter.
Arthur also blamed Acton’s father for allegedly manipulating her into making the accusations and dismissed allegations involving her own daughter.
But the documented court history contradicts Arthur’s claim that her husband was never charged. Records show that Cledith Arthur was arrested and charged with rape in July 1978, before fleeing the state with his wife.
The couple eventually settled in Pennsylvania, where Donna Arthur accumulated a record of criminal complaints. Court records cited in reporting show she was found guilty of animal neglect in 2021 and theft by deception involving bad checks in 1995 and 1996. In the animal-neglect case, a court described her as “not credible.”
Donna Arthur remained married to Cledith Arthur until his death in 2004.
The history makes the decision to feature her in a political attack ad particularly contentious. The video presents a mother’s accusations against her daughter without addressing the documented criminal proceedings involving the man Acton accused of abusing her.
The ad comes after Ramaswamy criticized Acton for discussing her childhood sexual abuse in a speech.
At the time, he argued that Ohio needed someone with “a positive vision for our state versus a governor who has none at all other than to complain about what someone else did to her.”
Acton has pushed back against what she sees as an effort to discredit her by belittling her experience as an abuse survivor.
In a television interview Tuesday, she condemned the use of her mother in the latest attack.
“I won’t normalize somebody who has said that my childhood is ‘something I’m just 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,” Acton said.
“The words our leaders use matter, and I think it’s gonna take courage right now from all of us to stop normalizing this sort of rhetoric,” she added.
The Democratic Governors Association also condemned the attack.
“Vivek Ramaswamy should be ashamed of himself for giving airtime to yet another person who was complicit in acts of horrific sexual abuse — this time against Dr. Acton herself,” Meghan Meehan-Draper, the organization’s executive director, said.
She described the video as part of a broader pattern, pointing to Ramaswamy’s previous criticism of Acton and an earlier campaign ad featuring a convicted child sex offender.
That earlier ad, which focused on state property taxes, was subsequently taken down after the campaign’s footage was found to include a man who was a registered sex offender.
The latest controversy puts Ramaswamy’s campaign in an uncomfortable position. Campaigns are expected to scrutinize candidates’ records, challenge their claims and expose inconsistencies. But this controversy goes beyond a routine policy dispute or an argument over a candidate’s qualifications.
It involves a woman who says she was sexually abused as a child, a mother who remained with the accused abuser, and a decades-old criminal case documented in court records.
Ohio voters can decide whether Acton is the right person to lead their state. The question raised by this ad is whether dragging a candidate’s childhood trauma into a political fight — while omitting the documented history behind it — helps voters make that decision or simply gives them another reason to distrust the people seeking their support.
