Vice President JD Vance on Wednesday defended an ad featuring the estranged mother of the Democrat running for Ohio governor, Amy Acton, dismissing condemnation of it from even fellow Republicans as “whining.”

In the ad from Vivek Ramaswamy, Acton’s Republican opponent, the mother said her daughter had lied and exaggerated about her childhood struggles. The ad was met with outrage, given that the mother’s longtime husband, Acton’s stepfather, was charged with raping the candidate when she was 12, according to records produced by the Acton campaign.

Ramaswamy is putting $4 million behind the spot. Vance lauded it, saying it “calls it out like it is, and calls Amy Acton a liar.”

Even though Ramaswamy’s ad does not directly mention sexual abuse, it has brought it to the forefront of the Ohio governor’s race and whipped up national attention. In the ad, Donna Arthur, Acton’s mother, accused her daughter of lying about details she has relayed about a troubled childhood in which she was homeless for a time. During that period, Acton has said, she was sexually abused by her stepfather. She has said she and her mother have not spoken since she was 12, when Arthur lost custody of both her daughter and her son.

Documents provided by the Acton campaign this week show that a grand jury had indicted the candidate’s stepfather on charges of raping Acton in 1978, the year Arthur lost custody. The stepfather, Cledith Arthur, pleaded not guilty, and then fled the state before trial. He died in Pennsylvania in 2004.

This week, Acton’s campaign decried the ad and quickly responded with one of its own, in which her brother, Philip Stearns, says that she had for years been the victim of their stepfather’s physical and sexual abuse.

Asked Wednesday evening about the ad, President Donald Trump tried three approaches. He first claimed not to know anything about it. Then he cited its contents at length, saying, “It’s a very unusual situation to have a mother hate a daughter that much.” Finally, he absolved Ramaswamy of responsibility for it, concluding, “I don’t think that has anything to do with Vivek.”

Vance, at a Wednesday morning campaign rally in the state, lauded Ramaswamy for the spot even as the backlash threatened to engulf the candidate’s campaign.

—

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Campbell Robertson and Bayliss Wagner/Kenny Holston
c. 2026 The New York Times Company