Hilliard resident Ray Watford is a retired newspaper production director.
"Whining." That’s what our vice president calls it when people object to a candidate’s childhood abuse being turned into a $4 million campaign weapon.
Two days before JD Vance used that word on a Sharonville stage Oct. 21, a video showed up online with no name on it. Amy Acton’s estranged mother looked into a camera and told Ohio her daughter has lied her entire life. “Don’t let her become your governor.”
Vivek Ramaswamy claimed the video the next day.
“It is an ad from our campaign,” he told reporters at a church in Westerville. His campaign then said it will spend $4 million to put the ad on television and streaming screens across Ohio before Nov. 3.
For a day, the question
was who would do this. Now we know. The answer is worse than the silence.
A man who wants to run Ohio looked at a child’s abuse, saw something useful and bought airtime for it.
Look at the witness he chose.
Acton has said for years that her mother’s husband sexually abused her as a child. She said it in 2019, before she ever ran for office. Her brother, Philip Stearns, backed her account. After the man was arrested and the children were taken from their mother’s custody, he said she stayed married to him until he died.
A calculated decision to put foulness into Ohio homes
Acton once described the last time she saw her mother. They were at a courthouse. She went to give her a kiss. Her mother turned her cheek away.
That’s the voice Ramaswamy is spending $4 million to put in every Ohio living room.
Why? Sources close to the campaign told Axios the ad tested well with persuadable voters. His campaign manager, Jonathan Ewing, called it “a campaign-ending moment for Amy Acton.”
So this wasn’t a lapse. It was a decision. Somebody ran the numbers on a little girl’s worst years and liked what they saw.
Ramaswamy says he has never met Acton or her mother. His spokeswoman, Connie Luck, said the campaign doesn’t know what happened between them, then called Acton a “serial fabulist” anyway.
Ignorance should have stopped that sentence. Instead, it became the preface. Now it’s a $4 million ad buy.
Even conservatives with no love for Democrats are recoiling. Robby Soave of Reason called the ad sick. Meghan McCain called it “dastardly.” Casey Putsch, who ran against Ramaswamy in the Republican primary, says he’ll vote for Acton.
Most people can recognize cruelty even when it’s aimed at someone they oppose.
Ramaswamy’s defenders will say Acton made her childhood part of her campaign. She talks about poverty, hardship and working her way out. Voters have a right to check that story.
Of course they do.
Pull the court files. Talk to the teachers and neighbors. Ask the brother who lived in that house. He’s already backed her up.
What you don’t do is hand the microphone to the one person with the most reason to rewrite that history, then buy her a statewide audience. That isn’t scrutiny. It’s a survivor’s pain used as a prop.
Standing in that Westerville church, Ramaswamy said he would love for this race to be about “the substantive issues that impact Ohioans.” He named property taxes, health care costs and electric bills.
Then he put $4 million behind none of them.
Campaigning for Ramaswamy, Vance was asked about the ad in Sharonville.
“Whether the ad was appropriate or not is not really my concern,” he told reporters.
Then he said he was “a little bit disgusted” by Republicans who were “whining” about it. His advice: “Stop whining about an advertisement and go win the race in 13 days.”
"Whining." That’s what the vice president calls.
Whether it was appropriate is the whole question. A man who can’t be bothered to ask it has no business lecturing anyone in his party about what they believe.
Every time this ad airs between now and Nov. 3, remember who paid for it. He finally signed his name. Believe him.
Then ask yourself what a man will do with a governor’s power when this is what he’ll do just to get it.
Whining.
Wow.
Hilliard resident Ray Watford is a retired newspaper production director.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: No JD, it isn't 'whining.' Ramaswamy deliberately putting foulness in Ohio homes | Opinion
