Amy Acton’s brother has slammed Vivek Ramaswamy after their estranged mother appeared in a brutal attack ad calling the Democratic gubernatorial candidate a liar.
Philip Stearns accused the Republican nominee of exploiting his sister’s childhood sexual abuse for political gain, charging that Ramaswamy sank to a “despicable low” by turning the assault Acton endured at age 12 into campaign fodder. The ad, featuring Donna Arthur, surfaced online Tuesday and immediately ignited a firestorm in what has already become one of the nation’s most vicious governor’s races.
In the video, Arthur, Acton’s birth mother, delivered a withering denunciation of her own daughter. “I love my daughter, but when I saw her lying about her opponent—and 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 stated. “She says she grew up living in a tent. None of that is true. She’s lied her entire life. My daughter needs help, and she can’t help you if she needs help herself.”
Arthur continued her attack without apparent reservation: “Don’t vote for people who lie. Don’t let her become your governor. If you think she’ll make your life better, you’re fooling yourself. It will only get worse.”
Stearns fired back with explosive allegations about Arthur’s own conduct during Acton’s childhood. “After he was arrested and Amy and I were removed from their custody, our birth mother stayed married to Amy’s rapist until he died,” he said in a campaign statement. He described the ad as a “desperate, disgusting attack” that exposed Ramaswamy as “a pathetic excuse for a man who is willing to hurt anyone as long as it gets him what he wants.”
Acton, 54, who led the Ohio Department of Health from 2019 through 2020, has woven her traumatic upbringing into her political narrative. Born from an unexpected pregnancy, she told The Vindicator in 2019 that her parents divorced when she was about three and that custody battles consumed her early years. She has spoken of spending at least one winter in a campground outside Youngstown and navigating a household marked by fear.
According to Acton’s account, Arthur cycled through relationships before marrying a man identified only as Bud, who had previously faced molestation accusations. Criminal charges were filed against him for abusing Acton, after which she moved in with her biological father, Jerry Stearns. Acton claimed in 2020 that Arthur also faced charges and that she and Bud subsequently “skipped town and have not been heard from since.”
Arthur has offered a starkly different version of events, accusing Jerry Stearns of abusing her while she was pregnant with Acton and alleging that the rape and sexual assault claims against Bud were fabricated as part of a custody scheme.
The Ramaswamy campaign has sought distance from direct responsibility for the ad while amplifying its central message. “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,” spokesperson Connie Luck told The Post. “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.”
The Ohio contest has been saturated with mutual character destruction. Ramaswamy’s allies have painted Acton as unstable and hinted at alcohol problems, while Acton has labeled him a “serial liar” and “scam artist,” declining to debate him as her allies have targeted his business record. Left-wing Ohio political site The Rooster had previously reported that Ramaswamy’s allies were preparing to deploy Arthur in an “October surprise.”
Despite Ohio’s Republican lean — the state has elected only one Democratic governor, Ted Strickland, since 1990 — Acton currently holds a 3.7 percentage point advantage in the RealClearPolitics polling average.
The ad’s emergence follows a pattern of deeply personal attacks that have defined the Ramaswamy-Acton matchup, with both camps trading accusations that extend far beyond policy disagreements into the terrain of family trauma and personal history.
Acton has not publicly responded to her mother’s specific claims beyond her brother’s statement, though her campaign’s framing of the ad as an exploitation of her sexual abuse survival suggests she views the attack as an extension of the harm she suffered rather than a legitimate political critique.
Ramaswamy, 39, the biotech entrepreneur and former 2024 GOP presidential candidate, has built his political identity on confrontational tactics, but the involvement of Acton’s estranged mother in an attack ad marks an escalation even by the standards of this race.