Whoever wants power is tempted, sooner or later, to make a family testify. In Ohio, in the last October weeks before the election of 3 November 2026, a candidate for governor has given in to it. He has put a mother in front of a camera.

She is Donna Arthur, and for one minute she speaks straight into the lens. “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 says, in words reported by Newsweek. “She is a liar. She lies about her past.” Then: “Don’t vote for people who lie. Don’t let her become your governor.”

The daughter is Amy Acton, the Democrat who ran the Ohio Department of Health during the Covid years. The man who paid for the camera is Vivek Ramaswamy, a biotech billionaire and 2024 presidential candidate. Both want to succeed Mike DeWine, a Republican who cannot run again. As Al Jazeera noted, the ad has drawn fire from inside Ramaswamy’s own party.

The record of 1978

Behind those sixty seconds lie documents. According to police and court records obtained by the Associated Press, as the AP reported, Cledith Arthur, Donna’s husband and Acton’s stepfather, was arrested in July 1978 and charged with raping his stepdaughter, who was then 12. Acton’s biological father had reported him. The abuse allegedly went on from December 1976 to April 1978. He pleaded not guilty and was indicted by a grand jury that September. He then missed a court hearing and was still a fugitive in 1981. Donna Arthur lost custody of her children. CBS News reported that she stayed married to him until he died in 2004.

Acton’s brother, Philip Stearns, put it more plainly in a statement released by her campaign: “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.”

In the ad the mother denies parts of her daughter’s story, including the winter Acton says she spent living in a tent. She hints at mental illness and says Acton “needs help.” Newsweek noted that none of her claims had been independently verified. On the tent, a 13abc Truth Test found a 1982 sheriff’s report in which a park manager confirmed that the stepfather had lived at the campground years before. His 1978 arrest papers also list the campground as his main address.

Four million dollars

The ad first went around online without the sponsorship notice it would need before it could air on television. On Tuesday, PBS reported, Ramaswamy said his campaign had made it. The campaign is putting $4 million behind it, and his spokesperson Connie Luck said the mother was not paid. People close to the campaign told Axios that it tested well with “persuadable” voters.

On Friday, at a stop in northeast Ohio, Ramaswamy defended it. “The irony is they’re lying about an ad that is about lying,” he said. “Our ad had nothing, nothing to do with childhood abuse, sexual abuse. We condemn that as forcibly as anyone.” His campaign called Acton “a serial fabulist” and added: “We don’t know what happened between Amy and her mother.” Luck pointed to an Acton press release from 12 August which claimed, on the strength of a Substack report, that Ramaswamy had hired his own mother to “manipulate clinical trial data.” Newsweek had not verified that claim.

It is an odd way to argue about honesty: the campaign says it does not know what happened, and calls the witness anyway.

The party divides

DeWine, who has endorsed Ramaswamy, broke with him. “I would urge the Ramaswamy campaign to take this down. It’s just wrong,” he said on Thursday. Senator Jon Husted, who is up for re-election, said he “would not have run that ad.” By Friday all five living former full-term governors of Ohio, three Republicans and two Democrats, had come out against it. Bob Taft said it “really exceeds the bounds of human decency.”

Washington took the other side. On Truth Social Donald Trump called the ad “very powerful.” At a rally in Iowa he said Ramaswamy had rung him for advice and that he had told him: “You’ve got to ride with it.” When a reporter mentioned that Acton’s mother had stood by the stepfather, Trump answered: “You don’t know that. You don’t know anything.” On Saturday, after voting in West Palm Beach, he said: “The mother said that Amy Acton is a liar and she’s no good. And you know what? I don’t think you can get a better reference on that.” JD Vance said he was “a little bit disgusted” by Republicans “whining” about the ad.

In this view, the court records do not count. What counts is who said what on camera.

Cleveland, Saturday

Barack Obama came to Cleveland and stood on stage with Acton and Sherrod Brown. “In recent days, we’ve seen there is no line he will not cross, no low he will not sink to,” he said of Ramaswamy.

Before the rally Acton told CBS News: “I have not seen her since I was 12 years old in a courthouse. So this is a sad story.” From the stage, as Newsweek reported, she remembered moving “countless times” and “living in a tent in the middle of winter.” Then she spoke to her opponent directly: “My opponent has chosen to exploit, intentionally, my childhood to save his stumbling campaign, but it’s not going to work. Decency still matters.”

The arithmetic

A Fox News poll of 2,005 registered voters, taken 15 to 19 October, put Acton ahead 50 percent to 48, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 points. Marist had her ahead 50 to 43. On 22 October Sabato’s Crystal Ball moved the race to Leans Democratic. Newsweek reported that the Cook Political Report still called it a toss-up, but Cook has since shifted it toward Acton as well. Kyle Kondik and J. Miles Coleman of the Crystal Ball warned that Republicans have done better in Ohio than the polls predicted before. Democrats have not won the governorship there since 2006.

Early voting began on 6 October. On 3 November polling stations open at 6:30 a.m. and close at 7:30 p.m. Until then, Donna Arthur’s minute will keep playing on Ohio’s screens, on Ramaswamy’s money. Earlier coverage: how the ad first reached the screen.