Election forecaster Cook Political Report shifted Ohio’s gubernatorial race toward Democratic candidate Amy Acton on Friday after a week of backlash over an ad Republican Vivek Ramaswamy ran featuring her estranged mother.
The outlet shifted the race between Ramaswamy and Acton from a “Toss-Up” to “Leans Democrat.”
“The trajectory of Vivek Ramaswamy’s odds in the Ohio governor’s race has been clear to us for the last few weeks. But the campaign’s decision this week to air a deeply personal attack ad against opponent Amy Acton confirmed that the race is slipping away from him,” Cook Political Report’s Jessica Taylor wrote in the analysis.
Ramaswamy’s campaign invested $4 million in an ad campaign featuring Acton’s estranged mother, who stayed married to a man who was indicted over allegations he sexually abused Acton when she was a child. In the ad, Acton’s mother, Donna Arthur, calls her daughter a liar.
Acton’s campaign immediately pushed back on the ad, releasing a video of Acton’s brother, Philip Stearns, talking about their alleged childhood abuse and saying Acton protected him from the situation. “I received a lot of abuse, but Amy always got the worst of it,” Stearns said in the Acton campaign ad.
“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,” Stearns said in a statement this week.
Democrats and Republicans alike have pushed back on the ad, with Gov. Mike DeWine (R-OH) urging Ramaswamy to pull the video from Ohio’s airwaves.
Ramaswamy has stood by the ad, saying it “had nothing to do with childhood abuse.” President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance have also defended Ramaswamy as he takes heat over the video.
“We ran an ad about lying. Amy Acton is lying. She has been lying this entire campaign about me, about her record, about her history in this state,” Ramaswamy said Friday.
In Cook Political Report’s assessment, Taylor wrote that the forecasting outlet has not “talked to a GOP source who thought this was a good idea.”
“This is not the kind of TV ad you run if you’re winning — or even if you’re confident you can,” Taylor wrote.
OHIO RACES LAUNCH INCREASINGLY PERSONAL ATTACKS AS ELECTION DAY LOOMS LARGE
Trump won the 2024 presidential election in Ohio by a double-digit margin, defeating former Vice President Kamala Harris by an 11.3-percentage-point margin. DeWine, who is term-limited, won his 2022 reelection bid against Democrat Nan Whaley by a 25-percentage-point margin.
According to RealClearPolitics’s polling average in the Ohio governor’s race, Acton leads by 3.6 percentage points. She also leads in the Polymarket odds in the race.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
