Democrat Amy Acton’s birth mother brands her a liar in an Ohio governor ad, but her brother says the truth involves childhood abuse and blames Vivek Ramaswamy.
New reporting describes a video that surfaced online Tuesday in the Ohio governor’s race, featuring Donna Arthur denouncing her daughter, Democrat Amy Acton, and urging voters to reject her.
Arthur calls Acton a liar about her past and her opponent. Acton’s campaign answered by accusing Republican Vivek Ramaswamy of turning childhood sexual abuse into a political weapon. Who paid for the spot remains unclear.
The exchange lands in a contest where Acton holds a narrow edge and Ohio has backed President Trump by wide margins in recent cycles. Family trauma is now the battlefield.
In the video, Donna Arthur does not hedge.
Arthur says:
"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 rejects a core piece of Acton’s public story.
Arthur continues:
"She says she grew up living in a tent. None of that is true,"
Arthur goes further, telling viewers Acton has “lied her entire life,” needs help, and cannot help Ohio if she will not tell the truth. She closes with a direct warning: do not vote for people who lie, and do not let Acton become governor.
“If you think she’ll make your life better, you’re fooling yourself. It will only get worse,” Arthur says in the ad.
The sponsorship trail is murky. Acton’s side tied the hit to Ramaswamy. His campaign did not immediately comment Tuesday.
Acton’s campaign released a statement from her brother, Philip Stearns, that casts the ad as a low blow rooted in abuse Acton has described from childhood.
Stearns said:
"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,"
He added that after the stepfather was arrested and the children were removed from custody, their birth mother “stayed married to Amy’s rapist until he died.” Stearns called the episode a “desperate, disgusting attack” and unloaded on Ramaswamy in personal terms.
That is the Acton camp’s account. Arthur’s video disputes the abuse narrative Acton has used and treats the sexual-assault claims as a custody fight tactic tied to Acton’s biological father, Jerry Stearns. The two family stories do not match. Primary court files and case dispositions are not laid out in the available reporting.
Related coverage of the same family clash has already tracked how Acton’s mother brands her a liar while the brother points at Ramaswamy.
Acton has made a hard upbringing part of her political origin story. In a 2019 interview with The Vindicator, she described a childhood that spun out of control after her mother divorced her father when Acton was about three.
“It got out of control. Custody [back then] always went to the mom. My dad tried to get custody of us,” Acton said then.
She also said she had “so many crazy stories,” spent years scared as a kid, and learned to navigate the adult world early. On the abuse she has alleged, she said she was “lucky that it got bad enough, because it got me out of there.” She has described winter time in a campground near Youngstown and said her stepfather faced charges, skipped town, and was not heard from again. She has also claimed her mother faced charges.
Arthur’s ad flatly rejects the tent story and the broader portrait. She has accused Jerry Stearns of abusing her while she was pregnant with Acton and has cast the allegations against the stepfather, identified in accounts as Bud, as a ploy in the custody war. Again: these are competing family claims, not a settled public record produced alongside the ad.
Voters are left with a candidate who rose on survival narrative and a birth mother who now says the narrative is false. That is a credibility problem no press release fully erases.
Ramaswamy, a tech executive and 2024 presidential candidate, is the Republican in the race. Acton has called him a “serial liar” and “scam artist” and has refused to debate him. Her campaign’s instant move was to put his name on the Arthur video.
A left-leaning Ohio political site, The Rooster, had circulated talk that Ramaswamy allies wanted to spotlight Arthur. An Ohio Politics News post on October 20, 2026, shared the ad and called Ramaswamy a “notorious conman” who had “co-opted” Acton’s estranged mother for an “October surprise.” None of that substitutes for a clear payer ID on the spot itself.
Ramaswamy’s campaign’s no-comment Tuesday left the accusation hanging. In politics, silence does not prove guilt, and a rival’s charge is not a receipt.
The race has already drawn national Republican attention, including moments when Vance jabs Amy Acton over drinking claims that allies have used to paint her as unstable.
RealClearPolitics’ latest aggregate shows Acton ahead of Ramaswamy by 3.7 percentage points. That lead sits on unfriendly terrain. Ohio gave President Trump 53% in 2020 and 55% in 2024.
Acton ran the Ohio Department of Health from 2019 through 2020. She is asking the same state to make her governor while her own mother tells voters she cannot be trusted and her brother answers with an abuse chronology the mother disputes.
The campaign has not been gentle on other fronts either. Separate reporting has covered an armed man charged toward Acton at a county fair, a reminder that this contest is already running hot.
Ohio Democrats have taken other political hits in recent cycles, including fights that saw the Human Rights Campaign shut out Ohio Democrats over girls’ sports policy. Acton’s race now adds a family rupture broadcast to the whole state.
Solid from the reporting: the Arthur video exists; she calls Acton a liar and tells Ohio not to elect her; the Acton campaign published Stearns’ statement blaming Ramaswamy and restating the childhood rape-and-removal account; Ramaswamy’s team had no immediate comment; the ad’s sponsor is not established in the piece; Acton leads by a few points in the RCP average; Ohio has voted heavily for Trump twice.
Not solid: a documented paymaster for the ad, on-the-record confirmation from Ramaswamy tying him to the spot, and primary police or court records reproduced to lock down every historical charge, arrest, marriage detail, or disposition named in the dueling family statements.
Stearns’ most severe labels for Ramaswamy are his words, released through the Acton campaign. Arthur’s most severe labels for Acton are hers, spoken on camera. A serious electorate can hear both without pretending the paperwork is complete.
Republican messaging in Ohio has kept a blue-collar edge in other stops on the trail, including when Vance returns to the steel mill and pitches work-first politics. This ad fight is uglier, more personal, and harder to spin as policy.
When a candidate sells biography as qualification, biography becomes fair ground. Acton did that for years. Her birth mother just answered in public. The campaign’s reply was to accuse the Republican rival and relitigate a nightmare from Acton’s childhood, while the underwriting of the ad stays opaque. Ohio voters can decide which story holds up. They should demand names on the checks either way.
