Known scumbag Vivek Ramaswamy has consistently trailed in the polls for the Ohio governor’s election. There are many reasons for this: Democrat Dr. Amy Acton is a compelling candidate. Despite enduring horrific childhood trauma, Dr. Acton has distinguished herself as a leader and public health expert. She was the first woman to serve as director of the Ohio Department of Health. She has won the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation’s Profile in Courage Award in 2021 and was named USA Today's Ohio Woman of the Year in 2022.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s approval rating in Ohio — a state he won by double digits in 2024 — is currently an unimpressive 42 percent. However, I think Ramaswamy is performing terribly because he’s a gross scumbag and everyone knows it. Politics isn’t always so simple but when it is, it’s because a candidate is a known scumbag.
Ramawsamy’s own favorability rating in Ohio is around minus 10 percent, which is low. Worse, according to CNN pollster Harry Enten, Ramaswamy’s net favorability rating among independents had sunk last week to minus 25 across the survey data he reviewed. That’s the the lowest mark for a Republican gubernatorial nominee in Ohio since 2000. In the 2022 election, independents were 29 percent of the electorate to Democrats’ 30 percent and Republicans’ 41 percent. Republican Gov. Mike DeWine won independents 62 to 37 percent, because regardless of what you might think of his politics, DeWine at least resembles a mammal. Even if Ramaswamy maxes out Republican voters, who continually demonstrate an immunity to shame, losing independents and tanking completely with Democrats is more than enough to cost him the race.
When a candidate is trailing in a state where their party normally dominates, the issue is specifically them. Something about you is so alienating it defeats partisan gravity. Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek is at least trying to address this problem in her re-election campaign, but Ramaswamy has abandoned any pretense of appealing to Ohio voters’ actual material concerns. He’s instead chose to make this election about character, which is a problem for him because he has none.
Although polling clearly suggests that a majority of Ohio voters already believe that Ramaswamy is polluting the airwaves with negative ads, he seems to think that more negative ads can turn around the election for him. He’s not just going for your standard negative ads, either, but perhaps the most repulsive negative ad campaign in modern political history. (And this is a modern political history that includes Donald Trump.)
Last week, Ramaswamy’s campaign dropped $4 million on a grotesque ad campaign featuring a sick video of Dr. Amy Acton’s estranged mother telling voters that her daughter is a liar who “needs help” and shouldn’t be trusted. While it’s true that this woman physically gave birth to Dr. Acton, it feels like a stretch to describe her as a “mother.” Norma Bates had a better parental resume. Dr. Acton’s brother released a disgusted statement where he pointed out that in 1978, Mahoning County child welfare and court authorities removed him and his sister from their “mother’s” care after their stepfather, Cledith Arthur, was charged with sexually abusing a 12-year-old Acton. She and her brother were later placed in the custody of their biological father. This was almost 50 years ago, when a mother had to suck on the most epic level to lose custody of their kids. Women who fattened up kids in their gingerbread houses were usually able to keep their kids.
This is a terrible ad for many reasons, but Donna Stearns Arthur is hardly a credible character witness for a daughter she hasn’t seen in decades. Ramaswamy is shamelessly using a pathetic old woman to smear his opponent, and he didn’t even bother to do a basic background check on Arthur. They found the woman living with cats in her car in a church parking lot. Although too many liberals might reflexively think her wretched condition makes her somehow morally superior, Arthur was once convicted of animal neglect in Pennsylvania after she left several cats and a five-day-old kittens inside a locked car with the windows rolled up on a hot spring day. One of the kittens had died by the time authorities rescued them for the car, which had an interior temperature of 120 degrees. This is barbaric even for Tennessee.
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Ramaswamy’s ad was a failure, both morally and practically. It hasn’t swayed Dr. Acton’s supporters — quite the opposite — and it’s pushed some voters who were on the fence to her side. The ad campaign might even qualify as a perverse in-kind donation for Dr. Acton, who became the top fundraiser on ActBlue last week, the first Democratic candidate for governor to do so since April.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer reversed its previous neutral stance and endorsed Dr. Acton on Sunday. Even Republicans have expressed their contempt for this attack ad and Ramaswamy in particular. A Republican member of DeWine’s cabinet denounced the ad campaign prior to DeWine himself rebuking it, and Sen. John Husted, who’s running for re-election, told the Associated Press, “I would not have run that ad.” (Neither DeWine nor Husted have rescinded their endorsements of Ramaswamy.)
Predictably, of course, Vice President JD Vance insists he’s not in the business of declaring whether gross ads weaponizing childhood abuse is “appropriate.” Like the true sociopath he is, Vance suggested that elected Republicans should just have their consciences removed through the same outpatient procedure he used when he entered politics and focus on winning this race.
“Politics is a tough business,” Vance said, “and my message to my fellow elected Republicans is: if you actually believe in the things you say you believe in, stop whining about an advertisement and go win the race in 13 days.” Hardly the St. Crispin’s Day speech.
Vance might talk “tough” about politics, but he’s won just one election on his own and he significantly underperformed not just Gov. DeWine but every other Ohio Republican on the ballot in 2022, which was a bad year for Democrats. Unlike Vance, Ramaswamy is running as an unrepentant asshole without the benefit of partisan tailwinds.
It’s understandable why Vance is so focused on Ramaswamy — his brother in slime —winning the governor’s election. The Senate seat Vance vacated in 2025 might flip to Democrat Sherrod Brown, who’s staging a comeback after losing his own seat in 2024. If Democrats sweep both races, it would be a delightful middle finger to Vance. This isn’t just pettiness, either. Vance’s former Senate seat would help Democrats regain the majority, and imagine Vance trying to launch a presidential campaign in 2028 when the governor of his home state, once considered reliably red, is now a Democrat. (Vance has grossly smeared Dr. Acton as a drunk on the campaign trail, so I doubt she’ll appear in public with him even on a dare.)
Vance might have to just “imagine” a presidential race, as well. After claiming in an interview that Trump would endorse him if he decides to run, Vance had to just stand there in the Oval Office with that constipated look on his face as Trump dismissed the idea: “He’s a very talented person and a very good person, but literally, I don’t think we’ve ever talked about it.”
Trump himself formally announced his last presidential campaign on November 15, 2022, just after the midterms. This was earlier than everyone else because Trump was desperate to avoid prison. Still, if Vance is serious about a 2028 run. he should have had conversations with his boss by now. (Fortunately for Democrats, Trump is a sadistic psychopath who will enjoy pitting Vance against every other candidate who might want the nomination.)
We should never assume that a Republican candidate sucks so much that they’ll lose an election, but Ramaswamy is so odious and Vance’s defense of him so repugnant that his potential loss could prove the most satisfying midterm result.
Republicans=slug-slime. The few who do stand up to the Blob eating their party are as rare as the "not all men" who speak up against the sexual violence of their peers.
A plurality of Ohio voters (36%) seem to fancy themselves "independents". This would be a good year to show some and stop electing Republicans who consistently kick them and the rest of us in the face.
"Trump himself formally announced his last presidential campaign on November 15, 2022, just after the midterms. This was earlier than everyone else because Trump was desperate to avoid prison. Still, if Vance is serious about a 2028 run. he should have had conversations with his boss by now. (Fortunately for Democrats, Trump is a sadistic psychopath who will enjoy pitting Vance against every other candidate who might want the nomination.)"