Amy Acton’s birth mother urged Ohioans not to elect her “liar” daughter governor, while Acton’s brother says the family’s abuse history makes the spot even more jarring.
A raw campaign video featuring Democrat Amy Acton’s estranged birth mother hit the Ohio governor’s race this week, with Donna Arthur telling voters her daughter lies about her past and should not run the state.
The spot surfaced online Tuesday as Acton holds a narrow edge over Republican Vivek Ramaswamy, and it immediately triggered a bitter fight over childhood trauma, custody, and who tells the truth. The New York Post reported the ad and the dueling campaign responses.
Acton’s camp blamed Ramaswamy for dredging up her history as a child sex-abuse survivor. Ramaswamy’s team said it did not know the full mother-daughter story but insisted Ohioans deserve to hear warnings about Acton’s truthfulness before Election Day.
It remains unclear who paid for or produced the unattributed spot.
In the video, Arthur does not hedge.
Arthur says she loves her daughter, then delivers the line that defines the ad.
"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 Acton’s account of growing up in a tent.
"She says she grew up living in a tent. None of that is true."
Arthur goes further, telling Ohio voters Acton has lied her entire life, needs help, and cannot help them if she will not tell the truth first.
"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."
Ramaswamy spokeswoman Connie Luck told The Post the campaign does not know what happened between Amy and her mother, who first spoke out about Amy in 2020, but argued Acton is a “serial fabulist” with serious problems with the truth that voters must weigh.
Luck added that people who know Acton best, a former boss, former state colleagues, fellow physicians, and now her own mother, are warning Ohioans not to vote for her.
Acton’s brother, Philip Stearns, answered with a campaign-released statement that framed the spot as a low attack on a survivor.
Just the News reported Stearns tying the ad directly to Ramaswamy and to abuse Acton endured at age 12 from their birth mother’s husband.
"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 that after the man was arrested and the siblings were removed from custody, their birth mother stayed married to him until he died. He called the attack desperate and disgusting and said it shows who Ramaswamy is.
That clash sits in the same grim territory as fights over how the system treats predators and victims, including when the House advanced lifetime no-contact rules for convicted predators.
Breitbart reported additional record detail: stepfather Cledith Arthur was arrested and charged in July 1978 for the rape of his then-12-year-old stepdaughter, with alleged abuse from December 1976 to April 1978; he pleaded not guilty, was indicted, and later became a fugitive. Stearns confirmed the siblings were removed from Donna Arthur’s custody after that indictment.
Acton has said she has not seen her mother since a 1978 courtroom appearance and suggested Ramaswamy’s side was behind the ad circulating without the usual “paid for” disclosure. She also said she will not normalize someone who treats her childhood as a complaint and then rolls out her birth mother in a campaign hit.
Long before this race, Acton described a hard upbringing in public interviews.
In a 2019 interview with The Vindicator, she said her parents divorced when she was about three, custody then usually went to the mother, and her father tried to get custody of the children. She spoke of “crazy stories,” of being scared as a kid while navigating the adult world, and of being “lucky that it got bad enough, because it got me out of there.”
She has also described spending at least one winter at a campground outside Youngstown. Arthur flatly denies the tent-and-campground portrait.
Those contradictions are now campaign fuel. Acton once led the Ohio Department of Health from 2019 through 2020. She has called Ramaswamy a “serial liar” and “scam artist” and has refused to debate him. RealClearPolitics’ latest aggregate showed her up by about 3.7 points. Ohio has elected only one Democratic governor, Ted Strickland, since 1990.
Personal blowups and credibility fights are familiar terrain in Democratic politics, from staffers’ allegations met with “smear” pushback to other high-profile party figures scrambling when their own words create new problems.
Left-leaning Ohio outlet The Rooster had already flagged rumors that Ramaswamy allies wanted to spotlight Arthur. An October 20, 2026 post from Ohio Politics News shared the full ad and called it an “October surprise” using Acton’s estranged mother.
Ramaswamy’s campaign did not claim the spot. Luck’s message stayed on Acton’s credibility, not on authorship. Acton’s side treated the appearance of Arthur as proof of Ramaswamy’s character. Voters are left with a mother on camera calling her daughter a liar, a brother describing rape and a mother who stayed married to the accused man, and no clear ad disclaimer tying the video to a campaign treasury.
That kind of opacity invites the same skepticism voters already aim at institutions and public officials who duck accountability, whether the fight is a governor’s race or a courtroom clash like the one that saw a federal judge refer a Democratic DA for possible prosecution.
Ohio Democrats know how quickly old positions and personal narratives can boomerang; even a figure like Sherrod Brown has had to explain shifting Ohio pitches when the record catches up.
Arthur first went public about Amy in 2020, according to Luck. Acton’s 2020-era claims, as relayed in coverage of the fight, included charges involving Arthur and an assertion that Arthur and the stepfather “skipped town.” Arthur has disputed the rape narrative as a custody ploy by Acton’s biological father, Jerry Stearns. The competing family accounts were never going to stay private in a statewide race.
The core dispute is settled only in the sense that both sides have now spoken. Arthur says Acton lies about her past and needs help before she can help anyone else. Stearns says the ad turns a twelve-year-old’s sexual abuse into a talking point and reveals Ramaswamy’s character. Luck says the public must hear that people close to Acton are warning against her. Acton says she will not normalize the use of the mother who lost custody after severe abuse and neglect.
Missing still: a clear payer line on the ad, full unedited script credits, and easy-to-cite court dispositions beyond the 1978 arrest and indictment narrative already reported. Primary police and case files are not reproduced in the coverage package driving this fight. The race continues with Acton slightly ahead and less than a full news cycle’s distance from voters who now have a mother-daughter rupture on video.
In a contest sold on competence and trust, a candidate’s own birth mother calling her a liar is not a side show, it is a character test Ohioans get to grade for themselves.
