Ramaswamy’s ad goes too far weaponizing family in politics | Opinion

The actions of the campaign of Ohio Republican gubernatorial hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy are disgraceful and continue a progressively nasty tradition of perpetuating gutter politics at any cost, even to the point of dragging an opponent’s family trauma into the public square.

This sort of dirty business has escalated during the Trump era, and has reverberative consequences, but more on that later.

Thankfully, the public backlash has been swift, but that did not stop Ramaswamy from doubling down on a viral political ad featuring the estranged mother of his opponent, former Ohio health czar Amy Acton, accusing her daughter of having a history of lying.

Imagine your mom publicly denigrating you. That’s painful enough, but Acton’s backstory is both traumatizing and a profile in courage. She and her younger brother have been estranged from their mother since they were children after abuse allegations against their stepfather. The mother remained his partner. Acton grew up to practice medicine and hold public office.

What is Ramaswamy thinking?

On a personal note, I watched Acton with Gov. Mike DeWine during the COVID-19 pandemic on daily televised updates communicating with candor and the seriousness of what we were going through. Few of us knew her back story then. After a few months as the public face of COVID information in Ohio, she became the target of public criticism, anti-Semitic slurs and armed protesters who gathered outside her suburban Columbus home over the state’s stay-at-home orders and mask guidelines. Acton resigned from her post in June 2020, even as security detail was hired to protect her and her family.

Ramaswamy said his campaign would spend $4 million to promote the ad statewide. This is a deliberate choice to embrace cruelty backed by serious money. It’s beyond the pale. He broke the unwritten rule about weaponizing family in political discourse. Criticize your opponent’s record, their judgment of position, but do not use private trauma as political ammunition. Nevertheless, this is where we find ourselves in the early 21st century. Big money and viral moments rule politics these days.

I have been in the opinion writing business for over 30 years, and I have witnessed plenty of political dirt in ads. One that comes to mind is George H.W. Bush’s Willie Horton ad during the 1988 presidential campaign that used racial fear to tie the violent crimes of a black man on furlough to Michael Dukakis.

Smart and creative politicians and their handlers can follow a different path in this modern era of campaigning that is impactful without puking all over everything. Change the paradigm.

Back to those reverberative consequences, it’s a wonder we all manage to choose a political leader after wading through the mess they make and, sadly, they have cultivated an atmosphere that extends beyond the campaign trail.

The Jan. 6 , 2021 riots on the U.S. capitol, inspired by harmful political rhetoric, claimed the lives of police and injured dozens more.

There have been two assassination attempts on President Trump’s life during his current term.

In June, Michigan authorities investigated a false anonymous report about Michigan resident Pete Buttigeg, former U.S. Secretary of Transportation and a possible Democratic presidential hopeful. He and his husband were told not to be alone with their 4-year-old twins during the investigation. The family was separated for 24 hours.

In 2020, federal authorities charged men in a plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Several defendants were convicted, though others were acquitted.

We have come to expect bare knuckles and grappling in politics. That’s the nature of the business. But political hostility has had real and frightening consequences.

Ramaswamy’s $4 million plan to expand this ad shows how campaigns spend to dominate attention. He can do better than put a candidate’s family trauma on display.

The problem with the political season is that candidates resort to appealing to the lowest common denominator instead of calling us to something higher and greater than ourselves.

The country doesn’t need campaigns that are necessarily kinder instead of honest. It needs campaigns that are honest without making cruelty the point.

Byron McCauley is Michigan columnist for USA Today Co. Email: bmccauley@usatoday.com

This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Ramaswamy’s ad goes too far weaponizing family in politics | Opinion

Reporting by Byron McCauley, Holland Sentinel / The Holland Sentinel

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This story was originally published October 22, 2026 at 3:47 AM.