Republican attacks on the candidate for governor are contradictory and hinge on a warped understanding of sexual abuse

I’ve heard people say that the Ramaswamy team must have been scared.

Last week, the campaign of Vivek Ramaswamy, the tech billionaire and onetime Republican presidential candidate who is currently the Republican nominee to be the governor of Ohio, ran an ad featuring the long-estranged mother of his Democratic opponent, the physician and former public health official Amy Acton.

Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist

Republican Mike DeWine said ad featuring estranged mother of Democrat Amy Acton was ‘wrong’

Donald Trump issued a swift rebuke against Mike DeWine, Ohio’s Republican governor, who on Thursday said gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy was “wrong” to release an ad critical of his Democratic rival Amy Acton that featured her estranged mother.

DeWine had implored Ramaswamy to take the ad down, but hours later, Trump urged Ramaswamy to keep airing it and accused the Republican governor of disloyalty.

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• Trump attacks Ohio governor over call for Ramaswamy to drop ‘deeply troubling’ ad

Reporting from Anchorage, Alaska

Mary Peltola’s campaign to represent Alaska in the US Senate has taken her to parts of the massive state’s interior that are inaccessible by road and on the frontlines of the cost-of-living crisis she hopes will make her the first Democrat to win the seat in nearly two decades.

JD Vance, the vice-president, criticized Republicans who have spoken out against a controversial campaign ad from Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. The ad features the mother of his Democratic opponent, Amy Acton, calling her daughter a liar. In a Tuesday statement, Acton’s brother, Philip Stearns, said his sister was estranged from her mother, who had married a man that sexually abused Acton when she was 12. He said his mother, Donna Arthur, remained in the marriage after her husband was arrested and her children were taken away from her

Amy Acton’s brother calls campaigning on his sister’s sexual abuse from their mother’s husband ‘a despicable low’

The family of Amy Acton, the Democratic candidate for governor of Ohio, is criticizing her Republican opponent Vivek Ramaswamy for using Acton’s estranged mother in a recently released campaign ad.

In the ad, which has circulated among conservatives on social media, her mother, Donna Arthur, said: “She says she grew up living in a tent. None of that is true. She’s lied her entire life.”