I remember being a young reporter on the women’s rights beat in 2012 when Missouri Republican Todd Akin instantly tanked his Senate campaign with a vile comment about rape and abortion. Asked whether he supports abortion exceptions for women who become pregnant from rape, Akin, said, “First of all, from what I understand from doctors, that's really rare. If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”
That “legitimate rape” comment haunted Republicans for the rest of the cycle, which was later dubbed the “Year of the Woman” because of how many Democratic women crushed men like Akin to retake control of the House and Senate. And now Vivek Ramaswamy, the billionaire tech bro in a tight race for governor of Ohio, has made an equally repulsive move that’s drawing national, bipartisan outrage right before an election and could potentially hurt Republicans up and down the ticket.
Ramaswamy’s team dropped an ad yesterday about his Democratic opponent, Amy Acton, featuring Acton’s estranged elderly mother. It’s essentially a long cut of Acton’s mom calling her mentally ill and a liar, disputing Acton’s claim that they lived in a tent when she was little, and saying Ohio can’t trust her.
The ad is so jarring and bizarre, as Sam Stein pointed out, that it just prompted folks to google what happened with Acton’s mother that would make her want to sabotage her own daughter’s political hopes. It turns out Acton has been estranged from her mom since she was 12 because her mom stood by the man who was repeatedly raping Amy and sexually abusing her brother. The husband—who’d been accused of molesting kids even before he came into the Acton family—was charged with child rape and indicted by a grand jury, and both he and Amy’s mom fled the state to avoid jail time. Nevertheless, Ramaswamy proudly claimed credit for featuring that woman in his ad yesterday and doubled down on it, spending $4 million to air it on TV across Ohio because he said he’s annoyed that Acton won’t debate him.
Acton put out her own ad last night in response to Ramaswamy platforming her vile mother, which ended up being quite powerful. Her brother goes straight to camera talking about the sexual abuse they endured as kids and how she shielded him from the worst of it:
Ramaswamy, now, is on record siding with a woman who enabled her own daughter’s rape and continues to abuse her from afar decades later.
The move was widely condemned by people across both parties, with some Republicans shaking their heads in disbelief that a candidate would do something like this right before the midterms. Republican commentators have been struggling to defend the video on cable news, and GOP political strategists were crashing out over it last night on X:
The critical Senate seat in jeopardy is that of Ohio Republican Jon Husted, who was nipping at Sherrod Brown’s (D) heels in the polls before Ramaswamy made the terrible ad. Republicans have been dumping money into the Ohio Senate race in the past couple weeks to try to save their majority, making it the second most expensive race in the country. Donald Trump needs Husted to win so badly that he’s been nonstop talking about the man’s ass at every campaign rally. I wish I were joking:
Husted has not denounced the ad yet, but the pressure on him is growing to do so—especially after his opponent directly called on him to say something.
Still, I’m not sure that any amount of denouncing this ad is going to be enough to wash the stink off the whole Republican Party, which at this point is pretty openly pro-rape. Their hero Donald Trump, a multi-accused rapist himself, recently sided with the 7 men that a young woman accused of gang rape at Cornell. That woman, unlike someone like Christine Blasey Ford, doesn’t even have anything to do with politics—the president just insinuated she’s a lying about rape for the love of the game.
Platforming the kind of mother that calls her young daughter a liar when she comes forward about sexual abuse is, at its core, what this party does. They regularly cast the victims of sexual violence as liars and the perpetrators as the real victims, because there are so many abusers in their own ranks that flipping the script is the only way to justify their continued support.
For a decade, the strategy has mostly worked. Republicans elected Trump after the “grab ‘em by the pussy” tape and then reelected him in what I argued was essentially a backlash to the Me Too movement. But now may be different; we’re experiencing a backlash to the backlash. Ramaswamy’s timing in outing himself as absolute gutter trash is looking especially terrible for him and the entire party, and I suspect there’s about to be a bigger reckoning at the polls than any of them were prepared for.