AMY GOODMAN: In the Ohio governor’s race, an attack ad has set off a firestorm of criticism from Democrats and many Republicans. Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, a tech billionaire, says he will spend $4 million more to promote the ad ahead of the midterm elections, even though it’s drawn criticism from members of his own party.

The ad features his Democratic opponent Dr. Amy Acton’s estranged mother, in which she denies her daughter was sexually abused as a child. This is a brief clip.

DONNA ARTHUR: I love my daughter, but when I saw her lying about her opponent, it’s not easy for a mother to say this, but Amy has a serious problem.

AMY GOODMAN: The ad first began circulating on social media earlier this week. Dr. Acton responded to her mother’s appearance in the ad in a statement, saying, quote, “Between the ages of 10 and 12, I was sexually abused by her husband, while my birth mother did nothing to protect me. … My birth mother’s husband was arrested, charged with rape, and indicted by a grand jury. At 12 years old, I testified in court. I haven’t seen my birth mother since that day in 1978. She and her husband fled the state and he was declared a fugitive,” she wrote. Dr. Acton also addressed the ad in a campaign stop Wednesday evening.

DR. AMY ACTON: But I’ve never attacked his family. I would never do that. This is despicable, what he’s done. And, you know, you can see that there are so many people who have experienced trauma and abuse in their lives. I’m running for governor because I won’t look the other way while bad actors, special interests keep taking my state backwards on nearly every single measure.

AMY GOODMAN: Ohio’s Republican Senator Jon Husted, who’s in a tight race against Democratic candidate Sherrod Brown, the former senator, said he would not have run the ad. And Ohio’s current governor, Republican Mike DeWine, condemned the ad, calling it “wrong.” This audio is a bit rough, but listen carefully.

GOV. MIKE DEWINE: It’s wrong to run this ad. And even at this late time, my wife Fran saw the ad run this morning on TV. I would just urge the Ramaswamy campaign to take this down.

AMY GOODMAN: But also on Wednesday, Vice President and former Ohio Senator JD Vance said he’d been left feeling “disgusted” — not by Ramaswamy’s ad, but by Republican pushback against it.

VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE: I’m a little bit disgusted when I see Republicans across the country who are whining more about that advertisement than they are about what the congressional Democrats and other Democrats want to do to the United States of America.

AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, President Trump has been fiercely defending the ad repeatedly on the campaign trail in Iowa, saying he advised Ramaswamy not to take it down, but instead to thank God.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: When I first saw it, I said, “Wow! That means Vivek easily will win the race.” And then I got a call from Vivek. He said, “What would you recommend? Because I’m getting killed in the press.” “Why?” He said, “Because they think I should immediately take the ad off.” They did an ad of the mother saying the daughter is incompetent, a liar, a disgusting, unreliable person. …

I said it’s a big thing. It’s like a big story about “he must take that ad down immediately. He must” — no. The mother is calling the daughter a terrible person and a liar. Everybody should be so lucky. Why would you shield somebody from that? Why would — why would we do that? So I told him, “Leave it up, and look upstairs and say, 'Thank you, God, very much. I appreciate it.'”

AMY GOODMAN: The Ohio governor’s race is just one of several hotly contested races in Ohio.

For more, we go to Mother Jones reporter Abby Vesoulis. Her latest piece is headlined ”GOP Doubles Down on Ad Exploiting Ohio Democrat’s Childhood Rape and Abuse.”

Abby, this is an incredible story. I mean, you have a woman who contends that she was raped and sexually abused at the age of 12. And the man who did it, her stepfather, was indicted, and then he and her mother, who he was married to, fled to Pennsylvania. And Dr. Acton has not seen her mother in — what is it? — in more than 40 years, since 1978. And somehow Ramaswamy’s people found this mother, and she talks about her daughter as a liar. She last saw her when she was what? Something like 12 years old. Abby, tell us this whole story. And President Trump saying Ramaswamy called him and said, “Should I pull it down? I’m being killed on this,” and Trump said, “No, just look up and thank God”?

ABBY VESOULIS: Dr. Amy Acton, the Democrat running for governor in Ohio, has previously discussed on the campaign trail and in her previous role as public health director for Ohio during COVID how she had a very rough childhood, living in tents at time, and that her stepfather sexually abused her when she was between the ages of 10 and 12. And, you know, Vivek Ramaswamy is now using that personal trauma as an effort to exploit what she went through and win this race. And he’s currently polling beneath Amy Acton, which shows, I think, that this ad is a desperate attempt to, you know, somehow pull off a victory despite poor odds.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Abby, what is your sense of the reaction among the voters — not not just the political leaders, but the voters — to this ad?

ABBY VESOULIS: So, I think Ohio voters are understandably upset. And what’s really interesting is that Amy Acton, among progressives, was not, you know, their favorite candidate. They were upset with some previous things she said about continuing to uphold Ohio’s laws regarding trans girls playing sports. And so, I think there were a lot of progressives who intended to not vote for Acton or sit the election out. And so, this ad, I think, is energizing those people to come to the polls and support Acton because of how despicable they feel Ramaswamy’s ad is.

And among Republicans, I’ve seen Republicans say that they just cannot vote for Ramaswamy after doing this. And I think it’s important to note that a lot of Republicans — and, of course, Democrats too, but Republicans — have been very frustrated by how the Epstein files were handled by the Trump administration. And so, here you have a situation in which, you know, candidate Ramaswamy is using the sexual abuse of a child to try to win a political campaign, and given everything that has happened with Jeffrey Epstein, these people are like, “That is where I draw the line.” So, I’ve seen many Republicans say that they are either going to stay home and not vote, which will hurt all the Republicans on the ballot in Ohio — and there’s some other very close races — or that they’re not going to vote for governor, or maybe even that they’ll vote for Acton. I think this ad is bringing a lot of sympathy to her situation.

AMY GOODMAN: South Carolina Republican Congressmember Nancy Mace said she was “stunned and shocked” that between the Ramaswamy ad and Republican congressmembers blocking the release of the Epstein files, quote, she said, “It’s going to take a long time for Republicans to recover from this. … We are not the party of pedophilia,” she said, unquote.

And she also referenced Congressmember Max Miller. He’s running for reelection amidst accusations of domestic violence. His opponent is the Bernie Sanders-endorsed Democrat Brian Poindexter, a union iron worker. Miller’s ex-wife Emily Moreno, who’s the daughter of Ohio’s sitting Republican Senator Bernie Moreno, claims Miller burned her chest and stomach by throwing hot water at her, held a gun to her head, and claims he fractured their 2-year-old daughter’s collarbone. In August, Republican Senator Bernie Moreno called on Miller to step down, writing on social media, quote, “He should not serve in the House of Representatives. I believe Max Miller needs to seek professional help to end the clear pattern of abuse he’s left in his wake. I believe he should not be free to continue endangering others until he does,” Senator Moreno said. Earlier this month, Miller’s campaign released an ad denying the accusations of abuse against him, defending his decision to stay in the race.

REP. MAX MILLER: Too many of us know the pain of divorce. It’s messy and complicated. For two years, my family’s heartbreak has been dragged onto your TV because, well, that’s politics. Despite relentless press and investigations, every allegation against me was proven false.

AMY GOODMAN: Abby Vesoulis, you and your colleagues at Mother Jones obtained some 2,000 pages of court filings and police reports pertaining to Miller through public records requests. Those records also include allegations dating back to high school. Tell us what you learned about Max Miller, how voters in Ohio are responding to the revelations. We are also including the former press secretary for President Trump in his first term. Stephanie Grisham dated Max Miller and then went on to write a piece in The Washington Post that he abused her. Talk about all of this in this last few minutes we have.

ABBY VESOULIS: So, what’s most important, I think, to note about the Max Miller situation is, like you said, this is a pattern of allegations. It’s not just Emily Moreno who says that Max assaulted her on multiple occasions. There’s also Stephanie Grisham, who reportedly was slapped by Miller when the two were dating during the first Trump administration.

There’s also an allegation against Miller that he pushed a girl down the stairs when she was in high school because [she] denied [his] sexual advances. Politico first reported on that in 2021, when Miller was running for his first term in the House of Representatives, and they cited three witnesses who saw that exchange between Miller and the girl that he allegedly pushed down the stairs. I contacted that now woman over the summer, and she said she really didn’t want to talk about it, because it was one of the most traumatic nights of her life, even still.

And so, it’s just so important to note that it’s not just Emily Moreno. And by the way, Emily Moreno’s father is a Republican senator. So, his ad, Miller’s ad, saying that this has been, you know, dredged into the news because of politics, that just doesn’t really make sense, because wouldn’t Moreno have wanted, you know, the Ohio contingency in Congress to be full of Republicans? So, there’s a lot of strange politics happening here.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Abby, there’s another big race in Ohio, the Senate race, where former Senator Sherrod Brown is trying to unseat Jon Husted. What’s your sense of how that race is developing?

ABBY VESOULIS: So, Sherrod Brown was senator of Ohio for 18 years before Bernie Moreno ousted him in 2024. And that was one of the closest Senate races back in 2024. And, you know, despite Ohio shifting red ever since 2016, Sherrod Brown has continued to be a fairly popular Democrat, the only Democrat in Ohio to win a statewide race in a decade-plus. And so, he has a lot of name recognition. In fact, a recent poll showed that 25% of Ohio voters thought that Sherrod Brown was still the senator and that he had never been voted out. So he has name recognition going for him. And then, additionally, because of how long he served and how fairly popular he was as a Democrat, he has a lot of campaign cash, whereas Vivek — sorry, whereas Jon Husted doesn’t have as much popularity. He’s not getting as much cash. He really doesn’t have anything to show for his two years in Congress. He hasn’t done anything notable. And so, I think the sheer amount of money Sherrod Brown has left, millions and tens of millions of dollars, and the fact that it’s considered a frontline race and Democrats are pumping a lot of money in, the polling is suggesting that Sherrod Brown is poised to win by a few points.

AMY GOODMAN: Abby Vesoulis, we thank you so much for being with us, reporter for Mother Jones. We’ll link to your articles, the latest, ”GOP Doubles Down on Ad Exploiting Ohio Democrat’s Childhood Rape and Abuse.”

Coming up, we go to Brazil, where Sunday’s runoff election between the right-wing Senator Flávio Bolsonaro and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will determine the future of the largest democracy in South America. Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: “Men Ana” by Alsarah & The Nubatones, performing in our Democracy Now! studio. To see the full performance and interview with Alsarah, go to democracynow.org.