In Ohio, the Republicans dug themselves a hole. ⠀.
A week before the Ohio gubernatorial election, Republicans gave Democrats perhaps their best argument of the campaign.
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The Republican candidate is billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy, a Trump ally and longtime friend of Vice President Vance. His opponent is Democrat Amy Acton, a physician and former head of the state's health department. Ohio is considered reliably Republican, and a Democrat has not held the governor's seat since 2011. But now Acton has been ahead in most polls for a few weeks now - she promises that "everything will cost less", and against the background of rising prices and Trump's declining ratings, it's working. But voters don't like Ramaswamy. Independents have him at 25, the worst for a Republican candidate in Ohio this century.
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Then Ramaswamy's headquarters decided to go all out and grab their competitor's unpleasant personal history. Acton has been talking for many years about his difficult childhood: terrible poverty, winter in a tent, domestic violence. The headquarters found her mother Donna Arthur, whom Acthon had not seen since 1978, nearly 50 years. In the video produced by the Republicans, the mother calls her daughter a liar who "needs help" and asks not to vote for her. At first the video was released without subtitles, then Ramaswamy acknowledged the author and publicly allocated 4 million dollars to the program.
⠀ The problem is that the mother in this situation was not the best heroine. In 1978, her husband, the stepfather of Democrat Amy Acton, was arrested on charges of raping 12-year-old Amy herself. The woman's children were taken away, but she stayed with her rapist husband and left Ohio. Amy's stepfather escaped justice. A mother abandoned her daughter because of a man who raped her daughter. Clearly, the public's sympathy was with Amy Acton. Most condemned the video, including Republicans.
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But Vice President Vance stood by his friend. They have been friends since their days at Yale Law School, and Ramaswamy's team includes people from the vice president's staff.