Vivek Ramaswamy Blows More Than $80 Million On Loss To Democrat Amy Acton As Red Ohio Flips Blue

Republican Ohio gubernatorial nominee Vivek Ramaswamy’s highly anticipated run for the Buckeye State’s highest office ended in disaster Tuesday after a projected loss to Democratic nominee Amy Acton.

Acton, a public health official whom POLITICO once called “Ohio’s Anthony Fauci,” looks to have the former 2024 Republican presidential candidate by five-point margin — as Acton garnered 50.8% of the vote to the billionaire businessman’s 45.8%, with 87% of ballots counted, according to The Associated Press. This is the first time since 2006 that Ohio, a state which President Donald Trump carried three times in a row, has elected a Democratic governor.

Acton will succeed term-limited Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, her former boss.

The Democrat’s win came two weeks after Ramaswamy’s campaign released an attack ad featuring Acton’s estranged mother — who defended and remained married to a man accused of raping Acton as a child — which a GOP strategist called “political suicide.”

As of Oct. 14, the biotech mogul — whose net worth was estimated in September to be $2.3 billion — raised a whopping $82 million for his ultimately unsuccessful effort, with half coming from his own money, according to OpenSecrets. Meanwhile, the victorious Acton fundraised just shy of $38 million, none of it from self-given loans.

In the Oct. 20 ad, Acton’s elderly mother, Donna Arthur, alleges her biological daughter is a “liar” with a “serious problem” and urges voters not to back her. If she wins, Arthur claims, Ohioans’ lives “will only get worse.”

Although Arthur claims in the video that Acton lied about living in a tent as a child, she did not mention her then-husband, Cledith, who a grand jury indicted in 1978 for sexually abusing then-12-year-old Acton. Acton said in a 2019 interview she has not spoken to her mother since then, ABC News reported. The Arthurs remained married until the death of Amy’s stepfather decades later.

“After he was arrested and Amy and I were removed from their custody, our birth mother stayed married to Amy’s rapist until he died,” Acton’s brother, Philip Stearns, said in a statement after the ad’s release. “This desperate, disgusting attack reveals exactly who Vivek Ramaswamy is at his core – a pathetic excuse for a man who is willing to hurt anyone as long as it gets him what he wants.”

Despite widespread bipartisan backlash, Ramaswamy doubled down on the ad and, instead of pulling it, committed $4 million to promote it, Axios first reported.