Two conservatives joined their fellow CNN panelists in torching Ohio’s Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy on Tuesday night for releasing an attack ad against Democrat Amy Acton that features her estranged mother.
CNN’s “NewsNight” host Abby Phillip kicked the discussion off by airing the ad in which Donna Arthur, Acton’s mother, calls her daughter a “liar” for her account of growing up in poverty and being raped by her stepfather.
“She’s lied her entire life. My daughter needs help, and she can’t help you if she needs help herself,” Arthur says in the ad. “People can change, but first they have to tell the truth, and my daughter still isn’t doing that.”
Ramaswamy’s ad did not tell viewers that Acton’s stepfather, Cledith “Bud” Arthur, was charged with sexually abusing Acton when she was a child and ultimately fled the state with Acton’s mother, who abandoned her children and remained married to him until he died in 2004.
Phillip called the President Donald Trump-backed candidate’s ad “extremely risky,” wondering whether it’s a sign Ramaswamy’s campaign “really think[s] that they are down that bad.”
“It is extremely risky. I agree with you,” conservative pundit Scott Jennings said. “This kind of thing, you know, I think the way it first got out was they were testing it in some sort of focus group, and it sort of escaped the lab. And they might think that it tested well. Of course, what you can’t test in those settings is the rebuttal, and when people actually find out the story.”
He added that to “throw out a piece like this at the end of a race is not a confidence-inspiring item, and, you know, we’ll have to see where it lands.”
Ramaswamy eventually took credit for the ad after it circulated, and his campaign said it would spend $4 million to promote it, despite the backlash.
After Phillip called the ad an “indictment” of Ramaswamy, conservative panelist Jason Rantz agreed, saying he would have voted for the Republican if he lived in Ohio, but after knowing the ad’s backstory, he wouldn’t.
“It is so unbelievably disgusting to put this kind of ad out, and we’re seeing smears like this, and we’ve seen this is not necessarily new, but I’ve never seen it this low, and I don’t think Vivek should want to be known for that,” Rantz said. “And it’s just a shame because I do think he could lead, but this shows that he can’t.”
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