US vice president JD Vance has voiced support for Ohio Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy amid backlash over a campaign advertisement featuring the estranged mother of his Democratic rival, Amy Acton. Calling himself “disgusted” by fellow Republicans’ criticism, Vance urged them to focus on winning elections rather than objecting to the controversial ad.Speaking at a campaign rally near Cincinnati on Wednesday, Vance said he was “a little bit disgusted” by Republicans criticising the advertisement, which features Acton’s estranged mother, Donna Arthur, accusing her daughter of lying and questioning her suitability for office.“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,” Vance said, in his first public comments on the controversy.According to news agency AP, Vance accused Democrats of using political tactics against Ramaswamy, a biotech billionaire and former Republican presidential candidate, saying they had “throw[n] every dirty trick in the political book at Vivek”, including calling him a “murderer”, while “the whole time Vivek has stood tall and talked about what he wants to accomplish.”“The media and the Democrats in the state of Ohio are obsessed because — guess what? — Vivek Ramaswamy had the audacity to run a TV commercial which calls it out like it is and calls Amy Acton a liar,” he said.“My message to my fellow elected Republicans is if you actually believe in the things you say you believe in, stop whining about an advertisement and go win the race in 13 days,” Vance added.The 60-second advertisement has drawn criticism from both parties. According to AP, Arthur lost custody of her children after her second husband was indicted for raping Acton, who has said she has not seen her mother since 1978, when she was 12.“I won’t normalise somebody who has said that my childhood is ‘something I’m just complaining about’, who today, just released an ad using my birth mother, who I was removed from at the age of 12 for severe abuse and neglect and sexual abuse,” Acton told HQ News Now.Republican senator Jon Husted, who is running against former senator Sherrod Brown, said he would not have run the advertisement. Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley called Ramaswamy “a bad guy”, while Meghan McCain also criticised the spot, AP reported.US president Donald Trump had earlier told reporters he knew nothing about the advertisement but said he had heard “the mother went very rogue on the daughter”. He added: “I don’t think that has anything to do with Vivek.”Despite the backlash, Ramaswamy’s campaign plans to spend $4 million airing the advertisement on television and online. Acton’s campaign has released a separate advertisement urging voters to “find more breathing room, and let’s heal what has divided us”.
