Ohio's governor asks for decency in a race where a Jewish woman may become governor

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, stepped before reporters at the Statehouse in Columbus on Thursday and said something many in Klal Yisroel will recognize as plain derech eretz: a person's family should be left out of politics.

The governor was speaking about a television ad featuring the estranged mother of Dr. Amy Acton, the Democratic nominee to succeed him. "It's wrong to run this ad," DeWine said, adding that his wife, Fran, had seen it that morning, and he asked the campaign of Republican nominee Vivek Ramaswamy to take it down. DeWine, who served as a county prosecutor and as Ohio's attorney general, recalled the victims of abuse he worked with over the years.

If she is elected on November 3, Dr. Acton would be the first woman and the first Jewish person to serve as governor of Ohio.

Dr. Acton grew up in Youngstown and has spoken for years about a childhood of poverty, abuse and stretches of homelessness. She became a pediatrician and preventive medicine doctor, and DeWine appointed her his health director in 2019, the first woman in the post.

She is well known in the Columbus Jewish community. She has served on the boards of the Jewish Community Center of Greater Columbus and Columbus Jewish Day School, where her children learned, and in 2020 she told the Cleveland Jewish News, "I am Jewish," and that her children were raised in the Jewish faith. She lives in Bexley, home to much of the city's frum kehillah. Her synagogue affiliation has been Reform.

During the pandemic in 2020, protesters gathered outside her Bexley home, one carrying a sign that quoted a verse about Jewish leaders plotting against the Christian messiah, and a state lawmaker called her a "globalist." She was given a security detail. DeWine has said many times that the pandemic decisions were his, not hers.

The one-minute ad features Donna Arthur, Dr. Acton's birth mother, calling her daughter a liar and suggesting she has problems. It first appeared online without any sponsor named. The Ramaswamy campaign has since taken responsibility for it and is spending $4 million to air it.

Dr. Acton's younger brother, Philip Stearns, answered with a statement and a video. He said the two children were taken from their mother's custody after their stepfather was indicted in 1978 for abusing Amy when she was 12, and that their mother remained married to him until his death. The Associated Press reported that court and police records match that account.

The Ramaswamy campaign stands behind the ad. Spokeswoman Connie Luck has called Dr. Acton "a serial fabulist" and said voters should know about her problems with the truth. Responding to DeWine, Luck said the governor was correct that the first candidate in the race to attack the other's mother was Dr. Acton, pointing to a summer line from the Acton campaign about Geetha Ramaswamy's work at a company her son ran. The Ramaswamy campaign called those claims slanderous.

DeWine said that earlier attack was also wrong, noting that family members have always been off limits. He has not withdrawn his endorsement of Ramaswamy.

President Trump said Thursday that Ramaswamy should keep the ad running, and criticized DeWine for speaking out. Vice President JD Vance said Republicans should stop complaining about it. Other Ohio Republicans, including Sen. Jon Husted and Secretary of State Frank LaRose, said they would not have run it.

The Torah's mitzvah of honoring father and mother is among the weightiest we carry. Our poskim have also long discussed what that obligation looks like when a parent has caused real harm, and anyone facing such a question in their own life should bring it to their rav.

What every Yid understands is the other half: a family's deepest pain is not material for a campaign, and lashon hara does not become permitted because it is broadcast. On Thursday, a governor said as much about a member of his own former cabinet, even though she belongs to the other party.

How we reported this: based on Associated Press, The Hill, CBS News, Cleveland Jewish News and Columbus Jewish News reporting through the evening of Oct. 22, 2026. Court records are described as reported by the AP; we did not review them ourselves. Whether Donna Arthur was paid to appear in the ad has not been reported. Kol America has not yet spoken with either campaign directly; the positions described above are those they have stated publicly, and we will add any response we receive. Kehillos with news to share can reach us at [email protected].