Sometimes, Scum Sinks to the Bottom
I'm not one for calling people by snarky nicknames. But when someone transcends the bounds of decency so far that you can't see the line, I must admit that "Vivek Ramaswampy" leapt to mind.
Before getting to why, it's worth noting that this didn't come as a shock. Back in 2024, when Vivek Ramaswamy ran for president for no reason other than to boost his public profile, I wrote that he was "A 37-year-old, tech multimillionaire who has zero experience and shows zero knowledge of government and society but is great at saying obnoxious, stupid things is in second place among all the 'isn't-Trump' candidates. This is how the GOP got Trump, a multi-millionaire who had zero experience."
But it's the "tech multimillionaire" part that's the deeply-scrubbed, whitewashed part of his story. On the surface, he made hundreds of millions of dollars by selling a company that was trying to develop a drug for Alzheimer. In brief, it's been described as a "pump and dump" scheme. Ramaswamy bought the company, knowing the drug had failed trials, brought his mother in to manipulate the data, and sold out for hundreds of millions. (For those interested in the details, you can see a 3-minute report on it here.)
But that's just the background for perspective.
At the moment, Mr. Ramaswamy -- who has been long-backed by Peter Thiel and far-right billionaire Bill Ackman -- is running for governor of Ohio against Dr. Amy Acton, who was director of Ohio's Department of Health, leading the state's effort during the COVID outbreak in 2019-2020. The race in Red Ohio is a toss-up, with Amy Acton slightly ahead in most polls by around four points.
The point of this story will now be very brief, because it doesn't take much to make it clear. And show how scummy reprehensible the Ramaswamy campaign is.
Yesterday morning, I heard mention on the news about a TV ad in the Ohio governor race that was apparently so smarmy that even many MAGOP officials around the country were criticizing it. Some, perhaps, out of decency. Others, perhaps, because they knew it risked undermining MAGOP candidates elsewhere by party association. All I knew was that the ad used Amy Acton's estranged mother telling people not to vote for her.
My assumption was that the outrage was because it was thought unfair to use a candidate's mother in a family spat. That struck me as understandable though odd. It turns out that it was odd for a reason -- because my assumption wasn't the problem.
The problem was why they were estranged. I only found that out later, which many here may have heard by now. It was because the mother lost custody of 12-year-old Amy and her younger brother, after they made accusations of physical and sexual rape abuse by their stepfather, starting when she was 10 years old. And court records surfaced, supporting that reality. He was arrested, the two children were removed from custody of the mother, who remained married to the man.
At first, the Ramaswamy campaign said that while they were aware of the ad, they didn't know who made it. Later in the day, as outrage grew, along with disbelief at the explanation, the Ramaswamy team acknowledged that, in fact, they had made the ad. And the fury grew. There was video of a Ramaswamy rally where a man stood up and began screaming holy hell at him for making the reprehensible ad. Even Sen. Jon Husted, the MAGOP running for re-election was said he "wouldn't have run the ad." Reports have since been uncovered out that the Ramaswamy campaign is planning a $4 million TV campaign with it. Whether they go forward with that now or not, I don't know. Also unknown is if running the ads will be counter-productive and backfire. [UPDATE: Well, most MAGOP officials have slammed the ad. But not former Ohio senator and current VP "JD Vance" who actually said, "I have to admit that 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." But then, this is the same guy who said immigrants in Ohio were eating pet dogs and cats even though he was told by officials that it wasn't true. And later acknowledged that he went ahead anyway because it would be a good story for the news.]
By the way, for any interested, this the page for donating to Amy Acton's campaign here. I'm not going to embed the scurrilous ad, of course.
What I will embed, though, is a great ad that the Acton campaign just made. It's with her younger brother. The spot is just 30 seconds. And very low-key. And that's all it needs.
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