"Amy has a serious problem," Democrat Ohio gubernatorial candidate Dr. Amy Acton's estranged mother says in a just-released campaign video, "She is a liar, she lies about her past."
I just about spit out my coffee.
"I love my daughter, but when I saw her lying about her opponent," entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, Donna Arthur says in the clip before trailing off into telling the world her daughter is a big fat liar.
"She says she grew up living in a tent," Arthur continued, referencing a common refrain from Acton's stump speech, but "none of that is true. She's lied her entire life."
The 1980 election was when 11-year-old me first got heavily into all things political, and I can tell you that in nearly five decades of political activism, political engagement, and writing about it as a career, I've never seen anything like Arthur's video today.
And yet somehow this isn't the first time Dr. Acton's mommy issues started a political firestorm.
And Another Thing: My rule of thumb is that I never use the Doctor honorific for people who are jerks about it, but that I almost always use it for people who actually practice medicine and could at least in theory prescribe me entertaining pharmaceuticals. By that measure, Dr. Acton earns the "Doc," but certain Islamo-Commie senate candidates from Michigan do not. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
At the height of the COVID panic in 2020, Acton suddenly resigned her position as Ohio Department of Health Director after Operation Rescue published "an exposé that included information on her Ohio medical license application that indicated she had been treated for mental illness and/or addiction issues at some point in the past." That's according to this Times Examiner report.
That exposé included similar audio clips from Arthur dismissing Acton's longstanding claims of abuse and neglect by both her birth parents. But "Arthur also refuted the allegation as untrue that Acton was homeless, neglected, and hungry as a child," that Times Examiner story continued. "Arthur revealed that she divorced Acton's father because she had been physically abused by him."
Weird family stuff aside, it's how Acton behaved as the state's health department chief that ought to bother voters the most.
Dr. Acton was one of the early movers on statewide lockdowns, ordering K-12 school closures on March 12, 2020, followed by a stay-at-home order just a couple of days later that shut down "non-essential" businesses and restricted most gatherings.
Her abbreviated COVID tenure was marked by protests, legal wrangling in the state assembly, and accusations "that she was once allegedly found 'curled up' into a ball on the floor before one of the emergency response meetings and seen crying in the bathroom in another incident," according to a September report in the Washington Examiner.
"I think she did not fulfill her duties as health director, providing the right facts,” Ramaswamy said to Ohio's WTOL-11 earlier this month. “But the most important part, that. that’s the big rub. When it came time to make those tough decisions, what did she do? She quit.”
Although she did order abortion clinics to stay open, if you want to get a sense of her health priorities.
And Another Thing: After doing all this research into Acton, I've adjusted my "Hey, Doc" rule of thumb to exclude M.D.'s who are this seriously creepy.
Here's Arthur's entire video so you can judge for yourself.
BOMBSHELL: Ohio Democratic gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton’s own mother urges voters not to vote for her daughter. “My name is Donna Arthur and I’m Amy Acton’s mother. I worked at Children and Family Service Association, building one of the first two sexual abuse programs in America. I love my daughter, but when I saw her lying about her opponent—and it’s not easy for a mother to say this—but Amy has a serious problem. She is a liar. She lies about her past. She says she grew up living in a tent. None of that is true. She’s lied her entire life. My daughter needs help, and she can’t help you if she needs help herself. People can change, but first they have to tell the truth, and my daughter still isn’t doing that. Don’t vote for people who lie. Don’t let her become your governor. If you think she’ll make your life better, you’re fooling yourself. It will only get worse.” That’s one hell of an October surprise.
— Walter Curt (@wcdispatch) October 20, 2026
I don't have any way of knowing whether it's the mother or the daughter — or neither; these things are complicated — telling the truth about Acton's childhood.
But looking at the record, when Arthur says of her estranged daughter, "Don’t let her become your governor," I believe her without reservation.
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