EXCLUSIVE — Knife-edge gubernatorial and House races in Ohio are cutting deep personally, as candidates and their opponents point to their respective pasts as they ask Buckeye State voters to entrust them with their future.
This week, Republican gubernatorial nominee Vivek Ramaswamy’s ad including Democratic opponent Amy Acton’s estranged mother has consumed their race for the governor’s mansion. Ramaswamy has stood behind the ad by pledging to spend $4 million to promote it ahead of Election Day, even as outgoing Gov. Mike DeWine (R-OH) has urged him to pull it.
Acton has reportedly not spoken to her mother since 1978, when, as a 12-year-old, she and her brother were removed from her mother’s custody. The move came following the indictment of Acton’s stepfather for raping her.
“The ad, on its face, is deeply, deeply troubling,” DeWine told reporters. “It’s wrong to run this ad.”
Ramaswamy still has President Donald Trump in his corner, however.
“The Press, in a concerted and well coordinated attack, is trying to get Vivek Ramaswamy to ‘take down the Ad,’” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Frankly, anybody whose mother spoke about a daughter in that way would normally lead to the daughter being precluded from serving in Office, let alone the Office of Governor. If my mother, the legendary Mary MacLeod Trump, said anything bad about me, the Fake News would play it up.”
At the same time, the race for Ohio’s 7th Congressional District has taken on national interest as Rep. Max Miller’s (R-OH) private life has become a campaign issue. Miller is accused of physically and emotionally abusing his daughter and ex-wife and has also been accused of drug use. Miller’s ex-wife is the daughter of Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH). Miller has denied the allegations, and his campaign did not respond to requests for comment on this story.
Brian Poindexter, Miller’s Democratic opponent, downplayed the importance of the personal drama surrounding the GOP lawmaker in an interview with the Washington Examiner, even though their race only became competitive after it spilled out into the open.
Miller won his second term in Congress in 2024 by 15 percentage points. But his ex-wife’s allegations, including that he threw scalding water at her and threatened her with a gun, have roiled the race in 2026. Polling has shown the district competitive this year.
“Voters always ask themselves two questions,” Poindexter said. “One, ‘Why should we fire the person in there?’ And we know all the reasons why to fire him, right? Obviously, his personal issues, but his policies have been absolutely devastating to the people in our district. That’s only half the answer, though. The other part, the other question they ask is, ‘Why should I hire you?’”
A union ironworker and former Brook Park city councilman, Poindexter, 47, said he was trying to give voters “something that they can believe in and something they can rally behind.”
That “something” is economic issues, according to Poindexter.
“Even Republican voters are having a hard time right now,” he said. “It’s not the only nonpartisanship that we have in this country right now, it’s the fact that we’re all having a hard time with an economy that’s out of balance. Democrat voters, independent voters, and Republican voters are all feeling this, the pinch of this economy that’s way out of balance, and I hope to be a voice to that and help bring it back into balance and make it rewarding for working people again.”
It remains to be seen whether the argument will work. For now, at least, Democratic groups are heavily focusing on ads highlighting Miller’s abuse allegations rather than the difference on economic issues between the two.
“In my situation, I’ve never gone negative at all,” Poindexter said of the ads paid for by aligned groups, not his campaign. “I just tell people, what, you know, it’s not Brian Poindexter accusing Max Miller of these atrocious acts. It’s the people that know him best who accuse him, and I just want to make sure people know the facts about who their representative is.”
Yet Poindexter has personal drama of his own that is becoming a factor in the race as Republicans argue that Miller is not the only flawed candidate in the contest.
GOP groups are running ads highlighting Poindexter’s own allegations of misconduct. Those include a 1998 police report that accused him of swallowing a “rock of suspected crack cocaine” during a traffic stop and a 2013 arrest for slapping a stranger at a Cleveland Indians game.
Poindexter is responding to the negative barrage by running ads with his family, setting up a contrast with Miller.
“I want to make sure that people know who I am,” Poindexter said. “That’s why I’m running my ad with my daughters because … the best title I’ll ever have in my life is ‘Dad,’ and I want to highlight that. I want people to know that I’m a real person, just like them, who wants to raise my family in peace and build a brighter future for my girls and working people in general.”
The strategy does appear to be resonating, at least with Democratic voters, including Joanne Bender, 70, an Ashland retiree.
“There’s definitely a reason to be concerned about … just who he is,” Bender told the Washington Examiner of Miller on the sidelines of a Poindexter town hall on agriculture issues.
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For Republican-turned-independent voter Sue Bradley, who also attended the town hall, it encouraged her to conduct her own “research and figure out if there’s anything that’s true with it.”
“My sister even had the same issue about, ‘Oh, Brian Poindexter or Max Miller? They both have negative things against each of them,’” Bradley said. “And I said, ‘Did you ever see what really what the issue was about?’”