UPDATE (Tuesday Oct. 20, 2026 10:10 p.m. ET): On Tuesday night the Ramaswamy campaign confirmed it was behind the attack ad targeting Amy Acton.
Two weeks before Election Day, Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is facing fresh criticism for yet another controversial attack ad against his opponent, Democrat Amy Acton. The Ramaswamy campaign did not initially say if it was responsible for the unaired ad that features Acton’s estranged mother, who defended her husband after he was accused of sexually abusing Acton when she was a child. It put out a statement saying the candidate’s mother “is clearly warning Ohioans not to vote for her.” (Ramaswamy previously faced backlash for an earlier ad that showed a man later identified as a sex offender; the man was later removed from some versions of the ad.) Later on Tuesday, however, the campaign confirmed it had in fact produced the spot and, despite bipartisan backlash, would be spending millions of dollars pushing it to voters throughout the state.
Incredibly, Ramaswamy’s campaign may still be facing bigger problems; a Marist poll published on Tuesday showed Acton leading him by 7 points. MS NOW’s polling data with partner FiftyPlusOne shows Acton with a 5-point edge. And a major source of his campaign woes centers not on questionable attack ads, but on Ramaswamy’s pedigree as a billionaire entrepreneur — and the corporate interests that seem to be alienating more and more everyday Ohio voters.
For the Republicans who ran for office in 2024, cozying up to America’s most powerful corporations was one of the best ways to ensure victory at the polls.
For the Republicans who ran for office in 2024, cozying up to America’s most powerful corporations was one of the best ways to ensure victory at the polls. It wasn’t just that large companies showered the GOP with more than $270 million in contributions that year. Big-business cash also proved prescient: According to data compiled by the Federal Election Commission and The Associated Press, a whopping 77% of the candidates who received hefty corporate donations went on to win their elections.
But in 2026, the mood is very different. Voters facing sky-high prices at the pump and the grocery store have focused their anger on the corporations reaping record profits and a government they perceive as serving the interests of the nation’s executives over everyday people. A survey conducted over the summer found that a quarter of Americans wanted CEOs to “stop being greedy,” while a record 89% of Americans viewed their government as hopelessly corrupt.
The numbers get even worse when voters think about the Republicans who run that government. Over half of Americans — and a 62% supermajority of independent voters — view President Donald Trump as “corrupt,” while also describing the broader Republican Party as “working for big corporations instead of the people” by a nearly 2-to-1 margin. GOP candidates in Alaska, Ohio, Iowa and elsewhere in the country are suddenly realizing that the corporate connections that once bolstered their campaigns have become their biggest political liabilities.
In Ohio, Ramaswamy has been one of the state’s loudest voices for corporate interests, especially in encouraging the building of more artificial intelligence data centers. At an April 2025 Lincoln Day dinner in Geauga County, he declared himself “strongly in favor” of the “AI data center boom in the state of Ohio.” Two weeks later, he urged Ohio lawmakers to weaken the regulatory “red tape” slowing construction of new data centers.
Ramaswamy failed to mention his own multimillion-dollar investments in data center companies, or the campaign donations he accepted from a super PAC connected to Vistra Corp., an energy company powering one of Meta’s Ohio-based data center projects. Those revelations didn’t sit well with the 78% of Ohioans who support a temporary ban on new data center construction, and Ramaswamy abruptly switched to a more skeptical posture over the summer.
Ramaswamy’s close ties to big business have worked against him in an election cycle where most voters view excessive corporate power as a major problem. Despite recent efforts to pivot his campaign to a message of quick tax cuts, Ramaswamy stumbled into a new headache last month when it was revealed that a group of out-of-state billionaires, including data center investors Ross Stevens and Ratmir Timashev, transferred $37 million to a super PAC backing his candidacy.
In a headache for Republicans who expected the state’s conservative slant to carry Ramaswamy to victory, he in fact spent most of September trailing his Democratic opponent, Acton. Ramaswamy’s consistently bad numbers were enough to trigger alarm bells in Washington, with both Vice President JD Vance and Trump racing to Ohio earlier this month in an effort to avert the GOP’s looming political wipeout.
Ramaswamy isn’t the only candidate getting hurt by corporate ties. In Alaska, Sen. Dan Sullivan’s close relationship to wealthy industrial fisheries has made him a public enemy among Alaska’s struggling small fishermen in a state where commercial fishing generates just over 7% of the state’s wealth. Local fishermen warn that Sullivan’s recent bill to reduce bycatch — the accidental capture of unwanted fish — is actually packed with government handouts that only apply to the corporate fisheries that contributed nearly $400,000 in contributions to his campaigns throughout his career.
Backed by a flurry of powerful TV ads featuring fishermen threatened by Sullivan’s bill, his Democratic opponent, Mary Peltola, now boasts a 7-point lead in the latest New York Times polling. Here, Trump proved unable to control his temper, blasting the Alaska GOP as “stupid” and adding a campaign visit to boost Sullivan. Democrats were quick to frame Trump’s emergency stop as validation of Peltola’s strength.
Embattled Republicans like Ramaswamy, Sullivan and Hinson may be hoping for a last-minute campaign reset, but polls suggest that their constituents aren’t buying the rebrand.
“It doesn’t matter who flies in to try and save Dan Sullivan from his abhorrent record, Alaskans will still hold him accountable for his price hiking agenda this November,” a spokesperson for Peltola’s campaign told Newsweek.
Back in the Lower 48, Iowa GOP Senate candidate Ashley Hinson is facing accusations of corruption following allegations that her husband, Matt Arenholz, quietly brokered meetings between insurance industry lobbyists and the state’s Republican congressional delegation. Rep. Hinson, who has framed herself as a warrior against special interests, never publicly disclosed her husband’s position as a government affairs employee for the lobbying group Independent Insurance Agents of Iowa, despite attending meetings he arranged.
And despite Hinson’s launch of her senate campaign with an ad in which she defiantly declares that “health insurance companies are ripping you off,” her financial disclosures reveal a politician with deep financial interests in insurance companies. Hinson reported that she and Arenholz hold an interest of up to $5 million in High Street Insurance Partners, while The Washington Sun reported that in 2021 Arenholz sold stock in a private insurance company for more than $1 million. When health insurance companies “rip off Iowans,” Hinson reaps the benefits — and voters are noticing.
Hinson’s attempt to line her pockets while selling herself as a fighter against insurance company abuses has fallen flat with the Iowans facing an increase of up to 16% in the cost of their health carecoverage. So far, Hinson hasn’t been able to change a narrative that is moving in Democrats’ direction: A Suffolk University poll published Oct. 4 found Hinson trailing her Democratic opponent, Josh Turek, by 4 points. A month ago, she led Turek by 1.
Embattled Republicans like Ramaswamy, Sullivan and Hinson may be hoping for a last-minute campaign reset, but polls suggest that their constituents aren’t buying the rebrand. With just two weeks left until voters flock to the polls, Republicans are discovering that they aren’t so quick to forget the candidates’ legacy of putting big business first. If the polls are any indication, even the most salacious attack ads are unlikely to change that.
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