Jennings: Ramaswamy’s campaign tactics ‘worst politics you could imagine’
The $4 million price tag on that ad tells you how much Ramaswamy's team believes in it, and how much they're betting the family attack will stick. Having your opponent's own mother call her a liar on television is about as personal as a campaign gets, and Scott Jennings, a Republican who usually defends the party's playbook, calling it the worst politics you could imagine is worth noting.
I think there's a real question whether this lands the way Ramaswamy hopes. Voters often recoil when family members are dragged into fights, especially estranged ones, because it can look less like accountability and more like exploitation. For Acton, it hands her a chance to play the sympathetic figure, and the estrangement detail cuts both ways. People might wonder why a mother would do this, or they might just feel sorry for the candidate.
The bigger picture is that negative ads work, which is why campaigns keep running them. But this one trades on a private family wound, and that's a gamble that could energize Ramaswamy's base while turning off the independents he needs in a governor's race. I'd want to see polling on how Ohio voters actually react before declaring it a mistake.