Thousands of alumni from the private Catholic high school that Republican candidate for governor Vivek Ramaswamy graduated from have signed a petition related to his campaign ad featuring the estranged mother of his Democratic opponent Amy Acton.
The online petition has been signed by more than 3,100 grads of St. Xavier, an all-male private Jesuit high school in Cincinnati. It starts with this sentence in bold: "We, the undersigned alumni, family, and friends of St. Xavier High School in Cincinnati, Ohio, are writing independently to express our deep moral disappointment in the campaign conduct of fellow alumnus Vivek Ramaswamy ('03) and to unequivocally condemn his recent political advertisement targeting Dr. Amy Acton."
That ad, which started airing in a $4 million broadcast and digital campaign last week, features Donna Arthur, Acton's mother. Arthur lost custody of Acton and her brother Philip Stearns in 1978, when she left the state with her husband after he was charged with raping Acton, who was then 12 years old. Acton has said she hasn't spoken to her mother since then. In the ad, Arthur said her daughter "lies about her past" and urges Ohioans not to vote for her. The ad was leaked on social media early last week. While President Trump and Vice President JD Vance have defended the ad, the response to it has been bipartisan anger and widespread condemnation from around the state and the country.
The petition asks Ramaswamy to take down the ad, and requests that he issue a public apology "for weaponizing family trauma and domestic abuse in an electoral campaign" and also to "commit to debating policies and records rather than resorting to personal cruelty that violates the foundational standard of being a 'Man for Others.'"
"It's not a political message. It is a message about human decency. It is not partisan," said Brian Cahill, a 1983 graduate of St. Xavier and one of the organizers of the online petition.
He notes the school isn't involved in the petition and hasn't taken a stand on the ad. "We strongly support and respect that, but we just felt like we couldn't sit by and let someone associated with our name destroy our reputation in this way."
Cahill said the idea for the petition came after out of texts with some St. X alumni sharing their frustration and discussions of the controversy in light of the school’s motto of “men for others”. Cahill said students were taught that their decisions affect everyone in the community, and that they needed to be careful not to take actions that hurt the community.
"I think a lot of us started to think about that when he ran for president the first time," Cahill said. “The fact that he would endorse this ad and then double down on it when people called out how abhorrent it is really made me question it, and clearly it made a lot of my former classmates question it as well.”
A message seeking comment from the Ramaswamy campaign was not returned.
