11/05/2026
This morning, Vivek Ramaswamy told Newsweek that when he called Dr. Amy Acton to concede the Ohio Governor’s race, she didn’t pick up the phone.
She’s been called petty, rude, and, in one particularly egregious post, “just as bad as he was,” because she *checks notes* … breached etiquette.
To be clear, this was the man who ran an ad featuring Acton’s biological mother, Donna Arthur, who sat in front of a camera and called her daughter a liar.
The two had been estranged since 1978, when — and, if you’re not familiar with the story, I ask you to read this next part slowly — Arthur lost custody of Amy and her brother when she fled with her husband *after he was indicted for ra**ng Amy from the time she was nine to twelve years old.*
So yeah, *that guy* called her to concede. At which time the Governor-elect gave a master class, particularly to young women, in recognizing their worth, flexing their self-respect, and holding fast to the boundaries that allow for self-preservation.
What Ramaswamy did was beyond reprehensible. Slinging mud is one thing, but he used the ongoing sexual abuse of a CHILD for leverage in a political race. Just writing that sentence made me nauseous.
Far too often, women are taught that we have to keep the peace at all costs. That we have to smile in the face of unthinkable violence and abuse, that we have to protect our abusers, keep their secrets, and, above all, ensure that everyone else is comfortable, no matter what that means we have to swallow.
Dr. Acton laid waste to all of that toxicity. Without saying a word, she declared that she owed that man nothing. That he had forfeited any and all entitlement to her time, to her energy, to any version of access. All by letting a single call go to voicemail. And I am so grateful for the example she’s setting for all of us.
{Image is a photo of Amy Acton, Ohio’s Governor-elect.}
