Any campaign involving Donald Trump is bound to get pretty ugly. The 2024 campaign was marred by current President and now Vice President JD Vance falsely claiming that Haitian migrants in Ohio were eating people’s pets.
But the 2026 campaign is coming Really ugly – especially on the Republican side.
Morality aside, the question is whether this ugliness is the sign of a good Republican strategy or of desperation. This seems to be a big help from the latter.
The big news this week was Ohio GOP gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s decision to air an ad featuring Democrat Amy Acton’s ex-mother calling her daughter a liar.
What’s not said in the ad: Acton said she hasn’t seen her mother since she was 12, when her mother lost custody of her children and the man she married was indicted for allegedly sexually abusing Acton. Acton’s campaign responded with an ad in which his brother spoke about the abuse they suffered and said, “Shame on Vivek.”
The Ramaswamy ad shook the GOP and the gubernatorial race. Prominent Ohio Republicans — including Gov. Mike DeWine, Sen. Jon Husted and Secretary of State Frank LaRose — have criticized the ad, as have Republicans elsewhere, such as Iowa Republican Senate candidate Rep. Ashley Hinson and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, a former presidential rival of Ramaswamy. Some criticize the politicization of family trauma. Others fear it will backfire on them.
The road to the 2026 midterm elections begins now
Both Trump and Vance urged their party to embrace the program and stop criticizing the ad, and Trump said Thursday night that he personally helped convince Ramaswamy to move forward.
But this isn’t the only recent example of the Republican Party falling to new lows during this midterm campaign.
In Texas, Vance recently made a joke that implied Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico was gay – sparking a long campaign of innuendo on that front. (This despite the homosexuality of prominent Trump administration officials.) And all the while, MAGA fueled a conspiracy theory, later debunked, that Talarico had gone to a psychiatric hospital.
In Michigan’s Senate race, former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers’ campaign released an ad claiming that his Democratic opponent, Abdul El-Sayed, “supports” terrorists and that his “radical ideology poses a threat to our national security.” (The ad and similar claims misrepresent the facts.)
In North Carolina, a Republican congressional candidate and the national Republican Party teamed up on an ad that appears to use AI to depict her opponent dancing with drag queens.
And in Maine, the Senate Republican super PAC is running a radio ad citing reports that Democratic candidate Troy Jackson’s longtime partner is his first cousin, with a refrain that says, “If he fucks his own family, he’ll fuck yours too.” »
Republican Sen. Susan Collins also coyly alluded to it, but on Wednesday she called for the ad to be taken down. The super PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund, did not respond to a CNN inquiry about whether it plans to do what Collins suggested.
Jackson’s partner responded indirectly in an op-ed published Wednesday, saying she never thought Jackson’s opponents would “stoop so low.” (Jackson’s campaign did not directly respond to this claim.) And despite the GOP attack, Republicans seemed unfazed by the fact that a once-iconic modern GOP politician, Rudy Giuliani, married his first cousin.
Time will tell if any of these tactics pay off. But it’s worth noting that the long-standing insinuations about Talarico so far don’t appear to have helped Republican Ken Paxton, who is in a tight race to defend this red-state seat.
Many of these elections feature more polls with the Democrat in the numerical lead than the Republican – although many polls are within the margin of error.
The Ohio gubernatorial race, in particular, could shift away from the GOP. CNN poll average shows Acton up 6 points, 50% to 44%, with all surveys on average conducted before Ramaswamy’s announcement.
So you might be able to see why Ramaswamy’s campaign might want to try something. Indeed, when the video first surfaced on Monday, it contained no disclaimer about who was behind it, and Ramaswamy did not initially claim it. But then he adopted it, and Trump said he encouraged him to keep the ad going.
Husted and Hinson’s decisions to distance themselves from the ad certainly suggest they are concerned about its impact on their races.
Character attacks and even sneak attacks have long been a part of campaigns on both sides, but often campaigns try to keep them at bay and let others do their dirty work.
This week we saw the president and vice president not only defend the Ohio ad, but also make some rather Machiavellian arguments in its favor.
While Hinson said it was “absolutely terrible” for Acton to have to “relive that trauma,” Vance ignored the moral issues.
“Whether the ad is appropriate or not doesn’t really concern me,” he said, adding that Republicans should “stop complaining about an ad and win the race in 13 days.”
And despite claiming to know “nothing” about the history of alleged child sexual abuse, Trump praised Acton’s mother for her “courage” in speaking out. He said even a grain of truth in the mother’s claims should disqualify Acton from the governorship.
And when pressed by reporters about the alleged abuse, the president repeatedly defended the ad.
What is clear is that American policy is becoming more and more brazen. And if this strategy proves successful for the Republican Party this year, the situation is likely to get worse in the future.
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