You've heard the attacks. Have you heard the facts?
On Cincinnati Edition, we break down the claims in some of the political ads airing in Ohio’s gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races. We dig into footnotes, Congressional votes and the use of AI. And we talk about which assertions can’t be proven at all.
Guests:
- David Niven, professor of political science, University of Cincinnati
- Andrew Tobias, state politics reporter, Signal Ohio
This conversation was prerecorded, so we can’t take calls. You can catch a replay at 8 p.m.
A transcript of the show is below.
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This episode was transcribed using a combination of AI speech recognition and human editors and has been lightly edited for clarity. It may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.
Have you been bombarded with political ads on TV and in your social media feeds? Are you struggling to sort facts from fiction before early voting starts in Ohio on October 6? This is Cincinnati Edition on WVXU. I'm Lucy May. Joining me in this recorded interview to fact check the claims in these attack ads are University of Cincinnati political science professor David Niven and Signal Ohio state politics reporter Andrew Tobias. Welcome back, David and Andrew.
Lucy: David It seems like every election cycle there are more and more of these attack ads. The claims are just becoming more extreme. Do you think this is harming our political discourse, or does this help inform voters in any way?
David: Well, to be fair, negative politics is literally as old as the country. You should see some of the things that Jefferson and Adams said about each other. They they pulled no punches back in the day. But to your question, the bombardment of negative assertions, the you know manipulation of facts. This is really where the challenge we're presenting for voters to sort through all this, to make sense of all this, is really overwhelming. And you know what's different right now than in the recent past? The capacity to generate fake imagery has just amplified the capacity to go negative and to create some kind of visual accompaniment that isn't real and only makes the voters' job harder. So, you know. Here's the bottom line. You know, if folks responded to you know positive messaging, we'd get a heck of a lot more of it. But negative ads work, and negative ads are with us.
Attack ads against Sen. Jon Husted
Lucy: Well, we're grateful to have you and Andrew with us today to sort through what's real and what's not, let's start with Ohio's U.S. Senate campaign and an ad that calls Republican Senator Jon Husted, who's the incumbent in the race, the face of data centers.
Ad: Jon Husted spent years aggressively recruiting data centers to the state, cutting sweetheart tax deals and fast-tracking approvals, while ordinary residents watch their electricity bills explode.
Lucy: So, Andrew, did Sen. Husted cut sweetheart tax deals and fast track approvals for data centers?
Andrew: Well, I want to start off with there's a basic truth to this line of attack, and that is that Jon Husted, when he was Ohio's lieutenant governor in the late 2010s and early 2020s, was a big advocate for data centers, but then when you hear the claim, you know he cut these sweetheart deals and fast tracked him. The lieutenant governor does not have the authority to do this thing single handedly, and so I think it does pretty clearly overstate Husted's actual role in these. But at the same time, I recall very clearly interviewing him about some of these data centers when they came in. Again, particularly in the late 2010s, it was a very different time. I mean, this issue didn't show up as a political issue really until the last year or so when the AI boom has taken place. But Husted was very positive about these. Him and the rest of the DeWine administration felt that these investments showed that Ohio was on the cutting edge of technology, and that there's all these constructions and economic activity associated with them. So yes, Husted was an advocate for them. Did he personally approve all this stuff? No, of course not.
Lucy: Okay. Well, another claim is a link between Sen. Husted and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Ad: Of all 535 members of Congress, who's taken the most money from associates of Jeffrey Epstein? Jon Husted. That's who. In fact, Husted's taken over $116,000 from one of Epstein's closest friends and co-conspirators, and last year took a maximum donation from him just weeks before voting to block the release of the Epstein files.
Lucy: Andrew, how much in campaign donations did Jon Husted take from Les Wexner, and what's his voting record on release of the Epstein files?
Andrew: So the number is about $116,000. That's total since the early 2000s, when Jon Husted's political career began as a state legislator, you have to kind of go back a long ways before he became a U.S. senator. But that's the number. And then the vote that the ad cites, anyways, was one in 2025. There was an amendment that was added to a military spending bill that Democrats tried to push through to release the Epstein files. Republicans, including Houston, voted against that, and that's kind of a common trick that you'll see legislators make, where they'll introduce something knowing that it won't pass, but trying to just get the other side on record opposing it, so that they can later bust it out for a campaign commercial. And so, I mean, it is fair to say, though, that Republicans have been pushed by President Donald Trump to block the broader release of these files, and so that is a real thing. But I think it's a stretch also to suggest that the reason that Husted voted against it is because of the financial support he received from Leslie Wexner.
Lucy: Well, and Andrew, after President Trump kind of changed course and said he was in favor of releasing the files after he had been opposed to releasing the files, didn't a lot of Republicans then get on board with the release?
Andrew: Yeah, that's exactly what happened. And you know, for somebody like Jon Husted, I think you know we've seen him as a Republican senator kind of take his direction from the president.
Lucy: David is Sen. Husted, in fact, the member of Congress who has taken the most money from associates of Jeffrey Epstein — is that a verifiable claim?
David: Well, it's a tricky claim because who precisely counts as an associate? You know, at some level, you know, we're going to be quibbling over who's in the ranks of that group. But you know, I think Wexner is generally considered to be one of the closest associates to Epstein, and it's not in dispute that Husted has received the most donations from Wexner of any member of Congress. In part because he served in both state and federal office and so had more opportunities to take those contributions. But when you kind of go line by line through others associated with Epstein. The totals don't rival $116,000. So it's hard to come up with another member of Congress who you could say plausibly received more money from the Epstein world.
Lucy: And certainly Leslie Wexner denies being called a co-conspirator of of Jeffrey Epstein, I think that was the word.
David: Well, I think he denies being a co-conspirator, but he he was in in in the federal files. The FBI considered him a a co-conspirator in its investigation.
Lucy: Okay, well, we are talking in this recorded interview about attack ads in Ohio's U.S. Senate and gubernatorial races, and we are fact-checking the claims these ads make. Another of these ads links Husted to Medicaid cuts.
Ad: Last year, we met with Sen. John Husted. He looked us in the eye and he said, "I will not cut this. One week later, he put half a million Ohioans' healthcare at risk, including Audrey's. You can't hug our daughter. Take your picture with her, and then cut the care that she relies on. We're not going to stand for that.
Lucy: Andrew, is it accurate to say Sen. Husted voted to cut 500,000 Ohioans off Medicaid?
Andrew: Well, I'll say first off, I'm in the rare position here, too. Sometimes I wonder where campaigns get the people in their ads, but I've met the woman who was speaking here. It was at a Sherrod Brown campaign event, but she the story she told is true about her daughter and stuff like that. So just an interesting side note. But as far as the number 500,000 Ohioans, I'm not really sure where they got that from. I had assumed that the number was related to the One Big Beautiful Bill, which was Donald Trump's signature spending legislation, it made all kinds of changes to Medicaid that health policy researchers have estimated would cause 308,000 Ohioans to lose their coverage. This is specifically Medicaid recipients who will be required to comply with new work requirements, and that number is just an estimate, and it could fluctuate based on how people are able to comply with them. With the, it's not so much the part where you have to work, but it's the part where you have to fill out the paperwork demonstrating that you either have a job or that you're seeking one or getting job training. And so, if the state is more successful with helping people navigate that, it could be a higher number. But I don't think it would fluctuate all the way up to to 500,000 people. I know the bill also would make some pretty deep cuts to Medicaid over the next decade. It's by $33 billion, and I there could be that there's some Medicaid enrollment drop because of that. But I've not seen a specific number to support the 500,000 drop that the ad sites.
Lucy: Okay, well, this next ad relates to the personal finances of members of Congress.
Ad: Last year, members of Congress made more than $635 million in stock trades. What's worse, I'll bet you're not all that surprised.
Lucy: Okay, Husted's photo is featured in this ad. David, do we know if he made money from stock trades in 2025, and if so, how much he made?
David: Well, you're right. Husted's photo is featured in the ad, but it kind of flashes by. It's it's certainly not. It's an unusual ad in that it does not directly focus on Husted. Doesn't mention his name. The answer is yes. We know what Husted has done, and he has not traded stocks in 2026 at all. Has not bought or sold anything this year, and had very very minimal activity in 2025. So, this is an ad that's more about the concept of the problem than citing Husted as an exemplar of the problem, you know. By contrast, you know, Rep. Max Miller, among the things he's been up to, is well more than a million dollars of stock trades in the relatively brief time that he's been in office. So it's an accurate depiction of the larger problem, and you know, I suppose it it sullies Husted by association, though Husted is not actually an active participant in the problem.
Lucy: Well, here's an ad targeting Senator Husted for his votes related to the war in Iran and tariffs.
Ad: Jon Husted has voted 13 times for the war in Iran, and it's had a direct effect on farmers. Diesel fuel has doubled since last spring. Cost of fertilizer tripled, and Jon Husted supports the tariffs, which have driven the prices down, which we can sell our crops.
Lucy: So, Andrew, is that is that right? Is it correct that Jon Husted voted 13 times for war in Iran, that he backed tariffs that are driving down the prices that that farmers can charge for their crops?
Andrew: So just taking that in order, yes, he voted 13 different times. It's not necessarily for the war because Congress hasn't authorized it, but there have been instances where Democrats in particular have tried to force votes opposing it, and so some of the 13 number include things like that. The fact is that he says he supports the war and has had there. There are opportunities that members of Congress have had to vote on that issue, and so that number is true. The tariff one's a little bit more complicated because of the specific part about the tariffs driving prices down. Husted does support Donald Trump's tariffs. It is the president who has imposed these, and one effect of that was that China refused to buy U.S. soybeans. They'd previously been a very large export market, and so that did cause prices maybe to go down more than they would have. But I also checked when I was doing research for this, and I see soybean prices actually are up year over year. So I don't. I'm not saying that it's not true that were the tariffs, we're trying to not do that, that prices wouldn't be higher. But I guess all I'll say is that things like tariffs and you know macroeconomics are very complicated. So it's kind of hard to draw a straight line there. But Husted certainly supported the tariffs themselves.
Attack ads against Sherrod Brown
Lucy: Okay, of course there are plenty of ads against former Senator Sherrod Brown. He's the Democratic candidate in this U.S. Senate race. And they target his long record in Congress. Here's one.
Ad: Brown gave us a border in chaos, sky-high cost of living, and boys in girl sports. That's why Ohio said you're fired to liberal Senator Sherrod Brown.
Lucy: Andrew, let's start with you. The claim is that Brown gave us this border and chaos, sky high cost of living, boys and girls sports. Break that down for us.
Andrew: Yeah. So, kind of taking those things in order. Before I do that, though, I'll say basically this is Republicans blaming Sherrod Brown for former President Joe Biden's records. So, did Sherrod Brown personally cause all these issues, or is he responsible for all the things the Biden administration did or didn't do about them? No, you know, it's this kind of thing similar to what we were talking about earlier with John Husted not personally negotiating every data center deal in Ohio. But kind of working down in order: One, the border chaos thing refers to how border crossings spiked under Biden's presidency, and they've since dropped sharply since Donald Trump took over as president. And I know in the 2024 election, I covered that, and Brown was pushing legislation that would increase border security funding. It was kind of clearly at that time like a political thing to do, but that that measure stalled. But kind of more broadly, there are votes that Brown has taken that either you know supported Biden's agenda or things Republicans will say that they didn't do enough to push back against it and what have you. So I'll try to keep it fast. The sky-high cost of living. Similarly, we remember how prices went up under Biden's administration after the COVID lockdowns ended, and you know Republicans would say Sherrod Brown was responsible for some of that. And then finally, the boys in girls' sports thing. This is a reference to the issue of more broadly of transgender girls playing in girls and women's sports. Which I just want to say that transgender people really strongly object to that framing that way. So, I just want to note that, calling it that. But that's what the ad said, and Sherrod Brown has at times voted against Republican measures that would try to restrict transgender athletes out of girls and women's sports. It's not really the same thing as causing it to happen, but you know that that's the basis for those three things. So yeah, we can I'm sure talk more about that stuff.
Lucy: Yeah. Well, this next ad is related to the death of an Ohio family.
Ad: Moduno was behind the wheel of this semi truck. It caused a chain reaction crash that killed 37-year-old Luke Saposki, 36-year-old Lenea Saposki, and their one-year-old child. But Brown doesn't care. I don't hear a lot about immigration from voters, except people on the far right.
Lucy: David, did Sherrod Brown take any votes in Congress that can be linked to the man who was held responsible for this fatal crash?
David: That is a really tenuous connection, and you know, the assertion, even in in the previous ad, the idea that you know Brown is responsible for the border in chaos, you know that's one of those unfalsifiable notions. You know what what even does that what even does that mean? So this is one of you know the assertion is a couple times removed from any particular action that that Sherrod Brown might have made, and I think very significantly, this was the ad that was the subject of the family of the folks who lost their lives in that car crash, demanding that that ad stop being used. That they never gave permission for family photos to be used in the ad, and I think actually did the Husted campaign more harm than good because they came across as, you know, essentially, you know, taking advantage of this family's pain in an ad that again, this this is a very tenuous leap that tries to connect Sherrod Brown to this, you know, personal tragedy.
Lucy: Do we even know if that last comment that is purportedly from Sherrod Brown was him? I mean, it's so tricky with AI these days, whether you know you're hearing from the actual candidate or or something else.
David: I think it's him, but it the reference isn't, you know, the suggestion that that that somehow plays into this. I think he's simply saying that the average Ohioan is not outwardly anti-immigration, and I think any poll would back that up.
Lucy: Well, here's an attack ad against Brown related to affordability.
Ad: But we don't have to guess what happens with Sherrod Brown back in the Senate. We already know higher energy costs, higher taxes, more spending that drives up costs. That's Brown's record. More Washington, higher costs. Jon Husted will get Washington out of the way.
Lucy: Andrew, what do you make of the claim in this ad that you know Sherrod Brown failed us, and Jon Husted will get Washington out of the way?
Andrew: Well, it's not really a factual you know issue to challenge. I think it just kind of gets at Sherrod Brown was there for a long time. Jon Husted's new and he'll change things. I think it's pretty interesting to use that kind of framing, given that Jon Husted is the incumbent in this race and Brown's the challenger. But that being said, I mean, that's my my two cents about that claim.
Lucy: Anything you want to add to that, David?
David: Yeah, I think Andrew is right that one of the really interesting elements of this is presentation of Husted as the invisible man in the Senate, you know that he bears no responsibility for the direction of things. Sherrod Brown, who is not in office, does, and I also think there's a tension in these ads that you know talks about, for example, the high cost of living. Well, the cost of living is high now. You know that there's this disconnect between you know wanting to assert that Sherrod Brown is to blame and things were terrible when he was in charge, with having to then grapple with well, how are things right this very moment?
Lucy: Today we're fact checking attack ads in Ohio's U.S. Senate race and also the gubernatorial campaigns. Our discussion was pre-recorded, so we can't take your calls. Here are a couple of attack ads related to immigration policy.
Ad: Brown voted to raise your taxes repeatedly and give those tax dollars to illegals. Now Sherrod Brown wants to tax your overtime and tax your Social Security, while he rolled out the red carpet to illegal immigrants, giving them millions of your tax dollars, from taxpayer-funded health care to Social Security benefits, and Brown voted 10 times to protect sanctuary cities, making Ohio less safe.
Lucy: Okay, so those were two separate clips played back to back from two different commercials. David, did former Senator Sherrod Brown vote to raise taxes repeatedly and give the money to people who were in the country without legal authorization, and did he vote to tax overtime and Social Security?
David: The immigration part of that, I checked on all the footnotes in these ads where they lead, and you know, I mean, it takes some doing. You have to freeze frame it because it's it's in pretty tiny print and it flashes on screen pretty quickly. But what you wind up with are, and and I'm not exaggerating here. In many cases, amendments to amendments to a bill, where some provision, some extra bit of language is being added to a bill that might not actually have anything to do with immigration in this case. One of the cases, really interestingly, was a vote that, in effect, never happened because the as a parliamentary matter it was ruled out of order. So one of the citations leads to a dead vote. Another one leads to a vote where Sherrod Brown voted on the same side as George Voinovich, which gives you an idea of how long ago this took place and the fact that a lot of these actions that are being criticized had a bipartisan element to it. So, are these accurate depictions of his record? They're a bit exaggerated. In one case, the implication is that Sherrod Brown was standing up for people who did something illegal in entering the country. One of these votes leads to a vote about folks with legal status in the country. So they're they're a bit enhanced relative to the claims that are being made in the ads with respect to those tax questions, I believe they're making the assertion that Brown doesn't support the actions of Trump and and the Congress in in recent years in temporarily rolling back some taxes on overtime earnings, for example, and and tips.
Lucy: For our listeners who aren't familiar. George Voinovich is a former Ohio governor, former U.S. senator from Ohio, and also a Republican. So that is the George Voinovich reference you made. Well, David, that second ad clip we played says Brown quote gives illegals taxpayer-funded health care and social security benefits. It says he voted 10 times to protect sanctuary cities. Fact check those claims for us.
David: Well, again, when you break it down, you know, for example, on healthcare, there was a vote that would have, and again, it's these are typically amendments to bills. There was a vote. That would have prevented spending any money on health care for even legal immigrants, and Brown voted against it. And it was ultimately a bipartisan vote. Several Republican senators, including Collins and Murkowski, voted with the Democrats to defeat the measure. The Social Security vote was the one that involved George Voinovich, so that again, he was on the bipartisan side of that. You know, with respect to the protecting sanctuary cities, most of those votes are in the category of not punishing sanctuary cities. So, if you're going to be precise with your language, you know, as as Andrew referred to earlier, with respect to Husted's votes on the war in Iran. Again, they're a little bit, they're a little bit exaggerated. One other thing to add about these ads is the generous usage of AI and and manufactured images. And in some cases, a handful of these ads, that's one of the footnotes that that these that these images are made up, but for example, you know, one of those ads shows a made-up fictional Sherrod Brown rolling out a fictional red carpet in the Hall of the Senate for the challenge for voters having to wade through what of this is real and what of this isn't. You literally cannot trust what you're seeing, it doesn't actually mean this ever happened.
Andrew: And let me chime in. I'm sorry. I mentioned earlier that I've seen ads that are more egregious about making it seem like he's in office. It's actually the one that you played at the beginning of the segment. It splashes the phrase Senator Sherrod Brown in red over the top. It says it uses the present tense, saying he's been there for 32 years, and I'm a writer. I have my grammar edited all the time, and that is he was there for 32 years. He is not currently there. You know, in continuation, that that refers to how long he spent in Congress before voters voted him out in 2024. So, I definitely I have talked to people who believe that Sherrod Brown is the incumbent in this race, Jon Husted has told me stories that his supporters have accosted him for like being crazy enough to challenge Sherrod Brown in this election climate, and so that's that. I want to just add up to what I said previously.
Lucy: Yeah. Well, here's another ad related to immigration.
Ad: Brown backed Joe Biden's open border policy that let drugs, crime, pour into Ohio's communities. He supported amnesty for 11 million illegals. Brown voted to hand out benefits to illegals too: taxpayer-funded health care, social security benefits, and COVID relief check.
Lucy: Andrew, did Sherrod Brown support amnesty for 11 million undocumented immigrants and vote to give them COVID relief checks?
Andrew: So there's a lot going on with those two claims. So the 11 million number. I looked at the footnotes on that one, and it was referencing a couple of votes that Brown took in 2012. It was voting for what people called the comprehensive immigration reform passed by the Gang of Eight. It was four Republican senators, four Democratic senators, and it created a path to citizenship for people without documentation in the country. But it would have been something that would have taken 10 years, and I mean it's been a long time. But I think certain they have to go to the back of the line and pay a fine. There's the verbiage that you know was the marketing slogans that kind of accompanied it, and I'll note by the way, Marco Rubio is one of the people who voted for that one. He's currently the Secretary of State, so I know critics at the time called it amnesty. There's just kind of more to it than that. It certainly was a bipartisan vote in kind of like a bygone political era too, because at that time Republicans felt that they actually had to become more moderate on immigration if they wanted to be politically successful. The COVID relief checks one. This refers to in the beginning of Joe Biden's presidency, he awarded what was a third round of COVID stimulus checks to people. The previous two rounds went under Donald Trump's presidency and is the same exact criteria as the third one. But Ted Cruz in 2024 decided to try to amend who would receive a check to cover more people, not just I don't have the exact phrase in front of me, but it was a legal term that expanded it not just to be people without U.S. citizenship or without legal authorization, but also it would have broadened to include people who were here legally at first, but their green card expired, or they were in America under what's called DACA, which through which President Barack Obama allowed for immigrants whose parents brought them here when they were little kids to remain here legally, and so Democrats voted that down, and so I guess you could say Republicans also voted to give illegal immigrants stimulus checks under Donald Trump's presidency because the same criteria was there, but so there's a vote to it. You know, there's a reason why they said it, but it's just the explanation I've given just take would not fit in a 30-second ad.
Lucy: We're going to turn to the governor's race in Ohio, and let's start with attack ads against Democrat Amy Acton. Here's the first one we're going to talk about.
Attack ads against Amy Acton
Ad: Acton called off Ohio's election at the last minute, defying a judge's orders and abusing her power.
Lucy: Okay, Andrew. This ad says acting called off the election, ignoring a judge's order. Gov. Mike DeWine has disputed that, hasn't he?
Andrew: Yeah. So, there is a version of this that happened. I was actually had a front row seat to a lot of it in March 2020. Mike DeWine tried to engineer a citizen lawsuit to block the election. This was in the very early days of the COVID pandemic, where frankly people were scared, and the concern was at the time that certain people, especially those with pre-existing medical conditions or senior citizens, would be too scared to show up to vote, and that would make the results, you know, questionable. And DeWine, and I'll say a couple of other Republicans who are running on the statewide ballot this year appeared in a press conference. That was Jon Husted and Frank LaRose calling for this lawsuit, saying that they needed to move the election. They failed in court, and then so what DeWine did was he administratively ordered that the election be. I think he ordered the polls closed, and so Republican lawmakers responded by rescheduling the election two months later. So Amy Acton signed that health order, but Amy Acton is a government bureaucrat who worked for Mike DeWine, and that's how it happened. And so DeWine has been asked about various claims from Republicans about Amy Acton unilaterally doing this and that during the pandemic, and he's always been pretty quick to say and clear that these decisions were his, that the authority she had was kind of like under his his direction, his administration, and that he's basically said the bucks stopped with him. But that's the story behind the whole thing.
Lucy: Well, here's one targeting Amy Acton's qualifications.
Ad: Amy Acton's medical knowledge was described as insufficient to Ohio's medical board, and she admitted to emotional or mental illness, drug addiction, or an alcohol problem. Later, Acton told the medical board she was clean, but days later, police came to her house, finding that she combined alcohol with prescription drugs.
Lucy: David, I want to take this one kind of claim by claim. Did the Ohio Medical Board call her knowledge insufficient? What does that mean?
David: Out of context, that sounds horrible and and and disqualifying and and all that. But what it actually was was an assertion that she wasn't finished, not that she had failed. So in her studies, you know, I think she had taken a, in effect, short leave, and you know this was a review, an interim review of of her work as a medical student, and so she hadn't finished a section of the training. So it was insufficient, as it sort of in the meaning incomplete, rather than insufficient as in you didn't you know that you failed to do the, you know, necessary studies.
Lucy: Andrew, what about this claim related to mental health? What has Amy Acton said about this admission related to her mental health?
Andrew: There are forms when you apply for your medical license, either to be granted or renewed. There's a questionnaire, and one of the questions for a time that's no longer there, but was they asked the applicant whether they never received any treatment for mental health or drug or alcohol addiction. So if you were to check the box, yes, it could have been any one of those three things. I guess are all of them. And so when Acton's been asked about this, she said that it referenced the therapy that she'd received as somebody who was sexually abused when she was young, and she's talked about that publicly. So she's really taken issue with Republicans putting this in ads. They've characterized it as Ramaswamy and his allies weaponizing her past as a sexual assault victim.
Lucy: And David, what about this incident when police went to her house? You can hear the sirens in that ad.
David: Well, again, Republicans have tried to make a lot out of what appears to be a married couple arguing with each other, and there were no charges filed, and there were no arrests. And this is a smear, you know, the the implication. Something must be really out of control. If that occurred, it goes hand in hand with you know, as Andrew just said, that that either or question: Have you had any mental health treatment, or an alcohol problem, or a drug addiction? You put those two back to back, and and the smear is the implication that well, you had all three, and then you had this police incident. And yours is a life out of control. So it's not disputed. The police responded to her home that she and her husband were shouting each other, and they told them to knock it off. What you make of that, of course, it's dependent on whether you take it for the straight facts or whether you let the sort of the insinuations do the work.
Lucy: And Andrew, I believe that same ad has up on the screen that that Amy Acton said she had been drinking, that she took an unknown amount of prescription drugs. What can you tell us about that?
Andrew: Yeah, I guess you know Republicans would have us think that she ate a bottle of pills and downed it with a bottle of wine or something like that, but the actual police report doesn't specify that she was intoxicated. It doesn't say how much she drank. It doesn't say anything about prescription medications other than it references them. So her campaign, when they've been asked about that, she said that she had one drink. She said that the medication in question had to do with migraine medicine. So I think people might envision, you know, something that is more intoxicating or something like that because of the insinuation, but that is what she has said about it.
Lucy: Well, this next ad blames Acton for a woman's death in a nursing home.
Ad: I had to put my mother in a nursing home because she had fallen. A few weeks after that is when Amy Acton shut down the state. My mother didn't understand it. It traumatized her. She didn't know why her family couldn't come visit her. Two months later, she died. Amy Acton is to blame for this.
Lucy: David, what can you tell us about the woman who's featured in this ad and the death of her mother?
David: This ad is one of the great whoppers of all time in terms of the level of insincerity of the information provided there. So the woman speaking to us is a Republican uber activist. This is somebody who's been Republican committees and Republican activists for a very long time, and the story that she's telling about her mother, you know, very sorry that her mother passed, but her mother passed in Kentucky, and as much as Amy Acton didn't keep anyone out of Ohio, didn't order any any closure of Ohio. One thing she absolutely and incontrovertibly didn't do was shut down Kentucky. So this is one of those where the Republicans wanted headlines and tears, and you know sacrificed any accuracy whatsoever in the story. The premise of it were there health orders, and were were we in a a difficult time in COVID? Well, absolutely, of course we were. Again, as Andrew referenced was that an Amy Acton action or or a Governor Mike DeWine action? Well, ultimately the final authority was with the governor, but this is in effect a made up story. None of these none of these facts as presented are accurate.
Lucy: Sure. Well, neither Governor DeWine nor Amy Acton would have had any sway in Kentucky, certainly.
David: And you know I've heard I've heard some Republicans you know kind of complain and say, well, it's basically true, but you know that that's exactly the opposite of what an ad is supposed to be. You know, an ad is supposed to be actually true, and so if you believe this, if you believe the kind of the fundamental purpose and point of that ad, we'll go find somebody who will say that in Ohio, and their inability to do that, I think, speaks volumes.
Lucy: Well, Andrew, you can't hear it in the ad, but the ad also includes text that appears on the TV screen that says more seniors died in Ohio than anywhere in the Midwest, and they and that text is next to a logo for the CDC. Is that correct?
Andrew: So I've seen that claim in a few different places. I don't remember if it was a TV ad too, but definitely online. So I've tracked down the data, and it essentially, it's true that Ohio had the most senior citizen deaths in nursing homes during 2020. By the way, half of the time Amy Acton was in office, and half the time she wasn't. But what it doesn't adjust for is that Ohio is one of the largest states in the Midwest, and so you'd expect that there'd be more deaths just by, to some degree, the virtue of there being more people here. So when you adjust for population differences, Ohio actually ranked had the sixth highest death rate among that group out of 12. But I guess that doesn't sound as scary in a commercial when you put it that way.
Attack ads against Vivek Ramaswamy
Lucy: Okay, the there are attack ads targeting Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy too. Here's one focused on Ramaswamy's history as a biotech entrepreneur.
Ad: As head of a dubious pharmaceutical company, Ramaswamy pushed an Alzheimer's drug he knew didn't work, making hundreds of millions scamming desperate seniors. His company also charged nearly $3 million for a single procedure to treat children with a genetic disorder.
Lucy: David, this ad talks about Ramaswamy pushing an Alzheimer's drug he knew didn't work. It claims he made hundreds of million dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars, scamming seniors and charged $3 million to treat children with a genetic disorder. Break that down for us.
David: All right, this is going to get a little complicated, so everybody, you know, buckle up. The 3 million to treat for a single procedure for a child with a genetic disorder. That's absolutely unquestionably true. That what Ramaswamy's company did basically was buy up drugs from other companies. You know, buy up the rights to those drugs. In some cases, drugs that those companies were ready to abandon because so few people, you know, had the condition, the affliction, and thus the market, the potential market for the drug was so small. So in some cases, they bought drugs for which there was a tiny, tiny market. And well, why would you ever do that? Well, you might do that if you were going to then charge the recipients $3 million each. So in that case, that's true. That was a an example where he used to talk about this briefly when he was running for president about you know the life saving work of his pharmaceutical company. Then, as reporters started asking about the $3 million price tag, he stopped talking about it. Okay, now here's where it's going to start getting complicated. Did he push an Alzheimer's drug he knew didn't work? His company bought an Alzheimer's drug from another company. That company had abandoned the drug, believing it didn't work. So Ramaswamy's, get this, mother, then on his behalf, reanalyzes the data, makes a claim. There's something here. There's something promising, and he buys the rights to it and attempts further testing. Did he believe it was going to work? Did he know it was flawed? That starts to get pretty murky. It seems like Ramaswamy's mother manipulated would be too strong a word, but massaged the data to make it look more promising than it really was. He advanced trials, but ultimately, when the trials failed, he stopped pursuing the drug. So that's what a trial is for, and that's the process, as any reputable pharmaceutical research team would pursue. That one gets a little fuzzy. When did exactly did he know it was not going to work, and what were his motivations going in? I mean, the purpose of the company was to make money. That was the motivation. So presumably, there was some belief that this drug was going to pan out. Now, the part that's really hard to justify is making hundreds of millions scamming seniors. Well, he made money, but he made money by selling pieces of the company that that he was running. He was not making millions from the seniors because the drug never reached the market, so that part of it is really hard to back up. He made an awful lot of money in this process, but he largely made it by getting money from other rich guys, not from you know, not from going over to grandma's house and selling her a dream about a new drug.
Lucy: Well, here's another ad related to his business background.
Ad: Backing a drug called garbage by a medical expert, selling stock in his company just before his drug failed a clinical trial.
Lucy: Andrew, did Vivek Ramaswamy sell stock just before his company's drug failed a clinical trial?
Andrew: So this is kind of a continuation of that yarn that that David just spun. The same drug we're talking about, the Alzheimer's drug that Ramaswamy's company is trying to develop, and there was a there's a big Japanese investment bank called SoftBank that shortly before the drug trial failed, and they spent a billion dollars buying a large stake of Ramaswamy's parent company that, through which he owned all of these subsidiaries that developed these independent drugs, including this Alzheimer's drug. The New York Times reported at the time that SoftBank didn't actually think the Alzheimer's drug would work, but they're more interested in the rest of his portfolio. And as it turns out, some of the other drugs that Ramaswamy's companies were developing, ended up making it to market, and so Ramaswamy and presumably SoftBank made money off of the whole thing. But Ramaswamy's campaign has really heavily contested this idea that that Ramaswamy sold out in his business right before it tanked. Because when the Alzheimer's drugs trial failed, the individual company that owned it, which was kind of a subsidiary. That company basically went belly up, but it was not particularly related to the the investment that this big company made because, like I said, they were more interested in the rest of his portfolio, at least according to New York Times reporting.
Lucy: Well, here's one more commercial. It sounds like the kind of parody drug commercial that could air on Saturday Night Live. Take a listen.
Ad: He supports repealing the Affordable Care Act and cutting Medicaid. If you want to pay more for everything from electric bills to property taxes, then talk to your doctor about Vivek Ramaswamy.
Lucy: Okay, so David, does Ramaswamy support repealing the Affordable Care Act and cutting Medicaid; those are claims that are made in parts of that ad.
David: He has said that he's talked about the government really shouldn't be in health care, and so that's a massive change in the direction of things in the United States. Obviously, as a governor, he wouldn't be in a position to necessarily accomplish all those things, though he certainly would be in a position to impose further cuts in Medicaid if he were to be elected governor of Ohio.
Lucy: And another part of the ad that we didn't hear says that his income tax plan could drive a 20% property tax increase. Andrew, is that true?
Andrew: So that claim was in a study made by a left-leaning think tank. The idea is that Ramaswamy wants to eliminate the income tax. It raises about I think $10 billion for the state. It's a major source of revenue. So I think the study essentially imagined what might you have to do to make up for all of that lost revenue. So the fine print in Ramaswamy's plan is that he wants to do that? He wants to eliminate that $10 billion of income taxes over 10 years. Presumably, the there might be other things that you kind of cut along the way. Republicans have always argued that cutting taxes causes more economic activity, so you raise more money from more people, basically a broader base. And that's that's like one of the arguments as old as time in in policy, but that's what he would say. So that's the basis for it. You know, is it clear that if Ramaswamy implemented his tax plan, that we would suddenly have a 20% increase in property taxes? It's not quite that simple.
Lucy: Well, we have talked about a lot of attack ads today. There are going to be a lot more certainly between now and election day. David, what should voters keep in mind when they see these ads?
David: You have to understand what is a campaign trying to do. In an ideal sense, they're trying to advance something you already kind of believe, something you already kind of suspect. So these ads are an opportunity for the voter to kind of challenge those assumptions sometimes, and I do think there's tremendous value in the conversation we just had in terms of breaking these claims down, because even in just a single 30-second ad, there can be numerous assertions and numerous insinuations. I do encourage in the classroom when you know when I teach campaigns and we break we break a a 30-second ad down. It takes a lot longer than 30 seconds to understand a 30-second ad.
Lucy: So Andrew, what's the best way to learn about these candidates outside of these ads that that are airing from their supporters and their opponents.
Andrew: Well, I'd be remiss if I didn't plug the people who pay my paycheck, Signalohio.org, your friendly local media outlets, including WVXU. You know, local media does a great job reporting on these candidates. I, as a reporter, try to as often as possible include links and sources to my breakdowns, and so I think that if people are wondering about the information they're seeing, look at the citations like carefully consider why they're in there. Look at it, see if the what's cited supports the underlying claim. But I think people, if you have time to do your own homework and look into your candidates, you have you can get a better idea of of who they are. And one of the best ways you can do that is by following local media.
Lucy: Yeah. Anything you'd like to add, David? Is a long list of footnotes a red flag?
David: This is where we make the job of the voter even that much harder because those footnotes could be an actual sign of legitimacy, and but they're they're also there for show in some cases, you know, well, surely this must be true. There's footnotes, and and I can tell you after wading through all of the ads that we've talked about today and more, some of those footnotes are actually a dead end, which is I think is a pretty telling commentary on the on the strength of the ad. Take one random footnote from an ad, and if it doesn't say the thing the ad said it said that's probably not a very reputable ad.
Lucy: I've been talking with University of Cincinnati political science professor David Niven and Signal Ohio State Politics reporter Andrew Tobias. Thank you both so much for your time today.