Alan Portnoy

So glad @kenblackwell pointed out DeWine’s utter hypocrisy! “Governor DeWine, you called the Statehouse press corps to the Capitol Rotunda this morning to demand that Vivek Ramaswamy pull an ad featuring Amy Acton's mother. You told reporters it was wrong to run it, and you reminded them of your years as a county prosecutor fighting for children who were abused. Ohio deserves to know why that same outrage stayed quiet last week, when the Acton campaign dragged a private family's abuse case into this race. On October 14, The Bulwark reported that Vernon Edwards had appeared in the background of a Ramaswamy property tax ad. The ad was about his wife, Patty Edwards, an Amherst woman afraid of losing her farm to rising taxes. Edwards pleaded guilty in 2006 to gross sexual imposition against a child in his own family. The Ramaswamy campaign said it knew nothing about his record and moved to cut him from the ad. The Acton campaign saw an opening and ran straight through it. Its spokeswoman said Vivek chose to "amplify a convicted pedophile" and called it disqualifying. Two days later, the campaign sent out a press release with "Convicted Child Sex Offender" in the headline, citing reports that the victims were his young nieces. Dr. Acton repeated the "convicted pedophile" line in interviews this week. Those girls never ran for governor. They grew up carrying a weight no child should ever carry. Twenty years later, a political campaign put their worst days back in the news to score points against a Republican. Did you say one word on their behalf? Dr. Acton stands in a different place. She is the Democratic nominee for governor and your own former health director. She chose to make her childhood part of her public life, starting with a 2019 profile in her hometown paper. She put it in her very first campaign ad in July and has talked about it on the trail ever since. A candidate who asks Ohioans for their votes on the strength of her life story has invited them to examine it. The children in Vernon Edwards' family made no such choice. You built a career on the promise of equal justice under the law. That promise means one rule for every victim, no matter which party it helps. You applied it this morning to a candidate who told her own story in public. As far as Ohio can see, you never applied it to children who never asked to be part of any of this. Ohioans also remember the spring of 2020, when they saw you and Dr. Acton side by side at the podium every afternoon. You made her your health director, and her signature went on the stay-at-home order that shut down businesses Ohio families had spent a lifetime building. Your administration locked families out of nursing homes, cutting parents and grandparents off from the people who loved them most. By Thanksgiving, with Dr. Acton gone, you had banned gatherings of more than 10 people and ordered Ohioans home by 10 p.m. Ohio businesses and families paid for those decisions. Today you stood in the Rotunda to protect the partner who helped you make them. You have held public office for nearly 50 years, from county prosecutor to the U.S. Senate to the governor's office. In that time you became the face of Ohio's political establishment, a moderate who kept climbing while Ohio families kept waiting for results. Politicians from that class have never known what to do with an outsider like Vivek Ramaswamy. Vivek is a principled conservative fighting the property taxes that threaten Ohio families' homes&farms. You still endorse him. Ohio Republicans need you to stand behind that endorsement with more than silence. Governor, Ohio is owed two answers before Election Day. Did you publicly object when the Acton campaign used Vernon Edwards' case&the children in his family to attack Vivek? If so, tell us when&where. If you did not, tell Ohio why you rushed to defend a candidate who chose to share her story in public &said nothing for children who never had that choice.”