The backlash against Vivek Ramaswamy’s controversial Amy Acton attack ad has now followed him all the way back to school.
Alumni of Cincinnati’s St. Xavier High School have launched a petition condemning the Republican Ohio gubernatorial candidate, arguing that his decision to feature Acton’s estranged mother in a campaign advertisement runs directly against the Jesuit school’s “Men for Others” ethos.
The independently organized petition calls on Ramaswamy, a 2003 St. Xavier graduate, to pull the ad, apologize publicly, and return his campaign to arguments over policy and political records.
Its authors describe the advertisement as an attempt to weaponize Acton’s childhood trauma for political gain. Ramaswamy’s campaign has acknowledged producing the ad and has committed $4 million to promoting it. Court records and reporting have corroborated key parts of Acton’s account of her childhood, including that her stepfather was charged with raping her when she was 12.
The alumni response has been anything but polite.
One 1996 graduate wrote, “This ad fails that test. Character matters. We expect better from a fellow Bomber.”
Another alumnus from Ramaswamy’s own class of 2003 said he had become “the very antithesis of what it means to be a Man for Others.”
Ohio Anger Is Spilling Well Beyond St. Xavier
That fury closely mirrors what has been unfolding in Cincinnati’s left-leaning Reddit community, where the ad has become another outlet for voters already hostile to Ramaswamy and the broader Republican Party.
One commenter called the controversy “truly a new low for MAGA,” while another warned Ohioans against assuming outrage alone would decide the race. The thread is plainly not a representative sample of the state, but the hostility is difficult to miss.
The remarkable part is how many different directions the criticism is coming from now.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine has urged Ramaswamy to pull the advertisement, while other Republican figures have also distanced themselves from the tactic. President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has defended Ramaswamy and encouraged him to continue running it.
That makes the St. Xavier petition more than another angry internet response. It puts Ramaswamy’s own educational background into the argument, with former classmates and fellow graduates effectively asking what became of the values they were all supposed to have learned together.
One alumnus reduced the entire controversy to five words: “Basic decency shouldn’t be this hard.”
For Ramaswamy, that may be the uncomfortable problem with an attack designed to put Acton’s past under a microscope. Instead, it has prompted growing numbers of Ohioans to examine his choices.
