By 
Peaches Calhoun
By Peaches Calhoun, founder of Humanity First
Before we entrust someone with power, we should examine the boundaries they are willing to cross to obtain it.
From the shore, the emerald water looks safe. Sunlight scatters across the lake, glitter dancing across the soft ripples. Children shriek as cold waves reach their knees. Behind you, a chilled cooler snaps shut, a radio plays, and someone calls out that the barbecue is ready. Farther out, the buoys rise and fall.
We understand those markers. We do not need to uncover a warning sign buried in the sand to recognize a boundary worth respecting. Beyond it, the bottom may fall away. Water that looks calm can conceal a current stronger than the person entering it. The danger does not always announce itself. Sometimes the first indication is realizing your feet can no longer find the ground.
Watching the controversy over an advertisement featuring Dr. Amy Acton’s estranged mother, I keep thinking about those buoys and what happens when someone seeking power crosses them without considering who else might be pulled into deeper water.
Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign acknowledged producing the advertisement and announced plans to spend $4 million promoting it. In it, Donna Arthur calls her daughter a liar and disputes her account of childhood hardship. The advertisement does not explicitly mention sexual abuse. That distinction matters.
So does the history surrounding this mother’s appearance. Acton has described childhood sexual abuse by her stepfather and removal from her mother’s custody at age 12. Note that there are actual government-documented records and reporting that corroborate key elements of her childhood account.
WOSU reports that her stepfather was charged with raping her and left the state before trial. He is deceased. The charge did not result in a conviction; these circumstances still provide essential context for evaluating the attack on her truthfulness.
A mother’s appearance on camera cannot, by itself, settle the truth of her child’s experience. Voters deserve that context before being invited to judge. They also deserve to examine the judgment of the campaign that decided this appearance belonged in an advertisement.
The response has crossed party lines.
Republican Governor Mike DeWine urged its removal. President Donald Trump defended it and encouraged Ramaswamy to continue running it. Their opposing responses expose a question larger than this race: What are we willing to excuse when we believe our side might benefit?
For me, this controversy feels like a massive earthquake with a magnitude of 9.5, like the Great Chilean Earthquake, revealing a fracture beneath our country’s soil. It tests whether human dignity remains a principle when respecting it might cost us something. And its consequences may travel far beyond the candidate being targeted.
Imagine a teenager watching after school who has been trying to tell someone about abuse. Perhaps they have rehearsed the first sentence a hundred times in their minds or the mirror. Then they see adults arguing over a woman’s childhood. They read strangers calling her credibility into question.
They may wonder whether anyone would believe them. Whether an adult who failed to protect them would be given the final word. Whether visible distress would count against them. We cannot know how every viewer responds. We can exercise enough care to consider those possibilities.
This is the undertow that carries fear. A campaign can choose its target. It cannot contain everyone its message reaches. The advertisement ends. The current keeps moving. It travels through comment sections, across dinner tables and into conversations at school.
It reaches people who never volunteered for a campaign and never asked to have their own memories stirred by one. People with eyes to see, ears to hear, and experiences that make the spectacle painfully familiar.
There is no lifeguard beside every screen. No whistle interrupts the moment a frightened child begins to question whether speaking up will make things worse. No campaign consultant arrives to explain that the message was intended to damage only one particular opponent. Those who feel its consequences must manage them wherever they are.
As a mother of four and community servant leader, I cannot dismiss that responsibility.
Our Ohio teenagers already know the ordinary rhythms of campaign season. They come home from school, open the mailbox, and carry attack ads inside with the grocery coupons and electric bill. Glossy accusations. Unflattering photographs. Bold lettering warning that someone will destroy everything we hold dear.
The mail lands on the kitchen counter. A backpack drops to the floor. Someone asks what’s for dinner.
But we should resist folding every campaign tactic into that familiar stack. Some choices demand more than a weary shrug about politics being politics. We tell children to speak up, find a trusted adult, and ask for help. Our public behavior must make those promises believable.
The Acton advertisement brings that responsibility into sharp focus. Other examples from this election raise additional questions about the boundaries we expect candidates and political advertisers to respect.
Consider a report from The Rooster about Ohio State Senator Michele Reynolds. The publication reported that Reynolds, facing conflicting Fourth of July appearances, sent a lookalike to march in the Reynoldsburg parade while she attended festivities in Groveport. It further reported that organizers expected Reynolds and that, when Mayor Joe Begeny requested to speak with her, her team said she was “on a call.”
These remain allegations attributed to the publication. If accurate, the concern is the representation made to the public. Candidates routinely send representatives to events. An honest introduction allows voters to understand whom they are meeting.
Picture the parade route: folding chairs along the curb, children collecting candy, neighbors waving at someone they believe has come to see them. Public trust takes shape in those small encounters. It deserves care there.
Then there is the advertisement I saw targeting Reynolds’ opponent, Stacie Baker. It depicted him cooking in a kitchen, dressed in a baker’s or chef’s uniform, in footage that appeared to me to be AI-generated. Its production method and sponsor require confirmation.
What disturbed me was the possibility it illustrated: someone’s recognizable likeness made to perform a scene he never participated in.
Imagine sitting on your couch and suddenly seeing yourself on television. Your face. Your expressions. A convincing version of you moving through a place you have never entered, doing something you never did.
Now imagine having to answer for it.
“Was that really you?” “Where was that filmed?” Someone else created the fiction. You inherit the work of correcting it.
For me, creating a lifelike performance with another person’s identity without their knowledge or permission crosses an ethical boundary. Seeking public office should invite scrutiny of your actual conduct. It should not require surrendering your identity for others to manufacture new conduct in your name.
The concern extends beyond one district or party.
In Ohio’s U.S. Senate race, a Republican super PAC released an advertisement depicting an artificial version of Sherrod Brown lingering at a birthday party after his hosts wanted him gone. The political message was that Brown had overstayed his welcome. The scene delivering it was fabricated. Reporting attributed the advertisement to an outside group, rather than Jon Husted’s campaign.
In Texas, the Texas Tribune reported AI-generated crowd imagery in Democratic Senate candidate Jasmine Crockett’s advertising. A Paxton campaign advertisement also depicted a fabricated scene of Republican Senator John Cornyn dancing with Crockett.
These examples differ in purpose and potential harm. A manufactured crowd, a synthetic opponent, and the use of a painful family history demand distinct examinations. Grouping them under “hardball politics” spares us the work of making those distinctions.
We should ask what is authentic, what context is missing, what viewers are being encouraged to believe, and who bears the consequences. The standard must follow the conduct, regardless of whose campaign benefits.
Joel Osteen offers a useful challenge in “The Rewards of Integrity”: consider how far behind the line we can stay, rather than calculating what we can get away with. That distance gives judgment room to work.
Candidates owe us answers. Examine their policies, investigate contradictions, and demand evidence. A difficult childhood does not exempt anyone from accountability. But accountability requires context, relevance, and proportion. Without those disciplines, it becomes an excuse for whatever helps someone win.
Truth. Transparency. Consent. Human dignity.
We recognize these buoys. Yet we keep entertaining explanations for crossing them. It is just a joke. It is just an advertisement. It is just politics.
Eventually, those excuses become a current of their own, carrying us toward conduct we once would have refused to defend.
As our poll official ushers us to our assigned voting booth and we settle in and begin to aim our finger toward a candidate’s selection box—whether we vote early or on November 3—pause and consider the person asking for your vote.
Examine their qualifications. Then examine their character. Look at the boundaries they have respected and those they have crossed when crossing served their ambition. When someone warns that the current is dangerous, do they listen? When their choices cause harm, do they reconsider or pursue a wider audience?
The judgment a candidate exercises while seeking power tells us something about how they may exercise it once elected. Consider whether that person, regardless of party, will respect your privacy, your dignity, and your right to tell your own story. Whether they will protect those boundaries when doing so becomes inconvenient.
Because eventually, the water reaches your life. Your family. Your child. Something precious that you need the person in power to handle with care.
Before casting your ballot, ask yourself:
Has this candidate shown me that they will protect the buoys in my life—or move them when they stand in the way of something they want?
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