Political Gain from Personal Pain is Ungodly

Last updated on: October 26, 2026 at 10:16 am by Melanie Springer Mock

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Political Gain from Personal Pain is Ungodly 2026-10-25T16:29:50-07:00 Melanie Springer Mock

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By now, the story has reached the far edges of the internet: How Ohio Gubernatorial Candidate Vivek Ramaswamy created an ad weaponizing his opponent’s biological mother against her. How the mother called Amy Acton a “liar,” urging Ohio voters to choose Ramaswamy. How Acton’s mother had been estranged from her daughter for almost fifty years, ever since Acton’s stepfather was charged with raping the girl when she was 12. The mother lost custody of her children, the stepfather went to jail, and somehow Amy Acton, despite the trauma she faced, has become a successful politician, currently leading Ramaswamy in the polls.

The ad received condemnation from some prominent Republican leaders, including current Ohio governor Mike DeWine and former presidential candidate Nikki Haley. Other Republicans doubled down, including Ramaswamy, who stands behind an ad his campaign spent $4 million producing and airing; and Vice President J.D. Vance, who condemned Republicans critiquing the ad, rather than the ad itself. President Donald Trump said Ramaswamy should “say thank you, God” for the ad, as if God was somehow responsible for the reprehensible attack on a woman and the personal pain she endured.

Using personal pain for political gain has now become God-ordained. Apparently.

My small town is experiencing a similar phenomenon as we approach the November 3 election of a mayor and several city council members. Last week, a local website published a hit piece on the challenger for Newberg’s mayoral seat. (I’m not linking to the piece, because it’s so disturbing, so untrue, and so unnecessary to give the writer any more page views.)

The long screed–filled with innuendo, unverified claims, and rumors–described, in lurid and unsubstantiated details, a deeply painful, personal event that happened in 2025. The event devastated the mayoral candidate, her children, her extended family, her friends, yet became grist for political chatter that tried to accuse the candidate of being culpable for a tragedy over which she had no control.

Personal pain, political gain.

As with the Ramaswamy ad, those holding power in Newberg have done nothing to condemn the article, nor the local social media accounts that reposted it, referenced it, and seemed to celebrate the presumed gotcha moment. It seemed these folks never bothered to think about a woman’s devastation, and about children whose lives were changed irrevocably. One city council incumbent posted on her candidate page that she would let the facts of the article speak for themselves, never mind that the hit piece had been spun out of whole cloth and was, in fact, mostly devoid of facts. (She took her post down several days later.)

It would be so easy for leaders in our community to condemn this disinformation and to affirm that personal pain would not be used for political gain. The mayoral candidate herself came out with a social media post “unequivocally rejecting the politics of personal destruction.”

But apparently, even an election to small-town office matters more than caring for neighbors who have faced tragedy and trauma; and political power matters more than the truth. Plenty of those leaders–nationally, and locally–are acting like this use of personal pain for political gain is God-blessed, that they can (like Trump) “say Thank you, God” for the opportunity to leverage another person’s tragedy and trauma for power.

Those who read scripture, though, know that this kind of exploitation is directly condemned, from the Ten Commandments (Thou shalt not bear false witness) to the Gospels, and modeled in Jesus’ life and ministry. There, Jesus turned away from the power offered to him on the mountaintop by Satan, rejecting a temptation to rule the world.

Instead, Jesus repudiated power again and again. Instead, Jesus tells us the greatest commandment is to love God with all your heart, soul, and mind. Instead, Jesus reminds his followers that the second is to love your neighbors as yourself. “On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets,” he says in Matthew.

Labyrinth at North Valley Friends Church, Newberg

Newly-Refurbished Labyrinth at North Valley Friends Church, Newberg, photo taken by the author.

Those who use others’ personal pain for political gain–especially those who identify as Christ-followers–need to remember this: the greatest commandment is not to win over voters with hit pieces that distort not only the truth, but the Imago Dei in others. The greatest commandment is to love God by loving neighbors. Everything–even a November 3 election–depends on this.

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