“Was It immature? Yes. Was It Juvenile? Yes. Was It Perverted? Probably.”

Vivek Ramaswamy (center) and his lack of scruples have been a frequent target of Rooster.infoMother Jones illustration; Alex Kent/AFP/Getty; Rooster.info Get your news from a source that’s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily. The most infamous political advertisement of the 2026 election cycle was first scooped by a quirky blogger who recently went to jail for sending a lawmaker what you might call a Shrext—a sexually explicit illustration of Shrek. D.J. Byrnes, the man behind a lefty Ohio political news site called The Rooster, was first to report that Ohio Republicans had tracked down the estranged mother of Democratic gubernatorial nominee Dr. Amy Acton and planned to feature the 82-year-old in an ad attacking her daughter. Acton hasn’t seen her mom, Donna Arthur, since 1978. That was the year Cledith Arthur—Acton’s stepfather and Donna’s husband—was indicted by an Ohio grand jury for raping Acton when she was 12 years old. (Both Arthurs fled the state before Cledith could stand trial; he died in 2004.) “If this is Conman’s ‘October surprise,’ then his campaign is probably headed to the bottom of Lake Erie,” Byrnes titled his October 12 blog post, referring to GOP nominee Vivek Ramaswamy. A week later, Byrnes was also first to post the unaired ad: the minute-long clip shows an unkempt Donna characterizing her daughter as an unfit candidate who lied about her abusive childhood. “I’m trying to roll the boulder towards, like, respectability.” Within 24 hours of Byrnes posting the clip, Ramaswamy not only took direct credit for the project but also announced he planned to spend $4 million flooding the airwaves with it. The billionaire biotech entrepreneur had already been trailing Acton marginally in most polls. After the ad hit televisions, his numbers eroded further: Acton now leads by four points in a recent USA TODAY survey, with some Ohio voters citing the ad as the reason they turned away from him. Meanwhile, incumbent GOP Sen. Jon Husted is lagging further behind in the polls in a state that has been a reliable stronghold for the last 10 years. The widely condemned (and factually refuted) ad has come up in nearly every conversation I’ve had with voters as I criss-crossed Ohio over the past week. Registered Republicans and Democrats alike have called it “despicable,” “deplorable,” and “deeply, deeply troubling.” This includes outgoing Republican Governor Mike DeWine. Byrnes’ scoops have upended not only Ramaswamy’s already tight race for governor, but also those of other Ohio Republicans on the ballot. With partisan control of both the House and Senate up for grabs, his reporting could have implications far beyond the Buckeye state. “People do desperate things when they’re down,” Byrnes told me over dinner last week in Columbus, as we discussed the fallout from the Ramaswamy ad. Byrnes, 39, is not exactly known for playing by the rules. With no college degree or formal journalism training, he self-identifies as a member of the “radical left,” and often blurs the boundaries between muckraking reporting and pugnacious activism. He’s also an elaborate prankster. In 2025, he posed as a representative of Ohio State University’s football team and tricked Ramaswamy and his team into meeting him at a Raising Cane’s fried chicken restaurant, where they thought they’d be sitting down with Ohio State’s head football coach Ryan Day and several players. Byrnes took a photo with Ramaswamy before revealing, via text, that Ramaswamy had gotten got. Byrnes can’t talk about the story without a boyish grin, but he also says he wouldn’t pull that kind of stunt now. “I’m trying to roll the boulder towards, like, respectability,” he says. To his credit, he beat every major news outlet to the story on Ramaswamy’s ad, which Republicans ultimately pulled from the air last week. Byrnes walked me through how he got the story: He had first heard rumblings that an ad featuring Acton’s estranged mom was in the works from an anonymous source. He also had an inkling Acton’s campaign knew something was coming: In what seemed like a preemptive move, Acton began airing an ad featuring her younger brother talking about how Acton protected him from abuse, hunger, and neglect when they were children. Ramaswamy’s concept wasn’t entirely new. Right-wing activists had previously used Arthur against her estranged daughter. During the onset of the Covid pandemic, Acton—then director of the Ohio Department of Health—drew conservative backlash when churches were ordered closed while abortion clinics remained open. In response, the anti-abortion organization Operation Rescue recruited Arthur to attack her daughter in a 2020 online interview. “She’s done this before. We know she’s capable of it,” Byrnes remembers thinking of Acton’s mom. Additionally, he felt, “Ramaswamy’s dumb enough to do it and Acton’s camp seems prepared.” A week after posting his first story on the subject, Byrnes got a text from a Republican buddy in Cleveland. It was a screen-recording of the yet-to-be-aired ad, which was being surveyed via text among select GOP voters in Ohio. At that point, it wasn’t clear who actually created the television spot; since it hadn’t yet appeared on television, the FCC-required “paid for” disclosure was missing. Ramaswamy claimed ownership the next day. “Republicans talk to me because I’m not a shill. I’m not taking dark money. I’m not taking money from the DNC.” It’s not the first time Byrnes has scooped the mainstream media. He was also first to report that a married NFL coach received a lap dance in public; that Ohio State University planned (and subsequently cancelled) a moment of silence for Charlie Kirk during a football game; that Ohio billionaire Les Wexner, founder of the retail empire L Brands and former associate of Jeffrey Epstein, was dodging subpoenas; and that Ramaswamy had acquired a new private jet, disclosing the candidate’s flight data. Byrnes received the tip about the private jet from his “old weed dealer” in Columbus, he says. But he has sources all over the state—and the political spectrum. “Republicans talk to me because I’m not a shill. I’m not taking dark money. I’m not taking money from the DNC,” he says, pointing out times he’s been critical of Democrats, including Acton and former Sen. Sherrod Brown, who is running against Husted. At the same time, Byrnes doesn’t describe himself as a journalist. Rather, he considers himself a “concerned citizen who sometimes engages in journalism.” He says his goal is to put a spotlight on lawmakers who don’t get enough scrutiny, especially as there are fewer local journalists around to cover the politicians whose decisions negatively affect the people Byrnes cares about. “It’s just basically like putting psychic damage on these people. If they feel a modicum of the psychic damage that these guys have put on my friends—my transgender friends, my working-class friends—then mission accomplished.” Hence the name of his blog, the Rooster. “It’s a dumb barnyard animal that crows at all hours of the day, but will defend its turf to the death,” he said. Byrnes’ recent brush with the law is a pretty good example of his willingness to ruffle feathers. Earlier this year, state Senator Jerry Cirino was running for the position of state senate president. Byrnes had previously written negative coverage of Cirino, a conservative Republican, over his stances on DEI and “liberal bias” in Ohio’s public universities. When Cirino dropped out of the race for senate president, Byrnes sent Cirino a couple of texts mocking his defeat. Byrnes called Cirino “Young Mussolini” and sent an imaginative sketch of Shrek holding his genitals. Cirino reported the messages to the police, describing the image as “harassment” and “pornographic in nature.” In June, Byrnes was arrested over the incident while he was reporting at the Ohio statehouse. He spent nearly 24 hours in jail and subsequently pleaded not guilty to the first-degree misdemeanor of telecommunications harassment. Byrnes argued the messages were protected political speech against a public figure, though a jury found him guilty of the misdemeanor in early October. (He is appealing the decision.) “Was it immature? Yes. Was it juvenile? Yes. Was it perverted? Probably,” he told me. “Whatever adjective you want to put on there, pejoratively, I’ll accept. But at the end of the day, it was political speech aimed at the fourth-most-powerful politician in the state.” Personal antics aside, Byrnes’ latest revelation—the advertisement featuring Acton’s mother—could be part of the reason Ramaswamy doesn’t become the most powerful politician in the state.