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Sullivan needs to walk his ‘Choose Respect’ talk into the White House
By Rich Moniak
October was Domestic Violence Awareness Month. In a social media post on Oct. 1, Sen. Dan Sullivan wrote it’s “time to recommit ourselves to ending the cycle of violence in too many of our families and communities.” Then he acknowledged to abuse victims that "the shame around this issue is not yours to carry.”
But he ended the month by letting President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance get away with defending a despicable Republican campaign ad that delivers the opposite message.
The ad was produced for Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. Now I understand events in Ohio don’t matter much to Alaskans. And Sullivan is busy trying to convince undecided voters he deserves another term in office. But twice this month I received a campaign ad from a Wyoming-based political action committee praising his effort to build Choose Respect awareness around the country. He needs to walk his talk all the way into the White House.
Dr. Amy Acton is Ramaswamy’s Democratic opponent. In 1978, her stepfather was arrested and charged with raping her. She was 12 years old. Rather than defend himself in court, he and Acton’s mother, Donna Arthur, fled the state.
Despite the facts surrounding the case, Arthur’s abandonment of her daughter, and multiple convictions of Arthur for felony theft by deception, Ramaswamy released a video of her calling Acton a liar.
After some Republican officials demanded the ad be taken down, Vance said he was “disgusted” by their “whining.”
“Vivek Ramaswamy had the audacity to run a TV commercial which calls it out like it is, and calls Amy Acton a liar" he said while endorsing the lie of the ad itself. The truth is Arthur doesn’t know her daughter. They haven’t spoken to each other in almost 50 years.
That fact didn’t matter to Trump either. He told reporters that Arthur “felt she had an obligation” to let Ohio voters know “her daughter is a liar.”
Although many Americans already recognize that Trump is the loudest, most prolific liar in the country, that argument means the people who know him well have an obligation to explain his horrible relationship with the truth to the rest of the voting public.
Even though Sullivan isn’t that close to Trump, he still owes voters the truth. But the only time he definitively took the moral high road was right before the 2016 election.
In the leaked Hollywood Access recording from 2005, Trump can be heard crudely bragging that his celebrity status lets him kiss and grope women without their consent. Sullivan didn’t buy Trump’s excuse it was just locker room talk. And he wasn’t impressed by his apology. Instead, he called the behavior “reprehensible” and withdrew his endorsement.
Since then, we’ve learned a lot more about Trump’s sexually abusive past. He bragged about being able to walk into the Miss American pageant dressing room unannounced and see contestants naked. Several underage teens accused him of doing the same thing at Miss Teen USA pageants. More recently, Trump was found liable for sexually abusing a journalist.
It’s also well documented that Trump had a close friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. In a 2002 story published by New York Magazine, Trump said they’d known each other for 15 years and noted Epstein “likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.” Several months later, he gave Epstein a sexually suggestive letter drawing for his 50th birthday.
Of course, Trump denies everything. But his credibility has been rendered worthless by his long ledger of shameless lies.
For Sullivan to give him the last word on Ramaswamy’s ad will undermine his commitment to the Choose Respect initiative he championed. And it will hurt the cause itself by implying respect for victims can be waived for partisan political purposes.
As a Marine officer who has seen the effect of war’s trauma on soldiers, Sullivan should understand that the ghosts of rape and parental abandonment are never fully vanquished. Considering where Acton is now, it’s pretty clear she found the strength to keep them from defining her life. Her story is a celebration of the human spirit’s will to rise above victimhood and go beyond settling for survival in the shadows.
And if Sullivan can’t acknowledge that, then the shame for the abuse of Acton’s truth by Ramasamy, Vance and Trump will belong to him too.
• Rich Moniak is a Juneau resident and retired civil engineer with more than 25 years of experience working in the public sector.
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