Burgers, Boycotts and the Ad That Divided an Ohio Community

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When a popular restaurant agreed to serve as a campaign stop for G.O.P. candidates ahead of Election Day, longtime customers turned against it and Medina, Ohio, was left reeling.

Burgers, Boycotts and the Ad That Divided an Ohio Community

When a popular restaurant agreed to serve as a campaign stop for G.O.P. candidates ahead of Election Day, longtime customers turned against it and Medina, Ohio, was left reeling.

Patty and Jon Stahl, the owners of P.J. Marley’s, in Medina, Ohio on Tuesday. The couple insisted that holding an event for the Republican ticket was not about taking a side.Credit...Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times

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· 9:31 min

Nov. 13, 2026

The first time someone called P.J. Marley’s in protest, a 16-year-old employee picked up.

From the host stand of the beloved burger joint, he could see the tranquil town square of Medina, Ohio, with its gazebo, twinkle lights and flapping American flags. But on the phone, the caller was screaming.

“They said something,” the teen told his manager afterward, “about pedophiles?”

He could not remember everything the caller said, but he remembered that word, the one that so many people would use to insult the restaurant in the coming weeks.

“Never dining there, vile pedophile supporters,” a woman from a nearby county wrote on Facebook.

“Gross that they chose to give pedophile protectors a platform,” a local woman posted.

The onslaught began in late October, when the Ohio Republican Party announced that a group of candidates who were traveling the state in a big red bus would stop at P.J. Marley’s on the Saturday before the election. One of them, Vivek Ramaswamy, who was running for governor, had just released an ad in which the estranged mother of his Democratic opponent, Amy Acton, called her a liar.

Left unsaid was that when Ms. Acton was 12, her stepfather was charged with raping her, and her mother took the stepfather’s side.

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