Amy Acton comes from struggle. For someone running to be Ohio’s first Democratic governor in 15 years, her hardscrabble background may be unusual, but it’s not unheard of for residents of a state still trying to recover from the ravages of deindustrialization. She was a kid when Youngstown’s steel industry shuttered in the 1970s, leaving the city depleted and its landscape dotted with abandoned steel mills and brownfields. The loss of work—and purpose—for the adults made for some rough childhoods. Acton says she moved 18 times before age 12; she recalls sleeping in a tent through one winter. Today, she is frank about the sexual abuse, hunger, and neglect she faced. She often talks about what it was like when people looked away from her, a “dirty and smelly” child.
It’s no coincidence that, over the decades since deindustrialization, the formerly purple state has become increasingly crimson, thanks in large part to partisan gerrymandering. (For 28 of the past 35 years, Republicans have simultaneously held the Ohio governor’s office and both chambers of the Statehouse.) Since the 1990s, the state’s once-lauded public schools have steadily declined; $1 billion per year in public school funding now goes to private school vouchers. Nearly a dozen rural Ohio hospitals are at risk of service reductions or closure due to Medicaid cuts in President Donald Trump’s trademark tax bill. And then there’s the corruption: Republican Larry Householder, former speaker of Ohio’s House of Representatives, is serving a 20-year prison sentence for his part in a $60 million racketeering scheme. In Ohio, economic circumstances may make life hard, but politicians often make things worse.
Acton has focused her campaign on that corruption and on the dire conditions of Ohio’s economy and public infrastructure—and the fact that Republicans have been running the state as it has fallen apart. Promising to “take on the corruption that’s raising our costs” and “give power back to the people,” her platform centers on affordability: She’s proposed a tax cut for working families, and lowering energy and medical costs. As her campaign website states, restoring public education is a top priority.
Acton’s background is squarely in Ohio. She paid her own way through Youngstown State, went to an Ohio med school, and taught public health at Ohio State. She is also a relative political novice: Her experience in public office begins and ends with her 16-month stint as the director of Ohio’s Department of Health in 2019 and 2020. Perhaps because of this, she is disarmingly unguarded for a public figure, with an approachable manner and a knack for establishing quick connections with strangers.
Her opponent, the stiff, ruthlessly ambitious former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, could hardly offer a greater contrast. An alum of Harvard and Yale, Ramaswamy is recognized primarily for his achievements outside the state. He is a Cincinnati-born hedge-fund billionaire who also founded a pharmaceutical startup that netted millions by exploiting the buzz around an Alzheimer’s drug that ultimately failed clinical trials. Later, he was tapped to co-lead the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, with Elon Musk, but around the time of Trump’s inauguration, he left to pursue the Ohio governorship.
“Ramaswamy is particularly inept and he’s particularly terrible,” said Nan Whaley, who ran as the state’s Democratic gubernatorial nominee four years ago. He is, moreover, untested as an Ohio candidate, having waltzed to his party’s nomination thanks to Trump’s backing. “I think that’s a statement on where the Republican Party is today, right?” Whaley said.
Ramaswamy may be the perfect foil for the personable Acton: As she’s crisscrossed the state in her Ohio- and union-made Jeep, she’s taken the opportunity to remind her audiences that Ramaswamy travels via private jet. Comparatively, in a state where 12.7 percent of residents live in poverty, her own backstory of hardship may resonate more. Mix in many Ohioans’ parasocial relationship with her since her wildly public-facing role at the beginning of the pandemic, and she has a real shot at breaking Democrats’ long drought in the state.
Because her past exposure to the public was limited to Covid response and prevention, Acton has the advantage of being a bit of a blank slate: likable, empathetic, and not a “typical politician.”
Acton aims to build a coalition around the basic policies she often estimates “95 percent of Ohioans talk about … that no one would disagree on.” Because her past exposure to the public was limited to Covid response and prevention, Acton has the advantage of being a bit of a blank slate: likable, empathetic, and not a “typical politician.” But as Election Day approaches, she’s become more prone to the calculations and tough, often controversial calls that are symptomatic of high-stakes campaigning—at times to the dismay of some of her biggest supporters.
While conditions nationally are now as fraught as Ohio’s have been for generations, Acton’s path—and voters’ response—may have long-standing implications for the Democratic Party. Indeed, depending on the outcome, her campaign may offer a blueprint for how Democrats can keep their coalitions together while running in competitive races, especially in the Midwest.
Acton’s political trajectory started during the anxious early period of the pandemic. Most Ohioans got to know her during her time advising Republican Governor Mike DeWine from 2019 to 2020. Under Acton’s guidance, on March 12, 2020, DeWine was the first governor in the country to order state schools to close in hopes of curbing the virus’s spread. Proactive communicators, DeWine and Acton hosted daily afternoon press conferences. “Wine With DeWine” or “Snackin’ With Acton” became an early-lockdown ritual. Someone started a Facebook fan club for Acton. There were bobblehead dolls.
Inevitably, Acton also faced backlash and threats of violence from those angry about lockdown. Protesters—some carrying long guns, and including at least one member of the Proud Boys—lurked outside her home. In June 2020, Acton resigned after refusing to sign public health orders (pushed by Householder) to permit outdoor fairs when businesses were just reopening and hospitals were stabilizing, but she continued advising DeWine.
The Ramaswamy campaign used Acton’s public health role as ammunition: In just six weeks, while Acton spent $100,000 on ads, Ramaswamy swamped Ohio with $9 million in ads. His political action committee, V-PAC, spent or reserved $82.3 million for ads that largely attack Acton, lambasting her leadership during the pandemic, alleging she would be soft on crime, and misconstruing a 1994 medical disclosure form in which, one ad claimed, she “admitted to emotional or mental illness, drug addiction, or an alcohol problem”—actually a reference to therapy for her childhood abuse. Acton’s campaign, meanwhile, has pounced on various missteps: In 2024, Ramaswamy called Medicare and Medicaid a mistake, “particularly Medicaid.” (The latter helps cover health care for about a quarter of the state’s population.) That same year, Ramaswamy moved his financial services company from Columbus to Texas. In a March Columbus Dispatch column, Ramaswamy suggested consolidating public universities to “right-size” Ohio’s education system—a position received poorly in a state with a lot of pride in its public universities.
Indeed, Ramaswamy sometimes sounds almost contemptuous of his would-be constituents. In July, he got booed offstage at a Young Americans for Liberty National Convention at Xavier University in his hometown, after claiming the real divide in America is not based on party, but between people who want to win and people who want to whine. As boos and jeers intensified, Ramaswamy hit back that, no matter what happens, “people in my generation have already made it. We’re gonna be fine. It’s gonna be your generation … that pays the price.” The room exploded in cursing and calls to “get the fuck outta here.”
Meanwhile, Acton has held a slim lead in most of the summer’s polls, even as Ramaswamy’s spending blitz increased. At the end of July, Steve Bannon commented, “Vivek is a terrible candidate to have at the top of the ticket,” and said Ramaswamy was dragging down Republican Senator Jon Husted, who is running for reelection against Democrat (and former Senator) Sherrod Brown.
It’s tempting to surmise that Acton’s campaign is succeeding primarily because Ramaswamy is such a poor candidate, but that’s only part of the story. The economic desperation in Ohio is real and long-standing, and her empathetic approach is tapping into people’s desperation to be heard.
Acton practically doubles as an oral historian on campaign stops, gathering stories from across Ohio, in a circuit of roundtable listening sessions with voters describing their experiences during the Covid lockdown. Or about their struggle to pay bills. Or about babies born roadside due to rural hospitals’ collapse.
Acton listened again in downtown Dayton at 6888 Kitchen Incubator, a women-, minority-, and veteran-led hub for underrepresented food entrepreneurs housed in the over century-old Dayton Arcade. Dabriah Rice, 6888’s executive director, and Jamaica White, chief operating officer, gave Acton and her staff a tour and then gathered over bounteous food samples. The conversation turned to finances. “It seems like there’s no catching up, regardless of how hard you try,” said Gia Daugherty Houston, 6888’s catering manager.
“That stress goes somewhere,” Acton said to a round of mm-hmms of assent. She described hearing from women business owners who previously helped their employees using the Affordable Care Act, but the subsidies expired. Acton also mentioned that her husband, Eric Acton, a teacher, “has to keep working while I’m running for governor, so we have health insurance.” Acton told the entrepreneurs that she wants to replicate an Illinois medical debt–reduction program, where a $10 million investment resulted in $1.1 billion in forgiven medical debt.
As the general election began to heat up in July, Acton began to stake out more moderate positions on issues involving law enforcement and trans rights, wading into more controversial policies that could win over centrists and Republicans. It’s not new for Democrats from red regions to break with the party—Dems from rural areas often swing conservative on gun rights; Midwestern officials may protect fossil fuel companies in the name of jobs. Most Ohioans only know Acton’s name because of her close work with a Republican administration. She tells voters, “I don’t care what party you are.”
In August, Acton broke with many in her own party to support a Republican-proposed amendment that would enshrine the state’s existing voter ID law in Ohio’s constitution. Later that month, after receiving the Ohio Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association endorsement, Acton was asked about ICE and said, “We always work with the federal law enforcement.” She said she would not prevent local law enforcement from assisting with immigration raids. Many headlines missed her caveat that federal agents would have to follow the law. But the campaign promise falls flat at a time when Springfield’s Haitian population and the city itself are under siege by ICE.
Then there was a response she gave to the Toledo Blade in July about trans athletes’ participation in youth sports. Acton said, “I do not support boys playing in girls’ sports. This is already settled law in Ohio, and as governor I will enforce and uphold the law.”
To LGTBQ+ advocates, hearing Acton describe trans girls as “boys” sounded like diminishing a vulnerable group for political ends. The situation worsened when Acton’s campaign invited state LGTBQ+ leaders to a “conversation”—presumably to patch things up—but Acton wasn’t in the online meeting. Trans leaders, including Ohio House candidate Arienne Childrey, were denied entry, and the meeting rapidly devolved into, as one participant described it, “a shit show.” Since the interview, Acton’s score on LGTBQ+ rights from The Buckeye Flame, a nonprofit newsroom focused on LGTBQ+ issues in the state, has gone from “A” to “pending.” (Ramaswamy, who asserts biological sex and gender are fixed and opposes gender-affirming care, received an “F” from The Buckeye Flame.)
When I asked Acton about her Blade comment, she framed the uproar as an attempt to use settled law to distract and divide, and a “sad part of political season.” But the controversy has rankled many in the queer community, and disappointed many of those for whom Acton’s pledge to “see” all of her constituents for who they are had resonated. Lee Tepper, board chair of Kaleidoscope Youth Center, Ohio’s oldest and largest youth center serving queer young people, is pragmatic. “We are not in a system that is going to offer us a choice that’s gonna feel good in every dimension. We’re going to have to sacrifice.” I could hear the restrained sigh in Tepper’s voice when they added, “But that doesn’t mean we have to sacrifice people, right?”
Whaley, now president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Southwest Ohio, sees Acton’s comments as a reflection of the state. (Seventy percent of Ohioans oppose transgender girls playing on female sports teams.) “We have a lot of work to do to change hearts and minds,” Whaley told me.
“She’s way, way better on trans issues than Vivek Ramaswamy,” Whaley added. It’s hard to argue with her there.
At the same time, her campaign has also attracted national attention for unsettling reasons. Over Labor Day weekend, an armed man, Patrick Havas, attempted to rush Acton at the Canfield County Fair, injuring multiple spectators before being apprehended by the Ohio State Highway Patrol. Acton was not hurt and, in fact, treated some of those who had been pushed down. Havas is the brother of Andrew Havas, a state lobbyist who resigned from Husted’s campaign after an NBC report detailed his 2009 conviction for sexual misconduct with a minor. Ramaswamy’s campaign issued a statement after the assault attempt, condemning political violence, just as Ohio’s Republican Party amplified a conspiracy theory, spread by far-Right provocateur Laura Loomer, that the incident was exaggerated or fake.
In a nation polarized by culture wars, such controversies remain commonplace. Yet Jessica Taylor, Senate and governors editor of The Cook Political Report, recently cited Acton’s campaign as one that is breaking with her party’s expected norms. “It goes back to the idea that Democrats just need to come across as normal and not woke,” Taylor told The New York Times.
What’s “normal” is, of course, up for debate. In Ohio, for a long time, it has meant struggle, unresponsive leadership, and corruption. Acton has pulled ahead by asserting that she can fix what ails it. “I’ve been on the ground for about two and a half years now,” she told me. “I go places Dems have not been in a long time.”
Cynics may see Acton’s recent maneuvers as mere political theater. Some supporters now worry she is Republican-lite. But an optimistic progressive Democrat might consider Acton the state’s best shot for something different, finally.
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