COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Dr. Amy Acton delivered a stunning victory in the race for Ohio governor on Tuesday, overcoming more than $100 million spent against her to become the first Democrat to win the seat in 20 years and the first woman ever elected to the state’s top post.
The public health physician and former COVID-19-era state health director defeated Trump-backed Republican Vivek Ramaswamy, a biotech billionaire and 2024 presidential candidate.
She campaigned relentlessly on affordability and better access to healthcare, appealing to working- and middle-class voters by emphasizing her hardscrabble roots as an Ohio native who spent part of her childhood homeless and, for one winter, living out of a tent.
The contest was roiled by Ramaswamy’s decision in the final month to air an attack ad featuring Acton’s estranged mother saying she had lied about her upbringing and telling Ohioans not to vote for her. The spot sparked national bipartisan backlash on grounds that Acton’s mother had lost custody of her children decades ago after her husband, their stepfather, was indicted for raping Acton as a child.
Acton’s victory was a huge win for a party that had slipped out of power in the former swing state, one that Democrats had all but written off as voters shifted toward Republicans during the Trump era.
Acton, 60, succeeds GOP Gov. Mike DeWine, whom she served alongside during the early months of the pandemic. But she enters office without elective experience, a stark contrast with her 79-year-old former boss, who is term-limited and likely retiring from elective politics after 50 years.
Acton’s victory came despite massive spending by Ramaswamy and his Republican allies. Elon Musk, for example, injected at least $5 million into a Ramaswamy-aligned political action committee.
She also won even after President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance, an Ohio native, made repeated trips to the state in the campaign’s final weeks to rally for Ramaswamy and Republican Sen. Jon Husted, who was running to retain Vance’s former seat.
Acton’s campaign was able to capitalize on Ramaswamy’s wealth to paint him as out of touch with average voters whose pocketbooks have been hit by Trump’s tariffs, the rising cost of living, and soaring fuel prices brought on by the war in Iran.
Ohio Republicans, energized by Ramaswamy’s high profile, wealth and proximity to Trump, unified around his candidacy early on. His path was facilitated by DeWine, who appointed his lieutenant governor, Husted, then the leading Republican contender for governor, to the Senate. The party’s decision to endorse a newcomer to Ohio politics left a number of veteran Republican politicians — including the attorney general and state treasurer — scrambling to adjust their own plans. And it wasn’t long before the move prompted some anxiety within the party.
Ramaswamy’s earliest headwinds came in the Republican primary, when fierce critic Casey “The Car Guy” Putsch, a vehicle designer and YouTube provocateur, seemed to catch hold with a portion of the party’s working-class base. Putsch also directed veiled ethnic and religious attacks at Ramaswamy, who is Hindu. In the end, Putsch’s $130,000 campaign attracted nearly 18% of the Republican vote. As the general election neared, Putsch announced he planned to vote for Acton.
Acton was one of the out-of-power Ohio Democrats’ most recognizable figures, after spending months during the early days of the pandemic on statewide broadcasts alongside DeWine and Husted. Ramaswamy and his allies had tried to turn that against her, arguing that she harmed Ohio by being too aggressive in shutting down schools and businesses. The governor ultimately defended Acton, his former Cabinet member, saying the buck stopped with him — though his endorsement stood with Ramaswamy throughout the campaign, even after the ad featuring Acton’s mother.
Initially leaked online, the 60-second spot featuring Acton’s mother was quickly claimed by Ramaswamy, who defended it as a fair criticism of a pattern of deception by Acton that was being inaccurately spun by Democrats and the media as questioning whether she was abused as a child.
The ad featured Acton’s mother, Donna Arthur, calling her daughter “a liar” with a “serious problem” with being honest about her past. She urged Ohioans not to vote for Acton. But Arthur had been estranged from Acton for nearly 50 years. She lost custody of her children after her husband, the children’s stepfather, was indicted for raping Acton as a child, pleaded not guilty and then fled the state before he could be tried.
Both Vance and Trump defended Ramaswamy’s use of the ad. The president even expressed jealousy that he’d never had the opportunity to run such an attack against a political rival.
But others, including five Ohio governors and other top politicians of both parties, women’s groups and several hundred alumni of Ramaswamy’s Catholic high school in Cincinnati, denounced the ad as gutter politics and called for Ramaswamy to take it down. The campaign took it off the air about a week before the election, having spent about a quarter of the $4 million ad buy Ramaswamy had announced.
