Do we like Amy Acton?
Our score: 7 out of 10. A decent record and years of public service, marked down for her trans-athletes stance and a tougher-than-expected record on abortion as health director.
Acton is a Youngstown kid who says she grew up in poverty and in the foster care system, which she credits for her drive into public service. She became a public health doctor and, as Ohio's health director, a familiar face of the early COVID response. She resigned in 2020, saying “pressure began to come on the governor and me”.
The nastiest stoush of the campaign was personal. Ramaswamy's team confirmed it was responsible for an ad in which Acton's estranged mother called her a liar and said her story of growing up in a tent was untrue. Acton answered “No. I've never lied,” and ABC 6 reported that court records back up much of what she has said about her childhood. That is the abuse-by-ad side of it; PolitiFact also found a separate pro-Ramaswamy PAC ad misleading about her medical record.
The rest of her record is more mixed than her fans might expect. As health director under a Republican governor, she defended Ohio's 2019 heartbeat abortion ban in court, according to The Intercept, and reproductive rights advocates said she went beyond what state law required. She had said she would follow state law. On the campaign trail she has said she supports Medicaid work requirements and a voter ID amendment, which is centrist territory rather than anything nasty.
She's not squeaky clean on the stump either: PolitiFact rated her ad claim that Ramaswamy “pushed an Alzheimer's drug that he knew didn't work” as mostly false. That's the only one of her own claims on its scorecard so far, so it's a thin sample. We found no dodgy business partners or conspiracy-theory slide to weigh against her.
On the good side, the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation gave her a Profile in Courage COVID Courage award in 2021, saying she “boldly proposed an aggressive shelter-in-place order” to slow the virus. She pitches herself as someone who will work with anyone who puts Ohioans first, and says she wants to end the “hot-button, culture war issues”.
So where do we land? Acton is a decent, steady operator on the right side of most things we care about, and her win ends two decades of Democratic drought in the governor's office. Her trans-athlete answer is the sticking point: where you land depends on whether you read it as a pragmatic pledge to follow the law or as throwing trans kids under the bus. Equality Ohio's door is still open, and what she does in office will settle it.