After one of the ugliest battles of the 2026 cycle, Democrat Dr. Amy Acton is projected to prevail over Republican Vivek Ramaswamy in her bid to be Ohio’s first woman elected governor, according to Decision Desk HQ.
Acton’s victory was a stunning comeback for her party in a state that has not elected a Democrat as its governor in 20 years, and where Republicans hold the top three statewide offices and have a veto-proof majority in the statehouse.
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Jessica Mackler, the president of EMILYs List, which backs Democratic women who support abortion rights early on in their campaigns, praised Acton’s “historic victory” after a campaign “rooted in the concerns of everyday Ohioans.”
“She showed that strong candidates who understand their communities and offer real solutions can compete in even the toughest races,” Mackler said in a statement.
For months, the contest between Acton, a former public health director for outgoing Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, and Ramaswamy, a pharmaceutical entrepreneur and failed GOP presidential candidate, was notably personal, with ads suggesting that Acton was a “drunk” and that Ramaswamy was a fraud consuming the Buckeye State’s commercial breaks.
Then, in the closing weeks of the race, Ramaswamy upped the ante by airing an ad featuring Acton’s estranged mother, Donna Arthur, suggesting that her daughter had lied about childhood sexual abuse and neglect. Court records confirm that Arthur lost custody of Acton and her younger brother in 1978 after her second husband, Cledith Arthur, was arrested, charged and indicted for raping then 12-year-old Acton. The Arthurs stayed together and fled the state.
The ad landed like a bomb in the race. Ohio Republicans largely denounced it but President Donald Trump praised it and Vice President JD Vance, an Ohioan, said Republican candidates needed to do whatever it took to win. DeWine, who endorsed Ramaswamy as his successor early in the race, called the ad “deeply troubling” and said it should be taken off the air. Trump likened it to “hitting pay dirt” and said other campaigns should use it as a model. Vance told Republicans upset about it to “stop whining.”
Paul Beck, a political scientist at The Ohio State University, predicted it would be a “turning point” in the race, telling The 19th that he “really felt, the first time I saw the ad, that Ramaswamy was digging his grave.” Beck also believed the ad could potentially have a negative impact on down-ballot Republican candidates in competitive races throughout the state.
Though Ohio had not elected a Democrat to lead the state for 20 years, polls had for months shown Ramaswamy, who founded Roivant Sciences and initially co-led Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, trailing Acton, who led Ohio’s public health department in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Polls out the week after the ad was released showed that using Acton’s estranged mother against her likely only hurt Ramaswamy’s chances to close the gap. Though competitive statewide races often tighten in their closing days, a subsequent New York Times/Siena University poll conducted from October 26 to November 1 instead showed that Acton’s lead had grown to 6 points from 4 points the month before, with Ramaswamy losing support and more voters saying they did not know who they would back in the gubernatorial contest.
Acton said during her final weekend of campaigning that she had received “such an incredible amount of love and support” since the ad aired, and that “many people have been coming up at the rallies, at the rope lines, sharing their stories.”
“I’ve always said that I am not the only one who has seen a thing or two in my childhood, and that’s why I do what I do,” Acton told reporters Friday.
Acton was born and raised in Youngstown, a manufacturing area in the northeast corner of the state that fell on tough economic times after the collapse of the U.S. steel industry. She often said during campaign stops there and throughout the state that growing up, you were far more likely to know what union someone belonged to than their political party. Securing local union endorsements, particularly in the skilled trades and manufacturing areas, was a key part of Acton’s campaign strategy.
Acton graduated from Youngstown’s Liberty High School with honors and was homecoming queen her senior year. She worked her way through college, then medical school at Northeast Ohio Medical University, a joint program of three public universities in the state. She completed residencies in pediatrics and preventative medicine before earning a master’s degree in public health from Ohio State.
When DeWine named Acton his public health director in 2019, she became Ohio’s first woman in the role. A year later, in the early months of the pandemic, Acton was a fixture on Ohioans’ television screens during daily briefings alongside DeWine. The updates about reported cases and virus spread were similar to those conducted on a national level by Dr. Anthony Fauci.
The name recognition that Acton earned as public health director positioned her as one of the only Democrats with the potential to win a statewide gubernatorial contest. Ohio is an intensely gerrymandered state that favors Republicans; the Democratic Party’s pipeline of talent had all but dried up, and the party itself has struggled to raise money. Acton’s campaign repeatedly noted that it was trying to win in a state where Trump prevailed in 2024 by 11 points. At times, the campaign’s tactics intended to appeal to Republican crossover voters put Acton at odds with the Democratic base.
At an election night party for Democrats at a Cincinnati-area brewery Erika El-Sawaf, 44, told The 19th that she was most excited this year to build support for her high school best friend, who was on track late Thursday to win a local judicial race. As a loyal Democrat, El-Sawaf said she supported Acton at the top of the ticket but had to “hold my nose a little bit” in order to do so. El-Sawaf’s sister is transgender, so it’s important that candidates support trans rights, she said, and in her mind, Acton fell short. “But at least maybe the bones are there” for Acton to be an effective governor, El-Sawaf said.
Acton approached her time in the public health department as a positive, saying it had created an enduring bond with voters. Ramaswamy saw it as a negative that would energize his Republican base. In one campaign ad, Ramaswamy featured a longtime GOP activist who said she was unable to visit her mother at a nursing home during the pandemic, and that she died alone as a result. However, the mother’s obituary showed that she’d died at a hospice facility in Kentucky, not Ohio, more than two months after Ohio lifted its stay-at-home order and after Acton had resigned as health director. Further, DeWine said repeatedly during the contest that the calls to shutter schools and postpone a primary election were ultimately his.
One reason that the Acton-Ramaswamy contest remained so intensely personal from beginning to end is that both candidates offered little in terms of detailed policy. Though they staked out different positions on everything from reproductive rights to data centers to healthcare access, neither candidate faced a competitive primary that compelled them to outline their policies in detail. Neither served previously as a legislator with a voting record to scrutinize. Acton tightly controlled media access at her events and declined to debate Ramaswamy in the general election. Neither answered newspaper editorial board questions about policies like improving childcare affordability that they spoke about generally during campaign stops.
Coree Hargrove was at the same Cincinnati-area watch party to support her sister, who was competing in a local judicial race. The 36-year-old educational aide in a local public school said that now that Acton has won, she hopes she can deliver on her promise to focus on affordability and deliver for working Ohioans.
“This is the first year I’ve visited a pantry more than a grocery store and that was humbling for me,” Hargrove said. “And if a single person with no kids or disability is struggling, who isn’t struggling right now?”
