Democrat Amy Acton has won Ohio’s governor’s race, breaking Republicans’ hold on the office and giving her a chance to serve as a powerful check on a state government long controlled by the GOP.
Acton’s victory over Vivek Ramaswamy makes her the state’s first woman to be elected governor and sets up something Ohioans have rarely experienced: a rival party inside state government.
“This is a win for all of us,” Acton said at a Columbus celebration with the Ohio Democratic Party. “It’s for all the scrappy kids who have been underestimated, overlooked or counted out.”
The governor’s office oversees state agencies that affect millions of people. Those agencies oversee prisons, highway maintenance and construction, and Medicaid, the healthcare program for poor Ohioans that covers roughly one-quarter of the state’s population. Acton takes office in January, replacing Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, who couldn’t seek reelection because of term limits.
As of 10:45 p.m., the Associated Press had declared Acton the winner based on its analysis of outstanding votes that show there are not enough Republican votes to alter the outcome. With 85% of votes counted, Acton led Ramaswamy with 50.7% of the vote to 46%.
Tuesday’s results mirrored polling, which mostly showed Acton ahead in recent weeks as the election neared. Besides defying Ohio’s recent history of electing Republicans, Acton also survived a historic number of attack ads.
Ramaswamy, who said he left a voicemail for Acton congratulating her, described Tuesday’s loss as a “tough night for us here in Ohio.”
“It was a tough race. It was a bitter race, at times, in both directions,” he said.
He added that he has “some serious concerns about the future direction of our country” and that “sometimes these things happen for a reason.”
“God has a plan, and we are his instrument,” he said.
Between the Ramaswamy campaign’s direct spending and money dumped into the race by outside groups backing him, Acton campaigned against more than $200 million in advertising, by far a state record, according to AdImpact as reported by NBC4 in Columbus. Acton’s side spent at least $44 million, according to AdImpact.
Negative advertising was a major point of attention at the end of the race, after Ramaswamy’s campaign produced a widely criticized ad that featured Acton’s estranged mother.
The last Democrat elected governor was Ted Strickland, who served four years after he won the office in 2006.
But Acton’s political breakthrough likely will test what a divided government can accomplish. Acton campaigned on, among other issues, targeted tax relief and increased school funding. To deliver on those promises, she will have to negotiate with a potentially hostile legislature, which will remain in Republican hands following Tuesday’s election.
Acton likely to face Republican pushback
An immediate risk Acton faces is steps by the legislature to limit her power before she takes office, something some Ohio leaders have discussed privately. Republicans in North Carolina and Wisconsin spoiled recent Democratic victories in those states by weakening the legal authority of the governor before Democrats took office.
Beyond that, legislative approval is needed for any law changes, including those affecting taxation, or to spend money. A governor’s main way to enact policy changes is through a state budget bill. But lawmakers must agree to introduce and hear the bill to begin with.
In turn, Acton can serve as a major check on the legislature through her ability to veto legislation, including vetoing individual line items in spending bills. Her exact power will depend on the results of state legislative races, though.
Acton’s victory could preface another fight over Republican power in Ohio. During her campaign, she endorsed a looming effort to try once again to overhaul redistricting, the contentious process of drawing political boundaries currently controlled by the GOP. Depending on efforts to collect voter signatures, the measure could end up on the ballot as soon as November 2027. Voters rejected a similar measure in November 2024 by 8 percentage points.
A new day for Democratic Party and policy influencers
Acton’s victory seemed almost unthinkable when she informally launched her campaign in January 2025, two months after President Donald Trump won the state by 11 points and longtime Democrat Sherrod Brown got voted out of the U.S. Senate.
In the years leading to that election, the Ohio Democratic Party had struggled to hold Democrats and independents in the Trump era, which has turned the once-bellwether state into a reliably red state.
But Acton’s victory will help revive the party’s fortunes overnight. Democratic policymakers, activists and lobbyists will now have new job opportunities and influence in politics and state government after years of being shut out of the Statehouse.
This could help the party with long-term political organizing efforts that could extend to other races.
Acton also could help shape state policy by appointing allies to state boards and commissions. For example, Acton has pledged to appoint commissioners “who put ratepayers first” to the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, which has faced criticism over the years for being too friendly to utility companies. The agency helps regulate public utilities, including deciding whether to approve their requests to raise rates or build new infrastructure.
From bureaucrat to TV star
Acton, a medical doctor, was a state bureaucrat in February 2020, when Ohio saw its first two cases of an obscure respiratory virus. Two Miami University students reported flulike symptoms after returning from a trip to China.
Wearing a lab coat, Acton held press conferences in her role as DeWine’s Department of Health director.
“We stand ready. Ohio is prepared. We drill for this,” Acton said.
Readers might remember what happened next.
Within weeks, Acton became one of the best-known people in Ohio. Following Acton and other health officials’ advice, DeWine was one of the first governors to issue lockdown orders in response to the pandemic. He closed schools, bars and restaurants within a few dizzying days in March 2020. The sequence drove viewership to DeWine’s daily pandemic briefings, which were streamed online through state government television.
The intense public interest made Acton famous. It also brought sharp criticism – and something darker, too. Acton resigned her job in June 2020, not long after armed protesters showed up at her Columbus-area home. She largely stayed out of the public eye after that. She considered running for office in 2022 but ultimately decided against it.
Democratic support slow to form behind Acton
Acton spent the next few years laying the groundwork for what became her eventual entry into state Democratic politics. After passing on the 2022 U.S. Senate race, she began campaigning for governor in 2025.
Acton was the first Democratic candidate to enter any statewide race. Her campaign launch got some press attention due to her pandemic-era ties. But she didn’t gain much immediate traction even within her own party.
Some Democrats questioned Acton’s ability to win and viewed her tenure as health director as a political liability.
State labor leaders remained on the sidelines because they wanted to see if Brown, a longtime labor supporter, would try to reboot his political career with a run for governor. Brown ended up running for Senate instead. Even so, some factions in the state party remained dissatisfied with Acton and were waiting on a decision from another potential challenger, longtime Democrat Tim Ryan, who considered running for Senate but opted not to.
This left the field clear for Acton, who won the May primary election uncontested.
Before this year’s election, Acton had repeatedly said she hadn’t run for anything since she was elected class president of Liberty High School near Youngstown.
On Tuesday, she won her second election, making history in the process.
Ramaswamy’s ad featuring Acton’s mother could haunt his future political ambition
Just two weeks ago, state and national Republicans were confident they would hold the governor’s race even as Acton was clinging to a narrow lead in many public polls.
Republicans felt confident those public polls – plus internal polls that showed a close or even Republican-leaning race – would once again underestimate Republican support and ultimately lead to a GOP victory on Election Day.
But then a political ad leaked starring Acton’s estranged mother, Donna Arthur.
Ramaswamy’s campaign tracked down Arthur in Pennsylvania and filmed her calling her daughter a liar who wasn’t fit to be governor. The campaign believed that, at face value, the mother’s testimony would be a devastating blow to Acton’s campaign.
But the backstory is ugly. Acton has said she was 12 years old when she last saw her mother. The two encountered each other at a court hearing for her then-stepfather, Cledith Arthur, who had been charged with raping Acton. Cledith Arthur evaded prosecution by fleeing the state, and Acton’s mother went with him.
Ramaswamy apparently was debating whether to make the ad public. But then a left wing blogger in Columbus leaked the ad. The Republican then not only announced the ad was his but also said he’d spend $4 million to push it out to voters.
The ad drew swift condemnation from Democrats and drove a wedge among state Republicans. DeWine, who had endorsed Ramaswamy, called on him to take down the ad, and much of the Republican ticket, including Sen. Jon Husted, distanced themselves from it. The ad made Ohio’s governor’s race the top national story for more than a week, just two weeks from Election Day.
Another faction of Republicans more closely aligned with Trump – Vice President JD Vance and Sen. Bernie Moreno – defended the ad as tough campaigning.
But the ad appears to have backfired. Both Republican and Democratic private polling showed its release coincided with a swing of support toward Acton – with a small percentage of voters saying it led them to change their minds. Ramaswamy first refused to back down, positioning himself as strong and unyielding in the face of liberal criticism. He then pulled the ad from the TV airwaves the week before Election Day.
The upshot – Republicans ended up spending some of the crucial final days of the campaign in a siege mentality, describing the need to come together to win the election. It’s not clear that the ad cost him the race, but it doesn’t seem to have helped. And it will give Republicans plenty of fodder if they’re looking for someone to blame.
Ramaswamy, 41, is among the country’s best-known Republicans and has ambitions of running for president, as evidenced by his unsuccessful run in 2024. Long-term, Ramaswamy’s loss will be a major blemish on his political career. But there are plenty of comeback stories in American politics.
This article originally appeared at signalohio.org.
