CLEVELAND — Ohio Democratic gubernatorial nominee Amy Acton’s past is coming back to haunt her this October in more ways than one.
Last week, with days before the Nov. 3 midterm elections, Acton’s race against Republican opponent Vivek Ramaswamy was upended by an ad from her opponent. The spot included a direct-to-camera appeal from her mother, a woman with whom she has been estranged since she was 12 years old, after facing sexual abuse by her criminally convicted stepfather.
But Acton’s past as the director of the Ohio Department of Health at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic is also haunting her among Republicans, a portion of which she’ll have to win over in a state that voted for President Donald Trump by double digits.
Acton, similarly to then-Gov. Chris Cuomo (D-NY), became a mainstay in homes across Ohio during the pandemic because of daily press briefings that she conducted alongside Gov. Mike DeWine (R-OH). The performances earned Acton a 2021 John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award. Closer to home, however, championing of lockdown, masks, and in-person restrictions earned her the nicknames of “Dr. Lockdown” and “Ohio’s Fauci.”
“Amy Acton has a very thin record because she hasn’t done much public service,” Vice President JD Vance told a crowd in Cincinnati last Wednesday. “So why are we talking about COVID six years ago? Because that’s the only time that Amy Acton ever had power over your life. And you know what she did? Did she act like an adult? No. Did she stand up for kids? No. Did Amy Acton make the hard choices that we would expect of any public leader? No. She did the exact opposite. She bent the knees to the Ph.D. She bent the knees to the bureaucracy, and Amy Acton did exactly what they told her to do.”
After the rally, in an interview with the Washington Examiner, Derek White, 63, described Vance’s argument as “a fair point.”
“That’s all we have to judge,” the Cincinnati resident, who is in sales, said. “Since then, she kind of faded from the limelight, so what he brought up is that’s what we’ve got.”
Likewise, Susan Alexander, 60, another rally attendee, said Acton “was a puppet” and “was following through with the left’s agenda.”
“They closed down and took advantage of our country, and our freedoms, and our businesses, and everything that we stood for,” said Alexander, a driver from Middletown. “We are still suffering the consequences of things being closed down.”
The political problem for Acton regarding COVID has been exacerbated by her declining to debate Ramaswamy and defend her pandemic record, at least for Republicans.
“She just seems like she’s hanging on a cliff by her nails. Why won’t she debate him,” said Barbara Matthews, a 66-year-old retiree who attended the Ohio Republican Party’s bus tour launch last Friday in Strongsville.
At the next stop on the tour, Nina Smith, 74, pointed to Acton’s resignation as the Ohio Department of Health director in 2020 as another reason why Smith cannot support the Democrat. Acton stepped down after about a year-and-a-half in the position amid pressure to sign public health orders that she did not consider to be scientific .
“People died and in the nursing homes, families weren’t allowed to go,” the Delaware retiree said. “She just quit. You can’t just do that if you take on a big job.”
Another tour stop attendee, Marti Davis, 83, drew on her career as a nurse, telling the Washington Examiner, “That’s why I knew that a lot of what Acton was saying was just dead wrong.”
The success of the COVID critique of Acton for Ramaswamy will depend on turnout. Roughly 33% of Ohio’s primary electorate identify as Democrats, 31% as Republicans, and 36% as independents.
In a Fox News poll conducted last week before the Ramaswamy ad with Acton’s mother, Ramaswamy and Acton were in a margin-of-error race, with 50% supporting Acton and 48% Ramaswamy.
The poll also found that Acton had a 10-percentage-point advantage over Ramaswamy with independents and women.
For those two demographics, independents and women, Acton’s COVID record could provide her with an edge, at least according to Paula Norman. The 72 year-old St. Clairsville retiree spoke to the Washington Examiner at a meet and greet last Thursday with Ohio Democratic Senate nominee Sherrod Brown in Martins Ferry.
“We all lost something,” Norman said. “We had to stay home for a month or so, you know. But I would say, if you’re alive, then yay, let’s thank Amy, maybe that’s why we’re alive.”
Jim Rhodes, 75, who was at the Brown event as well, broke down in tears when remembering COVID and his daughter’s experience as a traveling nurse working in Arizona during the pandemic.
“She got sick and couldn’t get through it,” the Yorkville retiree said. “Folks died. Trump supporters just died.”
For some voters, however, the pandemic is in the past. Sarah Smith, a 57-year-old who attended former President Barack Obama’s rally with Acton on Saturday in Cleveland, said that Acton’s COVID record was “not a concern of mine at all.”
“From my family’s perspective, we’ve all been vaccinated,” the Cleveland manager said. “Handling COVID at the time, I’m sure it was incredibly difficult. People were going to make some mistakes.”
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Afterward, Marisa Hanson, 51, agreed that Acton’s COVID record “says a lot about her and her beliefs.”
“[She’s] just for the people, for the greater good of everyone, not just one individual or her party or anything like that,” the Cleveland retiree said. “But overall, for people in general.”