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. 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.
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