Ramaswamy attacks Acton’s pandemic record in Ohio governor race

Vivek Ramaswamy has turned Ohio’s governor’s race into a direct reckoning over the state’s pandemic response, making Amy Acton’s 2020 orders a centerpiece of his campaign against the Democrat seeking to break a 20-year drought for her party in the governor’s office.

Ramaswamy spent much of the race attacking the decisions Acton made as Ohio’s public health director at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Those orders, issued at the urging of Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, closed schools, shuttered businesses, restricted sporting events and suspended voting in the 2020 primary. Ramaswamy has accused Acton of spreading “COVID ideology,” while Acton’s campaign said she was proud of working with DeWine to save lives and keep Ohioans safe.

The issue has reemerged as one of the dominant themes of 2026 because it fits the political terrain in Ohio, where many Republican voters still blame pandemic restrictions for the disruption and anger that followed. That gives Ramaswamy a line of attack that reaches beyond policy disagreement and into the broader backlash against public health authority, state mandates and the political establishment that managed the crisis.

Ramaswamy’s path to the nomination was clear long before Election Day. On May 9, 2025, the Ohio Republican Party’s state central committee endorsed him by a 60-3 vote, and on January 7, 2026, DeWine added his own endorsement. Ramaswamy then chose Ohio Senate President Rob McColley as his running mate, a move that tied his ticket more closely to the state’s Republican governing class even as he campaigned as an outsider.

Acton, meanwhile, selected former Ohio Democratic Party Chair David Pepper as her lieutenant governor running mate and is trying to become the first Democrat in 20 years to win the governor’s office. Ramaswamy defeated his only primary challenger, businessman and YouTuber Casey Putsch, in the May 5 Republican primary, clearing the way for a general election that will test whether his anti-lockdown message reflects a durable realignment among Ohio Republicans or a candidate-specific brand that is harder to convert into a governing coalition.