The long shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic creeps into the race for Ohio governor

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Dr. Amy Acton, a Democrat running unopposed in her party’s primary for Ohio governor, faces some steep challenges in the coming general election.

She is trying to be the first Democrat in 20 years to win the office in a state that has become dominated by Republicans. Her presumed opponent, Republican Vivek Ramaswamy, has national name recognition and a personal fortune that he is plowing into his campaign.

But Acton’s most formidable obstacle may be a ghost from her recent past: the COVID-19 pandemic.

Acton, a physician, was Ohio’s public health director when the coronavirus hit the United States in early 2020, causing a wave of deaths, anxiety and social disruption. As the government took aggressive action to combat it, Acton became a household name throughout Ohio.

Six years later, the orders Acton signed at the urging of Republican Gov. Mike DeWine to battle the virus — closing schools, shuttering businesses, restricting sporting events and suspending voting in the 2020 primary — are drawing fresh attention as she runs for the state’s top office and have become a central line of criticism from Republicans.

During campaign rallies, Ramaswamy has accused Acton of spreading dangerous “COVID ideology.” Her campaign said it does not think voters will buy it.

“Dr. Acton is proud of the work she did alongside Governor DeWine to put public health over politics, save lives and keep Ohioans safe,” her campaign spokesperson, Addie Bullock, said in a statement. “It is unfortunate that Vivek Ramaswamy wants to play politics on this issue.”

Choosing ‘liberty’ or ‘lockdowns’

Wearing a white medical coat, Acton was a fixture at daily COVID-19 briefings with DeWine that were highly anticipated events watched in households across the state. Day after day, she calmly explained the virus’ trajectory, the grim march of hospitalizations and deaths, and reassuringly provided tips on how Ohioans should handle themselves.

“Ohio, don the mask, don your cape,” Acton said at the time, asking ordinary people to act like superheroes.

In Ohio and elsewhere, the social trauma from the pandemic has yet to fully heal. It has changed how millions of people in the United States view vaccines, how deeply government should interfere in daily life and even whether people can trust government health officers.

The below-the-surface skepticism, which continues even as concerns over contracting the virus have faded, has emerged as an unusual storyline in the race for governor.

Ramaswamy, the front-running Republican, is airing ads capitalizing on lingering anger over the election order that Acton issued for DeWine. At Republican events around the state, mention of Acton’s name elicits loud boos.

“Are we choosing freedom or are we choosing Fauci?” asked Zac Haines, a Republican campaigning for the state Senate, in a reference to former national infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci as the candidate warmed up a recent Ramaswamy fundraising crowd. “Are we choosing liberty or are we choosing lockdowns?”

A hero to some, a villain to others

At Democratic events, Acton carries the air of the cult hero who, back in 2020, inspired a Dr. Amy Acton Fan Club with its own yard signs, a bobblehead doll and a proposal to honor her with a state holiday.

Campaigning this year, she seems to tread cautiously when discussing her time as Ohio’s health chief, sometimes avoiding use of the words COVID-19 or coronavirus.

“I had the honor and the privilege, the privilege, of serving in a very tough moment,” she told a Democratic crowd in southwest Ohio in March. “I’m proud of Ohioans, because together we flattened that curve, we saved a lot of lives.”

Ohio ranked 22nd among the states in its per capita death rate from the virus during the pandemic’s first year, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Acton, who left the job halfway through 2020, does not dwell on what happened after the government imposed restrictions: the mutiny against DeWine over business closures and health mandates, the legislation by Republicans to limit the governor’s powers and the protesters, some of them armed, outside her house.

At a recent States Forum symposium in Columbus, where people from across the political spectrum were brought together to try to find common ground within the “ Make America Healthy Again” movement, Acton said she had worked for or advised five different governors.

“So I’ll work with anyone who wants to solve a problem rather than make one,” she said, “which is what Ohioans are longing for.”

While he has endorsed Ramaswamy, DeWine denounced the campaign’s ad against Acton for suspending the 2020 primary.

“I told her to issue the health order,” he said. “The decision was mine.”

Ramaswamy is dodging his own pandemic ghosts

Ramaswamy and another prominent Republican running in this year’s midterm elections have their own ties to Ohio’s pandemic response.

As CEO of Roivant Sciences, the biotechnology research company he founded in 2014, Ramaswamy “worked with the lieutenant governor as an adviser on COVID-19” during 2020, he wrote in a 2021 op-ed. The lieutenant governor at the time, Republican Jon Husted, is now a U.S. senator running for reelection and was a regular participant alongside Acton and DeWine in Ohio’s daily virus briefings.

A Roivant subsidiary, Genevant Sciences, also played a “fundamental role,” according to a March press release. The statement announced a $2.2 billion settlement with Moderna over its unauthorized use of Genevant’s and Arbutus Biopharma’s patents in its COVID vaccines.

During the pandemic, Ramaswamy, whose wife is a physician, supported vaccines. He received one himself and advocated mask-wearing, although he said he never supported governments mandating either.

One of Ramaswamy’s companies, Datavant, even pushed for a national COVID registry that would be used to allow the small segment of the population that was gradually gaining natural COVID-19 immunity to “get back to normal life” while the rest would continue to be “segregated.”

Yet since he entered politics for the 2024 presidential race, Ramaswamy has taken steps to distance himself from those days. In early 2023, he stepped down from the Roivant board and a reference to his service on Ohio’s “COVID-19 Response Team” was scrubbed from his Wikipedia page. He called it a simple correction, saying the panel never met.

His campaign referred questions about his time at Roivant to the company, which did not respond to an email seeking comment.

In an interview, Ramaswamy said both his support for a COVID registry and his talks with Husted involved “getting the economy going again.” While calling his position on the virus “nuanced,” he said he intends to hold Acton accountable for the decisions to shutter Ohio businesses and schools and to suspend voting in the 2020 primary, which eventually was conducted by mail balloting.

“As a decision maker, you have to weigh the costs and benefits of your actions,” he said. “You can’t be unmoored from the data.”