(Amy Acton’s volunteers are) motivated by what they see around them in Ohio – not on TV.
| Contributed Commentary
Ohio governor’s race: See which candidates are running for 2026
Here are the candidates that have entered the 2026 race for governor in Ohio.
- The Ohio gubernatorial race pits Democrat Amy Acton against Republican Vivek Ramaswamy.
Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter and writes from Ohio University.
The gubernatorial campaign between Democrat Dr. Amy Acton and Republican Vivek Ramaswamy is speeding up, but Acton’s campaign seems far more visible as a ground game than the TV war that Ramaswamy is waging.
Moreover, the Acton campaign has drawn such notable figures as former two-term Democratic Gov. Richard F. Celeste, a Lakewood native, to campaign for Acton at such genuinely down-home Ohio events as the Clermont County Fair, in Owensville, a half-hour east of Cincinnati, and the Butler County Fair, in Hamilton, just north of Cincinnati – and at fairs and events in numerous other Ohio communities.
“I judge a campaign by its energy,” Celeste wrote. “The energy in the counties I visited – Licking, Tuscarawas, Stark, Cuyahoga, Clermont and Butler (as well as an event in Archbold [west of Toledo] that brought four counties together) – was uniformly upbeat. Many folks who are not normally involved, or who have been turned off by all the negativity, want to help Dr. Acton become governor.”
“I saw Acton signs in Butler and Clark counties. Not a sign for Ramaswamy. My sense is that folks are attracted to Amy Acton’s honesty and positive energy. She turns kindness into a strength, not a weakness. And people in counties across Ohio are responding,” Celeste added.
The Celeste sum-up: “This [Acton campaign] is a campaign of people power vs. big money. And big money has begun to have a very bad odor. And the fact that the [Ramaswamy] campaign is so negative adds the smell of desperation: Lying and buying is not a winning formula.”
Sure, some of the counties Celeste has been visiting this summer are hardly considered Democratic as such. But Butler and Clermont, for example, house tens of thousands of Cincinnati commuters who, like working Ohioans everywhere, are being socked by skyrocketing gasoline prices and property taxes.
Celeste – “13 grandchildren, 11, soon to be 12, greats” – is retired president of Colorado College. He is 88 but seems a decade younger. Celeste was U.S. ambassador to India, and lives in Colorado Springs. He was Ohio’s governor from 1983 through 1990, lieutenant governor from 1975 through 1978, and earlier an Ohio House member from Greater Cleveland. And Celeste was director of the Peace Corps from 1979 to 1981.
Among other Statehouse accomplishments, Celeste successfully skippered Ohio through the worst banking crisis since the Depression of the 1930s, 1985’s collapse of Cincinnati’s Home State Savings Bank, resolved via a bipartisan Statehouse effort that protected every depositor’s money.
In contrast to the visible energy of Acton’s campaign for the governorship, Ramaswamy’s appears to be mostly a TV-based quest, maybe because that’s the better arena for lobbing negative ads at Acton.
By way of background, Acton is a Youngstown-born physician (Youngstown State undergrad, then Northeast Ohio Medical University), age 60, who lives in Bexley. She was for a time state health director in the Cabinet of Republican Gov. Mike DeWine.
Ramaswamy, a Cincinnati native (Harvard undergrad, Yale law), lives in Upper Arlington and is a hugely successful entrepreneur. He’ll turn 41 on Aug. 9.
Late in 2024, Ramaswamy moved the headquarters of his lead company, financial firm Strive Asset Management, from Columbus to Dallas, a decision that has drawn fire from Democrats as inconsistent with Ramaswamy’s vows to boost Ohio’s economic development programs.
On the issues, the contrast between Ramaswamy and Acton is sharp, especially given that Ohio gubernatorial campaigns, at their core, aren’t about ideas; they’re about management and – because it affects every Ohioan – the economy and its interplay with Ohioans’ grocery bills and gas prices and taxes.
Ramaswamy’s elixir for what ails Ohio is largely composed of tax cuts, though Ohio isn’t a notably high-tax state, and the tax burdens would be lighter if the state government as a whole – not just hard-pressed Ohio homeowners – bore more of the cost of their communities’ public schools.
Dick Celeste’s enthusiasm for and public participation in Acton’s campaign for governor is a vote of confidence in Acton’s prospects of victory. TV ads can’t muster that kind of enthusiasm. Celeste is walking his talk.
So, likewise, are Acton’s other enthusiastic volunteers; They’re motivated by what they see around them in Ohio – not on TV.
Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter and writes from Ohio University.
