COLUMBUS, Ohio — The long shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic has settled over Ohio’s 2026 race for governor, where the Democrat who became a household name urging Ohioans to “don your cape” and mask up is now running against a Republican whose own pandemic-era record is more complicated than his campaign trail rhetoric suggests.
Dr. Amy Acton, the former state health director who signed the orders closing Ohio’s schools, businesses, and sporting events in early 2020 as the coronavirus swept into the United States, is running unopposed in the Democratic primary. Her presumed general-election opponent is Republican Vivek Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur with national name recognition and a personal fortune he is pouring into his campaign.
Six years after those restrictions — imposed at the urging of then-Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican — the pandemic response has become a central dividing line in the contest to lead a state that has tilted increasingly Republican over the past two decades. Acton is attempting to become the first Democrat in 20 years to win the governor’s office.
At Republican events around the state, the mention of Acton’s name draws loud boos. A Ramaswamy campaign ad has targeted her for the decision to suspend in-person voting in the 2020 primary — an election ultimately conducted by mail. At a recent Ramaswamy fundraiser, state Senate candidate Zac Haines warmed up the crowd with a question that distilled the campaign’s framing: “Are we choosing liberty or are we choosing lockdowns?”
Ramaswamy has accused Acton on the stump of spreading “COVID ideology.” His campaign referred questions about his own pandemic-era business record to his former company, Roivant Sciences, which did not respond to an Associated Press inquiry.
Acton’s campaign has pushed back. “Dr. Acton is proud of the work she did alongside Governor DeWine to put public health over politics, save lives and keep Ohioans safe,” campaign spokesperson Addie Bullock said in a statement. “It is unfortunate that Vivek Ramaswamy wants to play politics on this issue.”
DeWine, who has endorsed Ramaswamy for governor, has nevertheless undercut one of the campaign’s central attacks. “I told her to issue the health order,” DeWine said of the primary suspension. “The decision was mine.”
Ohio’s per capita death rate from the virus during the pandemic’s first year ranked 22nd among U.S. states, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Acton, a physician, was a fixture at DeWine’s daily COVID-19 briefings early in the pandemic, calmly explaining the virus’s trajectory and urging Ohioans to take precautions. “Ohio, don the mask, don your cape,” she said at the time. Her visibility inspired a Dr. Amy Acton Fan Club with yard signs, a bobblehead doll, and a proposal for a state holiday. But it also drew protesters — some of them armed — to her home.
She left the health director job midway through 2020. On the campaign trail this year, she sometimes avoids saying the words “COVID-19” or “coronavirus,” instead framing her service broadly. “I had the honor and the privilege, the privilege, of serving in a very tough moment,” she told a Democratic gathering in southwest Ohio in March. “I’m proud of Ohioans, because together we flattened that curve, we saved a lot of lives.”
At a States Forum symposium in Columbus focused on 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.”
Ramaswamy’s own pandemic-era record includes ties that his campaign has sought to minimize. As CEO of Roivant Sciences, Ramaswamy wrote in a 2021 op-ed that he “worked with the lieutenant governor as an adviser on COVID-19.” The lieutenant governor at the time was Jon Husted, now a U.S. senator running for reelection who regularly appeared alongside Acton and DeWine at the state’s daily virus briefings.
A subsidiary of Ramaswamy’s company, Genevant Sciences, played what a March news release described as a “fundamental role” in the global pandemic response and reached a $2.2 billion settlement with Moderna over alleged unauthorized use of its patents in COVID-19 vaccines. Another Ramaswamy company, Datavant, pushed for a national COVID registry designed to let people with natural immunity “get back to normal life” while others remained “segregated,” according to reporting at the time.
During the pandemic, Ramaswamy — whose wife is a physician — supported vaccines and received one himself. He also advocated mask-wearing, though he said he never supported government mandates for either.
Since entering politics during the 2024 presidential race, Ramaswamy has worked to distance himself from those positions. In early 2023, he stepped down from the Roivant board and paid an editor to remove a reference to his service on Ohio’s COVID-19 Response Team from his Wikipedia page. He has called the edit a simple correction, saying the panel never met.
In an interview with the Associated Press, Ramaswamy described his pandemic-era involvement as focused on “getting the economy going again.” While calling his position on the virus “nuanced,” he said Acton should be held accountable for the decisions to close businesses and schools.
“As a decision maker, you have to weigh the costs and benefits of your actions,” Ramaswamy said. “You can’t be unmoored from the data.”