Will Amy Acton Do What Politicians Never Do, Admit She Erred, and Apologize for the Harm Her Advice Caused Ohioans?

Acton could possibly win without giving this type of speech if Ramaswamy doesn't alter his strategy, but she will need to show she can own her errors and be trusted to do right by Ohioans.

For the first time in modern times, in Republican Vivek Ramaswamy and Democrat Amy Acton, Ohio has two candidates running for governor who have never held elected office. Both of them will wrap themselves around the mantle of outsider and non-career politician. Thus far, neither of them has shown the capacity to act like an outsider. Ramaswamy selected an insider as his running mate with Ohio Senate President Rob McColley. Acton gave the nod to longtime insider and attempted career politician (and subscriber to this column) David Pepper. Ramaswamy refuses to buck his Establishment by criticizing the nearly two decades of failed leadership from John Kasich, Mike DeWine, and the supermajority Republican Ohio General Assembly. Acton doesn’t face the same problem given that her party hasn’t held power in twenty years. She faces a bigger problem.

For Acton, her moment of truth is to show Ohioans that she isn’t just another left-wing progressive urbanite with a telegenic smile. We’ve seen that show in Michigan with Gretchen Witmer and more recently in Virginia with Abigail Spanbarger. Unlike Purple Michigan and Blue Virginia, however, Ohio is unabashedly Red with no chance the Ohio General Assembly will be anything other than deeply Red. Should Acton win, therefore, she will have to work with Republicans to get anything actually done, which I honestly wonder if that might not be a bad thing for four years given how little total Republican control has gotten Ohioans.

The chief obstacle to winning is that Acton’s advice to DeWine and Jon Husted during the pandemic proved to be disastrous and wrong. As evidence has shown, her idolatry of Anthony Fauci was grossly misplaced. She cannot win Ohio with just Democrat votes or by splitting independent voters. She will need Trump Republicans in the form of former union Democrats in the crescent that runs from northeast Ohio along the Ohio River over towards Cincinnati to give her the nod, too. Her advice put them out of work, kept their kids out of school, shut down their churches, separated them from hospitalized family members, and forced a pre-therapeutic sold as a vaccine on them. If Acton really wants to win, she needs them to forgive her by giving the speech below.