Dr. Amy Acton, running for Ohio governor in 2026, talks to Lorain Co. Democratic Women's Club in Avon

AVON — Ohio has never elected a woman governor in its history. Amy Acton said Tuesday she wants to change that. "It's a myth a woman can't win in Ohio," the medical doctor and Democratic candidate for Ohio governor in 2026 said Tuesday night to more than 60 people who showed up at the Big Top Brewhouse on Center Road at an event sponsored by the Lorain County Democratic Women's Club. Five years after guiding Ohioans and Gov. Mike DeWine through the COVID-19 pandemic, Acton, 59, pitched her "fierce commitment to social justice," to public education and public health and how to make public service "cool" again. She recalled growing up so poor in Youngstown that her family sometimes had to live in a tent. Rising out of poverty, Acton ended up graduating from Youngstown State University and The Ohio State University and earned her medical degree at Northeast Ohio Medical University in Rootstown in Portage County. School and libraries "saved my life," she said, giving her a place to go and eat meals. After becoming a doctor, she treated pediatric HIV and AIDS patients in New York before landing a job at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus. From all her experience, Acton said she learned that when it comes to health, "your ZIP code can affect you more than your genetic code." In 2019, Republican Gov. Mike DeWine appointed her director of the Ohio Department of Health. Acton advised him and helped lead the state's approach to the COVID-19 pandemic, which earned her positive recognition on a national level and also resulted in protests outside her home. Ohioans "flattened the curve," slowed the spread of the coronavirus and in doing so saved a lot of lives, she said. Acton resigned as ODH director after refusing to sign "political" orders but stayed on as an adviser to DeWine through the summer of 2020. Acton said she doesn't see herself as a political person, but a problem solver. And with so many problems to fix in their state, Ohioans can't look the other way, she said. "People are struggling," she said. "This state is going backwards on nearly every measure, from public health to public education, from health care to higher education to losing its best and brightest young people to other states." And those problems "didn't happen on a Democratic Party watch" but in a state under Republican control for decades, she said. Clean water, safe food and child labor laws increased life expectancy in the United States by 30 years in a single century, but with the way things are going now "this generation might not live as long as their parents," Acton said. Government needs changed and modernized, "constructed, not deconstructed," she said. There's a "gen alpha" slang phrase that goes: "That is so Ohio." It's not a good one, Acton said. It means something is "weird" or "cringey," like the lie propagated by some prominent Republicans during the 2024 campaign season that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating pets. The Buckeye State needs to rise past that, she said. Acton said the best way to solve problems is to get multiple people with different opinions to sit at the same table. She said she's happy to work with Republicans, noting that many have turned out to her fundraisers and speeches to listen, to talk and to find out how to fix problems, not create more. "This is not an impossible task we set before ourselves," Acton said. DeWine is term-limited out of office and Republicans who have announced their candidacy to take his place in 2026 include Attorney General Dave Yost; businessman Vivek Ramaswamy; and school board member, businesswoman and community organizer Heather Hill. Contact Dave O'Brien at (440) 329-7129 or dobrien@chroniclet.com