Vivek Ramaswamy (a man so unpopular Elon Musk kicked him out of DOGE) is running for Ohio Governor. While he’s flying around Ohio in his private jet and receiving $10 million donations form billionaires, Dr. Amy Acton is running to fight for everyday Ohioans.
Today, Dr. Acton, Former Director of the Ohio State Health Department, joins Jen to discuss the political landscape in Ohio. She explains how her lifelong public service has trained her for the role of Governor. At a time ripe with extremism and vitriol, Dr. Acton argues that we all need to reconnect with our common humanity.
To learn more about Dr. Acton’s campaign, click here!
Dr. Amy Acton is the Former Ohio State Health Department Director. She was appointed by Governor Mike DeWine and was the first woman physician to ever hold the position. As Director, she passed Tobacco-21, anti-vaping policies, and helped save countless lives by leading the Covid response for 11.7 million Ohioans. Now, she’s running for Governor of Ohio.
The following transcript has been edited for formatting.
Jen Rubin
Hi, this is Jen Rubin, Enter in Chief of The Contrarian. Usually, the governorship of a deep red state is not very competitive. But it looks like 2026 is not going to be just any year, and we are delighted to have, what, I think everyone agrees will be the Democratic nominee, Dr. Amy Acton. Welcome, Dr. Acton. Lovely to have you.
Dr. Amy Acton
Thank you.
Jen Rubin
The race is very competitive. Why do you think that is?
Dr. Amy Acton
Well, I can’t say enough, you know, I’m a very unusual person, I’m definitely not a political pundit, but I am a physician. A lifelong public servant, almost 40 years in my work, and I’ve been traveling everywhere in this state, Ohio, the 7th largest state, population-wise in the country, listening deeply, going places candidates, quite frankly, haven’t been in a while. And everywhere I go, we keep seeing record crowds of people, does not know party, which I think is very interesting. And universally, they are longing for public servants who actually solve problems instead of making them.
We are a very independent-thinking state. I know you said deep red, I would say maybe we’re slightly pink. We’re a heavily gerrymandered state. You know, where I grew up in Youngstown, Ohio, you know, in the valley of the place of Bruce Springsteen songs, you know, we’ve gone for Obama twice, and then Trump, and I believe it’s because People are struggling, and with all the actions that have been taken, they’re feeling it more than ever. There’s no breathing room, and they’re looking for folks that can actually solve problems again.
Jen Rubin
You have an interesting life story, and you mentioned Youngstown. Tell us about your upbringing and some of the things you’ve overcome in your life.
Dr. Amy Acton
Well, thank you. You know, I’ve been open about my story. I did grow up in Youngstown, Ohio. Pretty rough childhood. A lot of abuse and neglect, frequent flyer and children’s services, and actually lived in a tent in the middle of winter in Northeast Ohio. So, as you can imagine, my brother and I were finally removed from that situation at the age of 12, and I always say in any room I’m in, I know I’m not the only one who saw a thing or two in their childhood. In many parts of our state, up to 50%, even more of our children are living in poverty. And this is all too common a story, but in my situation, and we all know we don’t get to pick the accident of our birth, I literally then moved a mile away. But I stayed in one apartment, nothing fancy, but in one school for the next 6 years instead of moving all the time. I got in med school and accelerated med school right out of high school.
My life obviously got a lot better, and I was haunted, by the kids I left behind, who were just as smart, just as nice. But you could watch our lives go different directions, and I didn’t have the words for it yet when I started out in my medical career in pediatrics. But your zip code can predict, on average, how long you will live. Oops, we saw a sign go. What kind of life you will have. More than your genetic code and everything I learned in med school. And part of the reason I’m running is I remember what it’s like when people look the other way. You know, when you’re a kid, you see adults sort of do this. And it’s not that people don’t care, but they often feel overwhelmed, not sure what to do.
But the people I remember more are the people who didn’t look the other way. And I remember a couple who would pull my brother and I up on their front porch and feed us breakfast, just because they knew we were hungry when we were walking to school. And literally, when I was out talking to superintendents both sides of the aisle in Ohio, I said, what is the number one thing you wish a governor would do besides stop all the bad things that are happening in education in our state? And they universally said free breakfast and lunch for every kid. And that just tells us something about what they’re seeing of what we’re struggling with. And I’m running because I refuse to look the other way. While a very corrupt statehouse that we have in our state with a lot of bad actors keeps taking my state in the wrong direction. Everywhere I go, people are ready for change.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely. You point to this disconnect between the state as a whole and the legislature. That certainly is the case on abortion rights, where a very Republican, gerrymandered legislature, would impose one of the strictest abortion laws, or forced, birth laws in the country. And the voters overrode that, so that you have a period of time now that women can see reproductive care. What other issues do you think that there is a disconnect on between the people of Ohio and the way they have been governed, in the legislature, and frankly, from the governor’s mansion, too?
Dr. Amy Acton
I’ll say, in addition to issues of affordability, which we’re going to hear a lot about, public schools are under attack in my state. And I would say this to everyone listening. One of the things I recognized, I’ve worked, you know, as an advocate for children’s hospitals in the 90s, and we would disagree on issues, maybe, but we would still get policy done. But what we have now, we all pay attention to federal. We know what’s happening locally. Federal, we just keep… our jaw drops on the ground, you know, you can’t believe it. But the state houses are where all the bad things are happening. And for instance, my opponent in this race has taken $10 million from a guy named Jeff Yass in Philadelphia to end public schools as we know it.
In Ohio, we actually… Ohio was different. When Ohio was founded as part of the Northwest Ordinance, and we chopped up all the blocks of land, and we left every so many for our public school. Because we were going to be a little different than the East Coast and Europe, we decided that everyone in our state, every kid like me, where public schools saved my life as a kid and library saved my life as a kid, because I could read and know life could be different. We decided every citizen was gonna get that, would lift our economy, it would lift our civic life, we would have high quality of life.
And literally, as I said, my opponent’s taking this money into his pack. In our state, they’ve kicked teachers off their own pension board. My opponent has said he wants to end teachers’ unions as we know it. There’s a very concerted attack on this issue of public schools, and this is actually a unifying issue in Ohio. Everywhere I go, many communities, that’s all we have are public schools. It is the center of the way of life. Our legislature didn’t fund a bipartisan funding proposal. They finally had to be constitutional. I can tell you, this is an issue on every Ohioan’s mind, and, you know, I am actually married to a 43-year public school, elementary school teacher and a coach who teaches at the same school he went to since he was 4 years old. I… I can’t say enough, I want to make sure that every… everyone in our state gets a chance to reach their full potential. And when we reach our full potential and have that opportunity, whole states rise. That’s actually how you lift a state.
Jen Rubin
Your opponent in the General Counsel, by all, appearances, will be Vivek Ramaswamy, who has talked about privatizing, Social Security. Certainly did not oppose any of the cuts, that Doge proceeded, even though he got kicked off, really, before it started, and has certainly not, seemed concerned in the least about Medicaid cuts. What doesn’t he get about, the state, that you think you do, and how would your approach be different?
Dr. Amy Acton
Well, obviously, I’m a doctor who’s been fighting for these issues my whole life, but I can tell you, when I talk about people have no more breathing room, healthcare… many things have gone backwards in our state. Our state always had the best health outcomes. We now live shorter, less healthy lives than neighboring states and many countries in this world. And the thing is, in many parts of my state now, you have to go an hour and 15 minutes to deliver a baby. to have your kid’s cavity filled. Rural hospitals have been collapsing, urban, and these Medicaid cuts are devastating. We actually had another Republican governor.
I worked, obviously, for Republican Governor Mike DeWine as the Department of Health Director, but the governor before actually expanded Medicaid because it was smart. Because when people are uninsured, all of our healthcare costs go up. All of us, every one of us listening, watched your healthcare premiums this year go up. This is the travesty of it, and I hear stories everywhere I go of folks who, you know, have premature twins or something, and they’re $300,000 in debt while they’re trying to work, and they can’t afford childcare, and their property taxes just went up. This is the squeeze that is just becoming intolerable for Ohioans.
There are governors who do things like alleviate medical debt, which is the largest cause of bankruptcy in this country, and certainly in my state. I think we all know that one catastrophic illness can wipe out everything we’ve spent our lives building up. So, you know, certainly this is a top issue for Ohioans. And you know, my state, they like to think that they don’t work on any of the 95% of things that we all want to see. We want to see people like our electric bills going up, and how we’re going to deal with the issues on our grid. We want to see housing solutions, and childcare solutions, and good… you know, we all know we need tax, but how do we make it fair again? All of these things, you know, safety, but the safety issues I hear about are about kids coming home from school, about being able to go worship safely, as we all know, sadly, this past week.
As people are worried about being able to talk to your neighbor, you know, the number one thing I’m hearing about is everyone’s exhausted of the hate and the vitriol and the chaos That purposeful pitting of us against one another, and I keep seeing in my state, you know, they don’t work on any of it, because they think they’re working on the economy, but our growth in GDP in our state, because they still believe in trickle-down economic theory when we know, economists worldwide know that economies are built from communities up. That’s actually how you build economies. And listen, our biggest export in our state is young people. But the number one issue I’m going to work on, and I say this everywhere I go, and I’ve been through a lot of public service.
I was the Director of Health during the pandemic in our state, so I have a deep bond with Ohioans that doesn’t know party. But the number one thing that I’m going to work on is our common humanity, because that’s what’s at stake in our democracy. All those sides are falling. And, Ed. And I’ll say this to you, you know, the biggest mistake being made right now is people see kindness as weakness. That is a big mistake. Kindness is a fierce, enduring commitment to justice. It is in every religion. It is what every parent listening here today, above all the things we wish for our kids, we wish that they’d be good people in this world. And it is a fierce commitment to seeing humanity in one another at a time where we’re being divided on purpose.
And, you know, I’ll end with this. The last Surgeon General said the biggest epidemic in this country is social isolation and loneliness. It presages Trump. We’ve been losing the fabric of our society, and we are hardwired for one another. And I can’t say I don’t get out of a room where people… I don’t watch people overcome with emotion. And including big, burly guys who come barking something at me, and then I just watch, despite their best intention, tears fill up. Because we don’t want to live this way. This is not the world we dream of being in, and it’s time that we get public servants back in on both sides of the aisle who are here to do the work of the people.
Jen Rubin
You received the Kennedy Profile Encourage Award. Tell us why you received it.
Dr. Amy Acton
I had to take a tough stand. You know, you know, we in Ohio, you know, I was a leader in pandemic. I’m so proud of our state. We flattened a curve, we saved a lot of lives, and we actually reopened earlier and got back to life sooner because we took swift, decisive action. And we led a lot throughout the country in the beginning. And people in my state, before all the purposeful pitting against one another, our first reaction in Ohio was to save one another. Ohioans’ heroism knew no bounds. And then eventually it got political, as we all know. And I stood up to orders a Speaker of the House wanted that, frankly would have killed people if I had signed my name. I was the only one who had quarantine authority.
I told my governor I’d keep advising him, which I have up through running for office. But I didn’t sign my name. I would have never slept at night, and I had a Hippocratic oath. Two weeks later, that same Speaker of the House was arrested in Ohio’s largest scandal in history, $60 million bribe scandals in federal prison. I keep joking at Ohio, we’re the complete lineup of HBO Max right now with our corruption, which is what we have to battle. And then I did get a call from Carolyn Kennedy and her son Jack, and I just want to say to everyone here. And I say this in Ohio, I am an ordinary person. The work I did leading during COVID was the work I do every day, it just wasn’t on TV, right? It’s the work we all do to try to make this world a little better. Courage does not mean that you never feel fear.
Courage comes from core, the root word for it is heart, and it means opening our hearts back up when we see things we cannot unsee, and we all are seeing them these days, and they’re haunting us. It’s about seeing the suffering, And I can’t say enough, when JFK wrote that book. It was about senators, if you remember, who took stands and lost their jobs. People all over this world and in this country have lost their lives standing up for what we all hold dear. It is time, and I think Ohio’s gonna be the bellwether again in this election. Where we take a stand against this very dystopic, horrible view of what we’re supposed to be, and make no mistake, this is not about Democrat or Republican or Independent. It is about extreme wealth, power, and ideology against everyone else. And the only thing that ever takes that down, because we’re going to see in my race, I’m up against this self-funding billionaire with a lot of friends that we have all heard about, from Elon Musk to Peter Thiel.
But the only thing that breaks power differentials, whether it was the 1870s and 1930s, whether it is bullying in schools or domestic violence. It’s always about the bystanders. It’s always about ordinary people finally finding their way back, linking arms, and finding the courage to say no. No, Mr. Ramaswamy, you cannot buy Ohio, you cannot buy my state, you can’t buy us. That is the energy I’m seeing on the ground. This is gonna be the election cycle, where people who are feeling the pain of all this, and I know what this feels like for my life. We all decide that we’re not looking the other way anymore, and we have to make our way back to one another and push back, and that’s… that’s what this election is ultimately, gonna be about.
Jen Rubin
Let me end with this question. In all likelihood, you are going to face a very conservative, and it’s not really even conservative, a very right-wing legislature. are you going to work with them? On what common ground do you think you can start, whether it’s guns, or healthcare, or education?
Dr. Amy Acton
You know, it’s well known, my whole life, I’ve been an advocate. I’ve always had to be nonpartisan and work with anyone who will sit around the table. I’m known for putting hard cards on the table, and then building out when multiple systems have to come together. These wicked hard problems, from housing to childcare, if they were easy to solve, we would have solved them already. These are multi-sector issues you have to convene and catalyze. You know, I worked on tough issues, and I worked for a Republican governor. who we don’t agree on every issue, but we could work together to try to solve things, because we both care deeply about Ohioans and everyone getting an opportunity.
And I can’t say enough, I worked with this president on things like uranium leaking in my state. I worked with my legislator, we did an opiate settlement in our legislature, we did Tobacco 21, we did all sorts of things together, and even when I was being most attacked, as was my Republican governor, I was getting flowers at night from the same people. I know how to work with folks to get things done, but in my state, you know, we are literally gonna go after gerrymandering again, because until we end gerrymandering for real. That’s how you get good people on both sides of the aisle back to do the real work, the hard yin and yang of hard conversations of getting to good policy that affects our lives. But I’ll work with anyone. In our state, we need 6 more House members, and we have a very good path to that in Ohio. So crucial, because the supermajority will break in our state, allowing a governor’s veto to stand, and that will be another important lever.
But I keep saying to everyone, we didn’t get her overnight. We got a lot of work to do, so we’re also doing a massive call to public service. No one person is gonna save my state. It’s just so important. But we have to have a vision 10 years out. Where we are the healthiest, again, where we have world-class education and workforce training, where we have a diversified economic development plan. And we can quit living in fear, because everywhere I go, people keep saying, don’t hurt us anymore. Like, we just… all we can hope for right now is that the National Guard doesn’t come to our city, or you don’t give us another unfunded mandate. That is what I’m hearing on both sides of the aisle from leaders.
We can want nice things again. We can dream big. This isn’t how government is supposed to work, we’re just getting used to it. It’s actually supposed to do things. Like, in my state, we could create the largest integrated park system in the country. We have all the natural assets for it. It’s a huge economic driver, it’s great for our quality of life, and it’ll help our young people want to be here if we have great housing and education, and a great quality of life. So, I know this is the beginning of a long road. You know, again, I’ve been… honored to serve. My whole life, I’ve been a public servant, but I… I’ve been honored to serve during one of the hardest times my state went through, but I would do anything, as would so many of the people I’m meeting. I don’t want folks to give up on one another.
Our little sides are falling. That’s so funny. It’s so dry and hot here, I think. But… It’s so important, if you had the privilege of doing what I’m doing, which is listening deeply everywhere, you would realize that all of us are wanting the same thing. I don’t hear culture wars. I don’t hear the crazy stuff. I hear people wanting us to get back to work together again, and I think we’re ready, and I’ll work with anyone who wants to do that work.
Jen Rubin
Well, thank you so much for spending time with us. This is going to be one of the races we’re going to be following, so we look forward to having you back and watching the race. I think you’re right that this is a bellwether. If we have an electorate that’s shifting as much as it does. This is absolutely in play, and we see that already in the polls. So, thank you so much. Happy holidays, and we look forward to having you back.
Dr. Amy Acton
You too. Be well, everyone. Take good care.
