Amy Acton wins Ohio governor race, beating Vivek Ramaswamy to become first woman elected to the job
Democrat Amy Acton has defeated Republican Vivek Ramaswamy in Ohio, becoming the first woman ever elected governor of the state and the first Democrat to win the office in 20 years.
Democrat Amy Acton has won the race to become Ohio’s next governor, defeating Republican Vivek Ramaswamy in one of the most closely watched contests of Tuesday’s midterm elections. US media projected the result on Tuesday night, and the Associated Press called the race for Acton as counting continued on Wednesday.
The result is historic on two counts. Acton, a 60-year-old physician, becomes the first woman ever elected governor of Ohio — Republican Nancy Hollister previously held the office for only 11 days in 1999 without winning an election — and the first Democrat to win the governorship since 2006, ending two decades of Republican control of the state’s top executive post.
With most votes counted, Acton led by roughly five percentage points, taking around 51 per cent of the vote to Ramaswamy’s roughly 46 per cent, according to returns reported on Wednesday. Libertarian candidate Don Kissick took about 3 per cent. The Associated Press results page later showed Acton ahead by a wider margin as more precincts reported, with more than 97 per cent of precincts in.
Acton is best known nationally as Ohio’s former health director, a role she held during the early months of the coronavirus pandemic, when she became a familiar public face in the state’s daily briefings. She had never previously held elected office, and she will succeed term-limited Republican Governor Mike DeWine, under whom she served during that period.
Her opponent was one of the highest-profile Republican candidates in the country. Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur and billionaire, first gained national attention as a candidate in the 2024 Republican presidential primaries before dropping out and endorsing Donald Trump. He entered the Ohio race with the backing of both Trump and Vice President JD Vance, whose home state is Ohio.
The campaign was also one of the most expensive governor’s races of the cycle. Reports put spending against Acton at more than $100 million, with Ramaswamy and allied groups pouring vast sums into the contest, including at least $5 million from a political action committee backed by billionaire Elon Musk. Acton’s campaign overcame that financial disadvantage, a point her supporters seized on as results came in.
The Ohio result fits the broader pattern of Tuesday’s midterms, in which Democrats won control of Congress and took governor’s races in states including Texas, Michigan and Georgia. Ohio had been carried three times in a row by Trump in presidential elections, and the swing towards the Democrats — roughly 16 percentage points compared with Trump’s 11-point victory margin in the state in 2024 — underlined how far the political mood had shifted.
For Republicans, the loss in Vance’s home state will be read as a particularly sharp rebuke. Ramaswamy had campaigned as a close Trump ally, and his defeat, alongside losses elsewhere, has already fuelled debate inside the party about whether its midterm message — on the war in Iran, gas prices and the cost of living — failed to land with voters.
For Acton, the challenge now turns from campaigning to governing. She takes charge of a state government long run by Republicans, and will have to work with a legislature and a political establishment shaped by two decades of Republican rule, while delivering on the health, education and economic promises at the heart of her campaign.
Her victory also gives Democrats a rare bright spot in a state they had come to regard as out of reach. Whether it marks a lasting realignment in Ohio or a one-off midterm verdict will not be known for years, but for now the state has a new governor — and, for the first time in its history, one elected by voters who is a woman.
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