Democrat Amy Acton has won Ohio’s governor race, defeating Republican Vivek Ramaswamy to become the first woman ever elected governor of the state — and the first Democrat to hold the office in two decades.
The Associated Press called the race late on Tuesday night, after Decision Desk HQ projected Acton the winner at 10:30 p.m. Eastern time. With about 85 percent of votes counted, Acton led Ramaswamy by roughly 50.7 percent to 46 percent, a margin her opponent could not close. Libertarian Don Kissick took about 3 percent.
For a state Donald Trump has won three times, the result lands as one of the night’s clearest rebukes. Ohio has not elected a Democrat as governor since Ted Strickland won in 2006, and no woman had ever won the office at the ballot box. Republican Nancy Hollister held the job for 11 days in 1999, but only as a caretaker after the previous governor left for the U.S. Senate. Acton is the first woman Ohio voters have actually chosen.
Acton, 60, is a doctor from Youngstown, in Ohio’s industrial north-east. She is best known outside the state as the face of Ohio’s early pandemic response: Republican Governor Mike DeWine appointed her director of the Ohio Department of Health in 2019, and she fronted the state’s daily coronavirus briefings through the first months of 2020 before resigning that June. She later worked at the Columbus Foundation, a community charity, before launching her campaign for governor in January 2025.
Her opponent was one of Trump’s most prominent allies. Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur, ran for president in the 2024 Republican primaries before dropping out and endorsing Trump, and entered the governor’s race with the president’s backing. He outspent Acton heavily, but the campaign turned against him in its final weeks. Acton refused to debate him, citing personal attacks, and a late Ramaswamy advertisement featuring Acton’s estranged mother drew criticism even from members of his own party.
Acton campaigned almost entirely on the cost of living: targeted property and income tax relief for working families, fully funding the state’s public schools, and extracting concessions from the data centres springing up across Ohio. She spoke often about her own childhood in Youngstown, which she has described as marked by abuse, neglect and periods of homelessness.
“I’m very excited that people are ready to start building an Ohio that gives a kid like me, growing up in Youngstown, a chance,” she said at a campaign stop near her home in Bexley, in the words reported by the Columbus Dispatch.
What she can actually do with the win is another question. Acton takes office in January, succeeding DeWine, who could not run again because of term limits — but she will face a legislature still controlled by Republicans, who are likely to resist much of her agenda. Her victory is a check on Republican power in the state, not a takeover of it.
Ohio’s other big race, meanwhile, is still undecided. In the special election for the U.S. Senate seat left vacant when JD Vance became vice president, Democrat Sherrod Brown led Republican Jon Husted narrowly, by about 48.5 percent to 46.6 percent, with most votes counted — but the Associated Press had not called it. That seat matters nationally: Democrats began the night needing a net gain of four Senate seats, and had already flipped two, in North Carolina and South Carolina.
Why this matters beyond Ohio: American states are not administrative regions. A governor controls the state budget, its schools and health programmes, and can veto laws passed by the state legislature. Ohio is also a bellwether — a big, politically divided state whose voters have often signalled the national mood. A Democratic doctor winning its governorship, on a platform built around affordability, in a state Trump carried three times, says as much about the cost-of-living anger running through this election as any result in Washington.
Acton’s win caps a striking night for Democrats, who have already won back the U.S. House of Representatives and flipped a Senate seat in South Carolina and seen Keisha Lance Bottoms elected Georgia’s first Black woman governor. The Senate, though, remains uncalled — and with it, the full shape of the next two years in Washington.
Results are projections based on unofficial returns and will be certified by Ohio election officials in the coming weeks. Our midterms guide explains what was at stake and when the remaining races will be decided.
