Turning facts into lies? It’s campaign 2026 in Ohio

POLITICS HAS taken Ohio to a place it doesn’t belong, dragged to the brink by candidates for offices big and small who lack the conscience or character to serve in public life, people whose pursuit of self-glory makes them willing to toss their reputations into the garbage bin of history.

Evidence of this is overwhelming. Of all the prominent officeholders from Ohio, only Gov. Mike DeWine qualifies as a normal Republican. In fact, he might be the only one who qualifies as a normal human being. But, thanks to term limits, DeWine will soon be gone, almost certainly replaced by voters in November with either Republican Vivek Ramaswamy or Democrat Amy Acton.

Since a Republican has sat in the governor’s office for all but four of the past 36 years, and with Ramaswamy having President Trump’s endorsement in a state Trump won three times, this race should have been over before it started. But it is not.

As proven during his failed run for president in 2024, voters don’t much like Ramaswamy. He comes across as smart, but arrogant. And many in the MAGA base are bothered by Ramaswamy for all the wrong reasons. He has dark skin. He’s a practicing Hindu of Indian heritage. He even had the nerve to attend world-class schools.

Trump’s declining popularity, skyrocketing fuel and grocery prices, and Ramaswamy’s unlikability explain why a concerned Ramaswamy campaign has already spent $10 million in television ads.

It also explains why a right-wing menagerie of influencers like Donald Trump, Jr., state party officials, and MAGA mouthpieces was quick to embellish the significance of a legitimate, but hardly earth-shattering, news story detailing a 2019 incident when police were called to the Bexley home of Acton and her husband following a nonviolent incident described in a police report as a “domestic dispute.” Acton was state health director at the time. As stated in the report by NBC News, no one was arrested or charged. The police report is a public record.

This election is close. If it stays that way, if Ramaswamy’s attempt to buy the election with his own money doesn’t work, then his truth-shattering will accelerate. In one of its most recent television spots, the Ramaswamy campaign says Acton “called off” the 2020 primary election because of coronavirus pandemic.

It’s a lie. And DeWine responded to the lie by again stating that the decision to delay the primary, not call it off, was his — not Acton’s.

On March 16, 2020, DeWine, Lt. Gov. Jon Husted, Acton, and Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose announced that the presidential primary election, scheduled for the next day, would be postponed. They also announced their preference for holding an in-person primary election June 2. Nine days later, the legislature passed a law that was different from what the governor had contemplated. That law provided that mail and in-person voting would continue to April 28. In-person voting at designated areas would be limited to “individuals with disability … who do not have a home mailing address.”

This legislative solution was supported by state Sen. Rob McColley, who is now Ramaswamy’s lieutenant-governor running mate. Jane Timken, Trump’s hand-picked Ohio Republican Party chairman, was also supportive of what the governor and Acton did during those difficult days in March, 2020.

Then-Ohio Senate President Matt Huffman said emphatically on the floor of the Senate on March 25, 2020, “To be clear, the election of March 17 was not canceled.” In that same speech, Huffman correctly identified Acton as the one who signed the order. Again, on numerous occasions, and both before and after Ramaswamy began airing his attack ad on Acton, DeWine has said he gave the order for Acton to postpone the March 17 election.

What’s most important to remember here is that more than 43,000 Ohioans died of the coronavirus. So, if Ramaswamy is willing to obliterate (MAGA’s favorite verb) the truth about how and why all this happened during the most serious public health crisis in more than 100 years, maybe he shouldn’t be trusted to run this state.

In close election campaigns, sleaze becomes MAGA’s weapon of choice. Unfortunately, it often works in Ohio. In the last two elections for the United States Senate, voters have elected candidates who lack the principles or intellectual honesty to serve in any office whatsoever. There was a time, not that long ago, when both JD Vance (now vice president) and Bernie Moreno would have been unelectable for high office in Ohio.

Nevertheless, first Vance in 2022 and Moreno, two years later, were comfortably elected to the Senate, both seeming to understand they owe their jobs entirely to Donald Trump, the most immoral man to ever hold the presidency. Voter decisions like this cannot be easily explained away. And they bode poorly for Ohio’s future.

Mr. Larkin was the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s editorial director from 1991 until his retirement in 2009.