Republicans taking Amy Acton cardboard cutout to state fairs to remind voters about COVID policy

As fair season launches across the state, Ohio Republicans are taking Amy Acton with them, in a manner of speaking.

The Ohio Republican Party and representatives for Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy plan to display a life-size cutout of Amy Acton in a bid to use her own words about COVID-19 and the state’s lockdowns against her.

It’s not entirely clear what Acton, the state’s former director of public health, who is running for governor as a Democrat, thinks of the stunt. Her campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment.

“Amy Acton quit on Ohio rather than let families go to the county fair, and she has never had to answer for it,” Ohio Republican Party Chairman Alex Triantafilou said in a statement. “This summer, she will.

“From Paulding County to the Ohio State Fair, our team and Republican leaders in every corner of the state will be at the fairs Amy Acton tried to shut down,” Triantafilou added. “We will remind voters that when Republicans fought back against her wanting to shut down the fairs, she quit.”

Dr. Lockdown pushed to ban county fairs in 2020, even as BLM protests continued on the streets. When she was directed to reopen the county fairs, she quit her job & claimed that was the “final straw.” We won’t let a socialist tyrant ruin our state again. Great visit to the… pic.twitter.com/94FHaALKAK

— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) June 25, 2026

Republicans are pointing to a statement Acton made, dubbing an order to reopen the fairs “the final straw” that led to her resignation, which came amid growing backlash to what many Ohioans viewed as a heavy-handed response to the pandemic.

“There was a real pressure on the governor and on me to sign orders. And this one order in particular was the final straw for me. It was to open the fairs,” Acton told WCMH-TV in Columbus in January. “We were just, if you remember, beginning to open businesses and finally stabilizing our hospitals. And it was pressure for fairs to be opened in a way that there was no science for.”

Republicans have also seized on a March 2020 decision to postpone a primary election despite a judge’s ruling Monday that it would be a “terrible precedent” to do so.

In 2020, the governor recommended rescheduling the election, and a Ramaswamy ad released earlier this year said Acton “called off Ohio’s election at the last minute, defying a judge’s orders and abusing her power.” Acton’s former boss, Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, has given her cover, saying it was his decision, not Acton’s.

DeWine’s current perspective has prompted many Republicans to clap at his apparent revisionist history, pointing to a March 16, 2020, release in which the governor said, “Health Director Dr. Amy Acton will order the polls closed as a health emergency.”

“Amy Acton did not just want to close our fairs. She told the families of rural Ohio that their way of life was hers to cancel,” state Sen. Susan Manchester, R-Waynesfield, a member of the Ohio Senate Agriculture Committee, said in a release. “The fairgrounds are where generations have gathered, competed, and passed down what matters, and she walked off the job rather than let Ohioans go to the fair.”