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WASHINGTON — Republicans are growing increasingly grim about their chances in November, with aligned groups pumping money into reliably GOP states and candidates scrambling to distance themselves from unpopular White House policies.

From Texas to Ohio and Alaska to Iowa, campaigns are grappling with a fed-up electorate that is sour on the president and angry over soaring fuel prices driven by an unpopular war. While Republicans are flush with unprecedented cash that could move the needle in some races, overall the mood is glum heading into the election’s final stretch as campaigns try to counter palpable Democratic enthusiasm to maintain their narrow lead in the House and Senate this November.

“Everybody is tired. You see the poll numbers. Everybody is cranky about gas prices,” said Jeanette Hoffman, a Republican strategist from New Jersey. “The party in power is playing defense. This is a referendum on the incumbents.”

Trump is trying to protect Republicans with cash

After mounting pressure from endangered candidates in battleground states, groups affiliated with President Trump finally began unleashing their stockpile of campaign cash earlier this month, joining with Republican committees that have amassed a record fortune that dramatically eclipses their Democratic counterparts.

“Republicans have air superiority. House Democrats are scrambling to catch up with the very limited resources they have,” said Mike Marinella, a spokesperson for the National Republican Congressional Committee.

But the spending underscores the extent to which Republicans are playing defense.

Three Trump-aligned groups — MAGA Inc., No Going Back PAC and Safety and Affordability PAC — have spent more than $163 million on advertising and air time since Sept. 1. Nearly 40% of that money — more than $63 million — has been spent in states and districts where Trump won by 10 percentage points or more in the 2024 election, according to an Associated Press analysis of data from AdImpact, which tracks media spending and ad buys.

That includes 12 House districts and three states with major Senate races.

In Texas, Republicans have spent nearly $107 million on ads and reservations since the beginning of the month trying to bolster scandal-plagued attorney general Ken Paxton in his Texas Senate race against Democratic state Rep. James Talarico. The spending, which is for ads through Election Day, is nearly four times as much as Democrats in a state Trump won by nearly 14 points.

Further north in Ohio, Republican spending to defend Sen. Jon Husted has exceeded $152 million, compared with $90 million on behalf of Democratic nominee Sherrod Brown, according to AdImpact.

Terry Casey, an Ohio Republican strategist, said both Republicans and Democrats are “kind of sitting on pins and needles because of the national and economic circumstances.” The outcome, he said, would depend on whether Democrats can turn out voters.

Democrats are competing in Republican stronholds

States that Trump won by wide margins — like Texas, Iowa, Ohio and Alaska — have become some of the most competitive battlegrounds in the midterms.

The White House is even investing time in states that haven’t been considered competitive for years. Vice President JD Vance recently traveled to Kansas to campaign for Sen. Roger Marshall, who is facing a challenge from Democratic nominee Adam Hamilton.

The founder of the nation’s largest United Methodist church, Hamilton received a rousing welcome from scores of people who crammed into a Topeka coffee shop to see him Tuesday.

“In all my 50, 60 years in politics, I’ve never seen a candidate that quite has the momentum going,” said Jim Ploger, an 82-year-old longtime Democratic activist from Topeka who believes Hamilton gives the party “the best chance we’ve ever had” to win a Senate seat.

Vance has also been to Iowa, Ohio, Maine and North Carolina to bolster Republican candidates, while Trump is also hitting the road. The week after the party’s unusual midterm convention in Dallas, he traveled to North Carolina to hold a rally with Michael Whatley, his former national party chairman. Republicans are increasingly concerned that he could fall short in his Senate race against Democratic former Gov. Roy Cooper.

There are more concerns about Georgia, where Rep. Mike Collins is trying to unseat Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff. Although Ossoff began the cycle as Republicans’ top target, Collins has endured weeks of negative headlines about a House ethics investigation and his son-in-law’s white nationalist views.

“I don’t think anyone’s expecting Collins to win,” said Tim Waters, chairman of the Peach County Republican Party. “Do I like that? No, I don’t like that. But it’s just the facts.”

In Texas, officials are hoping a huge influx of last-minute cash will help save Paxton. Sen. John Cornyn, who lost his primary to Paxton after Trump turned on him earlier this year, isn’t so confident.

“I think it’s going to be very rough, lots of headwinds,” he said. “Even in places like Texas, which are pretty red, we’ve got flawed candidates who I think are going to have a hard time.”

Republican National Committee spokesperson Natalie Baldassarre said the party is focused on turnout and is well aware of the historic trend in which the party in control typically loses seats in the midterm.

“We have money to spend and we’re not taking anything for granted this cycle,” she said. “This is very high stakes, and it’s unfortunate that other people feel glum and down. But we’re doing everything we can to protect and expand our majorities so we’re full steam ahead.”

Party officials are more bullish on races in Maine and New Hampshire, where Democrat Kamala Harris won in 2024, and remain optimistic about Michigan, where Trump won by less than two points and where former Rep. Mike Rogers faces progressive Democrat Abdul El-Sayed.

Some Republicans call for an end to the war

Some Republicans are taking steps to distance themselves from Trump even as he urges his supporters to vote like he is on the ballot.

Rep. Tom Tiffany and Rep. John James, the party’s nominees for governor in Wisconsin and Michigan, both joined calls for an end to the war in Iran.

“War is terrible, and no one likes war,” James told reporters.

Mike Rogers, the Republican Senate nominee in Michigan, released an ad in which he also called for ending the war. Standing in a grocery store, he bemoaned high prices and said the government should suspend gas taxes and stop diesel exports.

“The war with Iran needs to end and end quickly,” Rogers said. ”Michigan families can’t afford to wait.”

In Iowa, where Republicans are trying to hold onto the Senate seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Joni Ernst, Rep. Ashley Hinson, who is locked in a tight race against Democrat Josh Turek, voiced the same frustrations.

“Iowans are being squeezed and shouldn’t have to foot the bill at the pump or the checkout line for the war in Iran” she wrote on social media. “These actions to lower costs are needed ASAP, and the war needs to be brought to a successful and immediate end.”

Hinson, however, did not join two fellow Iowa Republicans in battleground districts — U.S. Reps. Zach Nunn and Mariannette Miller-Meeks — in voting with Democrats on a resolution intended to halt Trump’s ability to continue military action without lawmakers’ approval.

Perhaps the most dramatic break with Trump came from Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, a Republican defending her seat in a competitive, majority Hispanic South Florida district. Last week, she released an ad filmed in front of the White House as she criticized the president for going “too far” on immigration policy.

Others have continued to scrub references to Trump from their websites. The latest was Republican Byron Donalds, who is running for governor in Florida, who recently revamped his site so that it no longer includes a number of prominent references to Trump and his endorsement, the Miami Herald first reported.

‘It’s a very competitive environment out there’

White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said Trump “is the unequivocal leader, best messenger, and unmatched motivator for the Republican Party” and that “the choice has never been more clear: doubling down on President Trump’s winning, commonsense agenda or the Democrats’ extreme liberal policies and obstruction.”

Some Republicans are acknowledging that voters aren’t satisfied.

“We shouldn’t say, ‘Hey everything’s perfect,’ because it’s not,” said Sen. Bernie Moreno of Ohio. “But look what we’ve done in 18 months, and we need two more years to finish the job.”

Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana, who has traveled across the country campaigning for his colleagues, said Democrats appeared to have enthusiasm on their side in the midterms, and he said his party needed to level with the country.

“You can’t look the American people in the eye and say, ‘Don’t believe your lying checkbooks,’” he said. “The cost of living increase is real.”

He also said that voters are “confused about the war” and “they don’t understand how we’re going to get out.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., was measured in his assessment on Tuesday.

“Well, I’m hopeful, obviously, but also realistic,” he said. “It’s a very competitive environment out there.”

Colvin and Kessler write for the Associated Press. Colvin reported from New York. AP writers Mike Catalini in Morrisville, Pa., Bill Barrow in Atlanta, Thomas Beaumont in Des Moines, Iowa, John Hanna in Topeka, Kan., and Lisa Mascaro, Mary Clare Jalonick, Steven Sloan and Joey Cappelletti in Washington contributed to this report.

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio — In the wood-paneled basement of a union hall, retirees sat in folding chairs last week as they recalled how miles of steel mills and plentiful jobs had slowly disappeared.

“We told our children to get your education, get out, and don’t come back,” said Al Antonelli, who has been a member of Ohio Laborers’ International Union of North America Local 125 for nearly 50 years. “Because there’s no future here, especially blue collar.”

Versions of Youngstown’s story played out across the industrial Midwest, where disappearing jobs and frustration in longtime Democratic strongholds helped fuel Donald Trump’s political rise. When Trump visited as president in 2017, he promised the jobs that had left Ohio were “all coming back.”

“Don’t sell your house,” one of the retirees recalled Trump saying during his Youngstown visit.

Nearly a decade later, the old industrial economy Trump promised to revive has not returned, and Democrats hope the political tide is shifting again. Two years after Democrat Sherrod Brown lost his Senate seat, he’s attempting a comeback by trying to win back some of the same voters who turned on his party. Brown wants to harness dissatisfaction with the economy, the war in Iran and the expansion of artificial intelligence data centers to dislodge Republican Sen. Jon Husted in November.

Brown’s chances of returning to Washington depend largely on whether he can win again in parts of the state that have spent years drifting away from Democrats. His race is also part of a much broader challenge for Democrats, who need to make inroads in Republican-leaning states like Ohio, Iowa, Alaska and Texas if they are to win control of the chamber in November.

Brown outlasted Democrats’ decline in Ohio — until he couldn’t

For years, Brown was able to outrun the Democratic Party’s decline in Ohio. His pro-labor populism resonated with enough swing voters to deliver decades of victories from the statehouse to Congress.

Trump carried Ohio by 8 points in 2016, four years after Barack Obama won it. Yet Brown won his third term in the Senate two years later, in part by continuing to perform well in places like Mahoning County, anchored by Youngstown.

By 2024, even Brown could no longer hold on, losing his reelection campaign to Republican Bernie Moreno by 3.5 percentage points.

Trump carried Mahoning by more than 10,000 votes, a remarkable reversal in a previously loyal Democratic county that Obama had won by nearly 30 percentage points just 12 years earlier. With Trump’s endorsement, Moreno won the county by just 220 votes.

The transformation extends across the Mahoning Valley. Neighboring Trumbull County went from backing Obama by 23 points in 2012 to Trump by nearly 17 points in 2024.

“The Mahoning Valley has struggled with deindustrialization, job loss for years, and the politicians in power have seemed to understand that, but it doesn’t seem like they were doing enough about that,” said Cryshanna Jackson Leftwich, a politics professor at Youngstown State University. “So at some point, 20, 30 years of supporting the candidates, people are gonna say, well, look, this has never worked for us, right?”

Trump and other Republicans offered voters something different, Leftwich said.

“Did they keep their promises? Not at all. Is the county still poor? Absolutely,” she said. “But they at least said they were going to do something different.”

Brown faces a much different environment this year

Democrats’ bid to flip the Senate requires them to net four seats, including by competing deep in Republican territory.

Two months from the end of midterm campaigns, high gas prices stemming from the war in Iran have compounded discontent with the economy.

Trump has also escalated a trade war with neighboring Canada, a fight with particular implications for Ohio. The state exported $17.5 billion in goods to Canada in 2025, or nearly a third of the state’s total exports, according to federal statistics.

Tension from the economic strain is visible in Parma, a working-class Cleveland suburb that split its ticket in 2024, backing both Trump and Brown. At a watch party for the Republican midterm convention in Dallas, supporters who stayed late into the evening cheered Trump but acknowledged that other issues would most likely determine the midterms.

“The real thing that’ll move the needle is going to be economics. Gas prices, grocery prices,” said Parma City Councilor Kevin Kussmaul. “That’s really what’s going to help.”

Parma Republican Party President Doris Peters said similarly that “everyone’s concerned about the high gas prices.”

“It’s all about the economy,” she added. “People remember how much money’s in their wallet and how much is not in their wallet.”

Sen. Jon Husted (R-Ohio) speaks at the Republican convention in Dallas.

(Julia Demaree Nikhinson / Ap Photo/julia Demaree Nikhinson)

The limits of a Democratic rebound in Ohio

Husted presents a different opponent than the one Brown faced two years ago. His restrained demeanor contrasts with Moreno, the brash former car dealer who entered politics as an outsider. Husted spent nearly 25 years in Ohio politics, as a state lawmaker, House speaker, secretary of state and lieutenant governor, before being tapped to fill Vance’s Senate seat.

But Husted may not need to generate much enthusiasm of his own. Except for Brown and candidates for the Ohio Supreme Court, a Democrat hasn’t won a statewide race for state office in Ohio since 2008.

Adam Radogna, 37, who hosted the watch party Wednesday for Parma Republicans at his Italian restaurant, has attended more than 80 Trump rallies and remains an ardent Trump supporter. But Husted is not someone he’s followed closely.

“I don’t know him at all,” Radogna said of Husted. “But I mean, I will vote for him.”

Brown faces enthusiasm problems of his own as he asks voters to return to a 73-year-old former senator whom they rejected just two years ago.

Ellen Zban, 67, a longtime Youngstown resident who said she leans Democratic but has voted for Republicans, said she won’t support Husted because she doesn’t believe he has listened enough to the community.

“I really don’t think he’s done anything for us,” she said. “We never hear from him.”

But Brown isn’t necessarily the candidate she wishes Democrats were offering either.

“He’s my best option,” Zban said. “But I’d like to see younger people running.”

The race is being flooded with money as both sides try to drum up enthusiasm and define the choice for voters. Husted and allied Republican groups have already spent more than $80 million with $86 million more reserved through Election Day, according to AdImpact. Brown and Democratic groups have spent $69 million, with $67 million reserved.

Elon Musk has also waded into the race through his America PAC, which is running online and streaming ads attacking Brown over transgender issues.

“Billionaires are lying to try and bail out their ‘Golden Boy’ because Jon Husted has always put special interests ahead of Ohio,” Brown’s campaign manager, Patrick Eisenhauer, said in a statement.

Brown has attempted to make data centers central to the race, an issue that has seen bipartisan outrage in communities across the country. Brown’s allies have called Husted the face of Ohio’s data center boom, blaming the massive facilities for contributing to rising electricity costs. Husted helped promote Ohio as a destination for data centers while serving as lieutenant governor.

The ads and backlash have generated enough concern among Republicans that an internal party memo described data centers as an “anchor” around Husted in the race.

“Thirty-two years in Washington turned Sherrod Brown into a liar,” Amy Natoce, a spokesperson for Husted, said in a statement. “Jon Husted is fighting to lower costs and help Ohioans keep more of what they earn. Sen. Husted introduced legislation requiring data center companies to pay for the power they use and return excess electricity to the grid.”

The state’s politics could shift again

In Youngstown, the union retirees who watched the Mahoning Valley shift toward Republicans aren’t convinced the movement is permanent.

Rich Troisi, business manager of Laborers’ Local 127, said Republican candidates in recent elections could win support in the area largely by aligning themselves with Trump. This year, he said, that dynamic may not hold.

“I don’t think Donald Trump’s endorsement is going to be what it was,” he said.

Antonelli, the longtime union worker, pointed to independent voters, who he said tend to move with their economic circumstances.

“My dad used to say, it depends on how tight your shoes are. Tight meaning, how’s the money?” he said. “Right now, the shoes are pretty tight, no matter who you are.”

Cappelletti writes for the Associated Press. AP reporter Julie Carr Smyth contributed to this report from Columbus, Ohio.

WASHINGTON — Republicans appeared to have a firm grip on the Senate heading into the final two years of President Trump’s term. But with less than two months until Election Day, control of the chamber is now up for grabs.

Democrats have found themselves competing in states that once seemed beyond their reach as Trump’s slipping approval ratings and voters’ dissatisfaction with the economy create a difficult political environment for Republicans. But races Democrats once counted on winning have also become more complicated.

It’s a battle that’s expected to exceed $3.4 billion in spending across all races during the midterm campaign. The implications are huge for Trump’s agenda and his ability to fill administration jobs and open court seats for the remainder of his term, as the Senate is empowered to confirm or block presidential nominees.

Republicans say it’s unlikely for everything to break in Democrats’ favor, but they acknowledge they’re facing a difficult landscape. Senate Majority Leader John Thune told South Dakota’s KELOLAND News last week that he does “worry” about losing the chamber.

“I’m a realist,” Thune said. “I don’t ever try and sugarcoat things. I think it’s a competitive environment right now.”

Democrats face a scrambled path to the majority

Democrats need to net four seats to win the majority. The original path had been to hold Michigan, Georgia and New Hampshire while winning back Republican-held seats in Alaska, Maine, North Carolina and Ohio. But things have changed.

“We now have multiple paths for the majority,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said last month. “We found new states — Iowa, Texas — which people a year ago weren’t even paying attention to.”

Some of the states where Democrats were feeling most optimistic at the start of the election cycle, such as Michigan and Maine, have grown murkier.

In Michigan, where there’s an open seat this fall, no GOP candidate has won a Senate race since 1994. But Democrats are struggling to unite behind nominee Abdul El-Sayed. The favorite of progressives narrowly defeated moderate U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens in the August primary, and feelings remain raw from a bruising contest that saw nearly $70 million spent against El-Sayed.

Republicans believe Mike Rogers, who lost the 2024 Senate race by fewer than 20,000 votes, has an improved shot against El-Sayed. The Senate Leadership Fund — Senate Republicans’ spending PAC — added $6 million to its Michigan advertising investment after El-Sayed won, bringing their total spending to $51 million, the third-highest total.

Democrats also saw a prime opportunity to finally defeat five-term Republican Sen. Susan Collins in Maine, where Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris won more votes than Trump in 2024.

Progressive Graham Platner easily won the nomination in June, but he left the race the next month over a sexual assault allegation that he denies. Democratic delegates in late July chose Troy Jackson, a lesser-known former state legislative leader, to replace him.

Jackson has been forced to play catch-up. Collins and aligned super PACs have spent almost $80 million so far, according to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact, while Jackson and Democratic-aligned groups have spent and reserved close to $45 million since he became the nominee.

As one path narrowed for Democrats, others widened

Democrats increasingly see a real possibility in Texas, a state that has been an elusive goal for decades, and other GOP-led states including Iowa, Alaska and Ohio.

In Texas, Democrat James Talarico faces state Attorney General Ken Paxton, who ousted four-term incumbent Republican Sen. John Cornyn to win the GOP nomination. Senate GOP leadership backed Cornyn, seeing him as the stronger general election candidate.

Paxton has been shadowed for decades by legal and ethical questions, including indictments for securities fraud, though he was not convicted.

Talarico and allied groups have spent nearly $30 million on advertising since the May runoff, compared to less than $3 million by pro-Paxton groups. The political fund associated with Trump last week spent $10 million on TV and digital ads to help Paxton — the first major general election investment by MAGA Inc. for the midterms. Senate GOP leaders had petitioned Trump’s political team to spend some of the more than $400 million it had last month to help Paxton.

Democrats have also upped their spending in Alaska, Iowa, Ohio and North Carolina, all states currently held by Republicans. The GOP, meanwhile, is feeling more optimistic about New Hampshire as well as Michigan, while spending more to defend seats in Iowa and Alaska.

The expanded map has upped the anticipated total spending this cycle. AdImpact in June projected $3.4 billion in advertising spending on Senate races, a significant increase from the $2.8 billion the ad spending firm projected in the fall of 2025.

Why more states are in play than expected

Democrats’ path has widened in part because of Trump’s slumping job approval, notably on handling the economy, which was at 32% according to an AP-NORC poll in July — down from 40% in March 2025, shortly after he took office.

Trump’s trade policies and the war in Iran, with its corresponding inflated fuel costs, have added to the economic uncertainty for voters less than two months before Election Day.

“Things still cost too much. And so we’ve got to work on that issue,” Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio told The Associated Press. “We understand that and we know that’s real.”

Ohio Sen. Jon Husted heard the concern firsthand at a roundtable last month. Husted is looking to fend off a comeback from former Sen. Sherrod Brown in another key matchup for both parties.

During the discussion on housing, one attendee told Husted that costs were “skyrocketing” in part because of uncertainty around tariffs.

“Uncertainty is the killer to this economy,” said Dean Windham, a real estate developer who previously ran for office as a Republican.

Some Republican Senate candidates have defended Trump’s policies while confronting concerns about their economic impact.

In Michigan, where Trump’s tariffs on Canada have become a central issue, Rogers has backed the president’s approach while leaving room for disagreement.

“President Trump is right to put America First — and tariffs are necessary, but are not a one-size-fits-all solution,” Rogers said in a recent statement.

Republicans believe the math still favors them

Even if Democrats hold every seat they currently control, they would need to flip at least two seats in states Trump carried by double digits in 2024 to win the majority.

Republicans are betting that those underlying advantages will matter more as Election Day approaches — particularly as Trump and the party turn their attention toward mobilizing voters who helped return him to the White House.

Trump told reporters last week that he will “be making a lot of stops” in the last 30 days before the election.

This week, Republicans will hold a midterm convention in Texas, where Trump is set to speak and top Senate candidates including Rogers and Husted are expected to attend.

But Republicans acknowledge they have work to do.

“Politics is local,” Republican Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota said. He pointed to Trump’s decision to import beef, which he said made farmers and ranchers “feel just like the administration pulled the rug right off from underneath” them.

“They’re hurt,” Rounds said. “They feel like they’ve been let down.”

Cappelletti, Beaumont and Jalonick write for the Associated Press. Beaumont reported from Des Moines, Iowa.

WASHINGTON — An armed assailant charged toward the Democratic candidate for Ohio governor, Amy Acton, on Sunday during a campaign stop at the Canfield Fair, injuring several people before he was stopped by troopers, the Ohio State Highway Patrol said.

The Highway Patrol said in a statement that a man it identified as Patrick Havas, 38, forced his way through a crowd, knocking over members of the audience as he moved toward Acton, the state’s former public health director. He had a taser and two pistols, the statement said.

The Mahoning County Sheriff’s Office said two handguns and a set of brass knuckles were recovered after his arrest, and “no weapons were ever brandished or even removed from their holsters.”

Havas was taken to the county jail and booked on charges of disorderly conduct and two counts of assault, the Highway Patrol statement said, adding that no other details were available pending an investigation. Online court records didn’t yet list the case, and it wasn’t clear as of Sunday night whether Havas has an attorney.

Republican Gov. Mike DeWine said in a statement that the man “tried to forcefully push himself” toward Acton as she was speaking at the fair in Canfield, in northeastern Ohio.

“Violence or the threat of violence at political or public events is always unacceptable,” DeWine added.

The attack is the latest act of political violence to roil the United States. The Ohio gubernatorial contest is one of the most high-profile races this year as the campaigns enter the final six weeks of campaigning before the election in November.

Acton is facing Republican Vivek Ramaswamy, who has parlayed his national name recognition from his 2024 presidential run, tech industry connections and alliance with President Trump into a record fundraising haul that he is tapping for advertising spots. He is using campaign rallies and advertising to criticize Acton.

Ramaswamy’s campaign called Sunday’s attack unacceptable.

“Candidates should be able to meet with voters without having to worry about threats or violence. What happened today is completely unacceptable and has no place in politics, and we hope that no one was hurt,” Ramaswamy’s communications director, Connie Luck, said in a statement Sunday.

Addie Bullock, communications director for Acton’s campaign, said in a statement that the assailant lunged at Acton. She said the candidate “will always stand up to the chaos, hate and vitriol that pits us against one another.”

The incident brought condemnation from Ohio Republican Sen. Jon Husted, who said on X that he and his wife were “disturbed by the attempted attack on Amy Acton today at the Canfield Fair. We are grateful for law enforcement’s quick response. There is no place for this kind of behavior, and it must never be tolerated.”

The country has seen a rise in political violence over the last decade, including assassination attempts against Donald Trump at a rally in 2024 and at the White House Correspondents Assn. dinner in April, and the Jan. 6, 2021, riot by a pro-Trump mob at the U.S. Capitol.

Other examples include a 2017 shooting at a Republican congressional baseball team practice in Alexandria, Va., a 2022 hammer assault on then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband at the couple’s San Francisco home, and the fatal shootings last year of a Democratic Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband and of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk in Utah.

Federal political committees spent more than $40 million on expenses labeled as security during the 2023-24 campaign cycle, the most recent one for which data are publicly available, according to a report released in April from the Public Service Alliance, a nonpartisan group that focuses on security for public officials.

Before running for governor, Acton had been recruited by DeWine in 2019 to lead the Ohio Department of Health while serving as an associate professor of public health at Ohio State University. As the COVID-19 pandemic ramped up in early 2020, she was thrown into the state and national spotlight — becoming a source of comfort to many viewers of the governor’s daily news conferences.

For her service as health director, Acton earned the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation’s Profile in COVID Courage Award, the Columbus Foundation’s Spirit of Columbus Award and Ohio State’s highest alumni honor, the Alumni Medalist Award.

Her position as the face of the DeWine administration’s aggressive stance against the coronavirus also earned Acton many enemies, among them statehouse Republicans and conservative Ohioans who opposed pandemic public health restrictions.

Fields writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Ryan J. Foley in Iowa City, Iowa, contributed to this report.