Amy Acton, the Democratic nominee for governor of Ohio, is facing backlash from Republican rival Vivek Ramaswamy after claiming COVID-19 mortality rates had been as high as 50% in the early days of the 2020 pandemic.

Acton highlighted the figure as evidence of her effective leadership as director of the Ohio Department of Health on a podcast appearance in September.

«In those early days, the mortality rate was 50%. I started with that in March. By June, when we reopened, it was because we took swift, decisive action. The mortality rate had gone down to 5%. We learned how to save lives,» Acton said.

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Acton’s retelling of the pandemic’s lethality comes as she defends her record as health director and amid an uphill bid to become the next governor of the Buckeye State.

COVID-19’s mortality rate was well below the 50% Acton described, resulting in 275,000 deaths nationwide in 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC)

Of patients who contracted the virus, the death rate was just 15.9% when adjusted for age. And when filtered further for when COVID was the cause of death, that figure fell further to 11.3%.

When asked about the figure, Acton’s office said she had been referring to death rates in hospitals.

She also bashed Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, the founder of Roivant Sciences, a biotech pharmaceutical company that helped produce COVID treatments.

«While Dr. Acton was working hand in hand with Governor DeWine to keep Ohioans safe, Vivek Ramaswamy was calling for mandatory COVID-19 testing, making more than $2 billion off of the COVID vaccine and recommending segregating Ohioans based on biomarker status,» Addie Bullock, a spokesperson for Acton’s campaign, said.

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Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy speaks at his caucus night event at the Surety Hotel Jan. 15, 2024 in Des Moines, Iowa.  (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

In the past, Acton has received Republican criticism for pushing Ohio’s COVID response too far. Acton has countered by arguing that her leadership, alongside Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, had been effective.

«I had quarantine power. … We were the very first to take action,» Acton said on the podcast.

A Ramaswamy spokesperson fired back at Acton, telling Fox News Digital she was «spewing lies» on COVID-19.

«Liberal Amy Acton is desperately trying to rewrite history, spewing lies in a futile attempt to justify her disastrous decision-making during COVID,» Connie Luck said. 

«But her outrageous claims only confirm what we already know: She’s an incompetent, failed government bureaucrat who ran our state into the ground and is wholly unqualified to lead Ohio.»

With Acton’s advice, Ohio was one of the first states to impose broad emergency restrictions, becoming the first state to shut down schools in March, issuing stay-at-home orders, closing polling places and limiting public gatherings of 50 and then 100 people. 

In those early days, Acton once overestimated the number of people in Ohio with COVID, asserting in March 2020 that the figure was 100,000, only to walk back the claim a few days later and state that she had been «guesstimating.» Also in March, Acton claimed Ohio could see as many as 10,000 new cases a day at a press conference with DeWine.

DeWine has defended Acton from criticism, saying it was ultimately his decision on which closures to enact and called Acton’s counsel «superb» in comments to local media.

Later, Acton split with the governor’s office. In particular, Acton disagreed with allowing county fairs, citing fears that the events would risk renewed spread of the virus. She also didn’t see eye to eye with which groups entered into partnerships with the state.

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Amy Acton, former director of the Ohio Department of Health and Democratic, meets with local residents while campaigning at Bottoms Up Coffee in Columbus, Ohio, April 6, 2026. (Stephen Zenner/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

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«I stepped down because I would not sign orders that were being forced on me. I stepped down in June because they began to make COVID, like everything else in the state house, political, giving special interests and certain businesses advantage over other businesses,» Acton said.

Having cleared the Ohio primaries and secured the Democratic nomination, Acton will face Ramaswamy in the Nov. 3 general election.

«En retroceso»

«Los reyes de las tierras»

Several Republican senators challenged the credibility of the testimony of a former Biden Justice Department official during the second day of the Todd Blanche confirmation hearing, pointing to the part she played in the clemency granted to 37 death row inmates.

Democrats called Elizabeth Oyer, the former U.S. pardon attorney at the Department of Justice, a nonpolitical position she served from April 2022 until March 2025 when then-Deputy Attorney General Blanche fired her, which she argued was politically motivated.

While Democrats cast the former pardon attorney as evidence Blanche had politicized the Justice Department, Republicans argued her recommendations to commute the sentences of federal death row inmates undermined her credibility.

Blanche, who has served as acting attorney general since April 2, did not publicly disclose the reasoning for Oyer’s firing, but she claimed it was because she refused to recommend that actor Mel Gibson, who serves as a special envoy to Hollywood for President Donald Trump, have his gun rights restored. The Justice Department denied this as the cause for her firing.

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In her opening testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday, Oyer mentioned Blanche’s handling of the Epstein files and Ghislaine Maxwell’s reassignment to a lower security prison as among the main reasons Blanche should not become attorney general.

«At the end of the day, the priority of this DOJ is protecting powerful men, even when it comes at the expense of vulnerable women,» Oyer testified Thursday.

But Sens. Josh Hawley, R-Mo.; Eric Schmitt, R-Mo.; and Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, hammered Oyer over an internal memo from Nov. 4, 2024, in which she recommended that Attorney General Merrick Garland advise President Joe Biden to consider commuting the 40 remaining federal death sentences. Biden went on to commute the death sentences of 37 of those recommended.

«You have no credibility to talk about Todd Blanche. You have none,» Schmitt said. «You’ve come here, you deny basic facts. You recommended the commutation of murderers. You gave no quarter at all or any time to the victims of these brutal murders. So, again, I can’t believe you’ve been called here by the other side. But I’m glad we’ve had an opportunity to expose your hypocrisy.»

A report from the Justice Department found that Oyer’s 73-page memorandum only dedicated three paragraphs to address the grievances of the victims’ families.

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Earlier in the hearing, Hawley pointed out some of the notorious federal death row inmates whose death sentences Oyer recommended be commuted to life in prison. Among them was Dylan Roof, who was convicted in the June 17, 2015, mass shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in Charleston, South Carolina, where he killed nine Black parishioners during a Bible study. Biden ultimately declined to pardon him.

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., speaks while pointing to a sign during the second day of acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche’s Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing on his nomination to be attorney general on Capitol Hill in Washington July 16, 2026. (Ken Cedeno/AFP via Getty Images)

«You said that actually Roof is not a compelling candidate for clemency, but you recommended it anyway,» Hawley said, referring to Oyer’s memorandum. «Why? Because he suffered from anxiety. You said, ‘Right, he suffered from anxiety’. Did it ever occur to you that maybe the family of his victims might suffer a little bit of anxiety because he marched into their church and murdered them in cold blood, because he was an incredible racist and he wanted to get on TV?»

Hawley then turned to Oyer’s recommendation to commute the death sentence of Robert Bowers, who was convicted of 63 federal charges stemming from the 2018 Tree of Life synagogue shooting, which killed 11 Jewish worshipers. Biden also did not commute Bowers’ sentence.

«This guy killed people just because they’re Jews,» Hawley said. «A jury recommended that he be sentenced to death, and you substituted your judgment for theirs, and now he’s going to live. Are you proud of that?»

«Sir, what I am proud of is the fact that I took my job as pardon attorney extremely seriously,» Oyer said in response.

«I think your judgment is astoundingly terrible. I’m amazed that this side of the aisle has called you.» Hawley responded.

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But Grassley pointed out that Oyer also recommended commuting the death sentence of Jorge Avila-Torrez. Torrez was on federal death row for convictions for the stabbing deaths of two young girls in Illinois, the murder of Navy Petty Officer Amanda Snell at a Virginia military base and the abduction and rape of a University of Maryland graduate student.

He pressed Oyer on the pardon recommendations she made. Oyer refused to answer, invoking the president’s executive privilege.

«You can’t even tell me if you contacted the victim’s family?» Grassley asked. «You can’t say yes or no to that?»

Oyer said that all the death row inmates who received clemency will spend the rest of their lives behind bars.

Former Department of Justice Pardon Attorney Liz Oyer is sworn in during the second day of acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche’s Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing on his nomination to be attorney general on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., July 16, 2026. (Ken Cedeno/AFP via Getty Images)

«These are absolutely horrific cases,» Oyer said. «And every one of the individuals you mentioned will remain incarcerated for the rest of their lives, most likely in a maximum security prison facility.»

Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., condemned his Republican colleagues’ line of questioning with Oyer later in the hearing.

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«I just want to start off by saying, Miss Oyer, I hold you in the highest esteem and respect, especially what you’re doing now as a private citizen,» Booker said. «You use a platform to educate people about the law. 

«It is technical, but yet accessible. And the badgering you just endured, it should be completely unacceptable. You were asked to comment on things you didn’t have before you. The treatment here, to me, is just outrageous. And I apologize on behalf of the United States Senate.»

Fox News Digital reached out to Biden’s office and Oyer for comment.