On Wednesday, August 26 I received the following e-vite from my local union:
I have great interest in talking to both of these people, so the decision to shlep myself to my state union headquarters on the Friday at the end of the first full week of school was irritating albeit easy.
I was never counting on being excited by a Democratic gubernatorial candidate in the state of Ohio, so I have not necessarily been disappointed in Amy Acton’s candidacy or campaign, because there was never anything invigorating from the platform to start with.
However, she’s now straddling the line with many voters, including me, after fumbling many stances this summer and pivoting to the right, most recently this past week with ICE and mass surveillance.
From Morgan Trau at Ohio Capital Journal:
Democratic candidate for Ohio governor Dr. Amy Acton is breaking from her party to support local police in working with federal immigration enforcement. This comes as Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy raises concerns about mass surveillance due to Flock cameras.
“It’s an honor to fight for the people who are first responders,” Acton said at a news conference Tuesday.
She had just been endorsed by the Ohio Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, a police union representing about 8,000 officers.
Now, Acton is breaking from her colleagues.
“We always work with the federal law enforcement, and we will do so — whatever it takes to keep Ohioans safe,” Acton said when specifically asked about federal immigration officers, or ICE.
Unlike other liberal leaders, she said she wouldn’t prevent local law enforcement from helping out with immigration raids. However, she expects ICE to follow laws.
“We need to hold anyone who comes to our state to the same standards of professionalism that we expect of our public safety officers, and I will always fight for that,” she said.
ICE has been utilizing Flock Safety cameras amid growing distrust over privacy concerns. The devices are typically, and supposed to be, used as license plate readers. Some Ohioans have chopped the cameras down.
“I absolutely know that we have had, as Governor DeWine said, many crimes solved due to the use of technology,” Acton said. “When I come in, we’ll be doing a very comprehensive overview of all our public safety and emergency response.”
Educators around Ohio are increasingly scared for our immigrant students and families who are enduring the waves of terror ICE continues to send through our streets, which is why I believe she needs to answer the question that I posed to her.
This article from Tiffin Ohio ran with the headline “Fact check: What Acton actually said about ICE and immigration enforcement” and, if you just read the headline, you’d think other news outlets led you astray. However, the article simply details how Acton has always said Ohio should support federal law enforcement.
Acton can expect ICE to follow the law all she wants, but they aren’t, and they won’t. Just this week the family of Alex Pettri, the Minnesota nurse who was shot 10 times in the back by ICE while trying to protect immigrants with nothing but his phone in his hand, did an interview with CBS saying they have heard absolutely nothing regarding the investigation into the stone cold murder of their son committed by the government.
ICE has recently kicked up their operations in Springfield, Ohio yet again and the local government is doing nothing about it. The Springfield News-Sun reported that residents showed up to speak out regarding ICE during public comment at this week’s city council meeting.
Community members shared concerns with Flock data being used to track residents as ICE is detaining people while on their way to and from work. ICE is also slapping ankle monitors on innocent people, and it has been reported Butler County Jail is now detaining at least 30 Haitians for ICE.
After public comment concluded, council members held a moment of silence and proceeded with their planned agenda, which held no actions or conversations regarding citizen concerns.
Acton’s recent comments regarding local police working with federal officers is troubling enough, but the idea that a “comprehensive overview” of public safety will result in anything changing is laughable at best, and Springfield residents are telling us why.
I understand her campaign manager and consultants think the middle messaging is best, but the reality of what we’re living through will continue while the “comprehensive overview” occurs, and it will end with “Well, the cops said they need it, so, we’re keeping it.”
Even if ICE did “follow the law” Acton’s words still fall short, because Senate Bill 172 is clipping through the Ohio legislature. The bill says federal law enforcement will be able to lawfully enter our school buildings to apprehend and detain any person who is or suspected to be unlawfully present. The bill language also notes that it supersedes any policy of any other governing body (read: school board policies).
When I saw the opportunity to actually ask Acton about her views on ICE and schools, I took it. I recorded it because this is the kind of accountability that I believe needs to exist with politicians, which includes people actively campaigning.
And she ignored me. Her campaign staffers answered instead, with “We’re just going to do backpacks today!” and “We’re not doing interviews.”
Politicians are meant to be accountable to the people, and I believe our country and especially Ohio is in the position it’s in because we, the people, have failed to hold them accountable.
The internet backlash I’ve received has been predictable yet interesting. For the most part it is what I expected it to be, but what has surprised me is the amount of people that share the basic principle of believing politicians should answer questions from constituents.
There is one criticism I cannot ignore, though, which is:
“We need to get her elected first and then we can hold her accountable.”
That is not how that works, it has never worked like that. Democracy brings the notion that politicians are elected into office because their platform and campaign is popular and agreeable among the electorate.
We the people hold politicians accountable to things they are proposing in their campaign, this is similar ideology to getting things in writing from your boss: You said this at a certain time and now I am holding you accountable to it, for better or for worse.
When issues rise up during the campaign window that are important enough to a big enough base of the electorate, the campaigning politician will add the issue with their stance to their platform in order to maintain their popularity among the electorate.
Acton has actually showed us this in her campaign already with data centers. She did not have a stance on data centers until very recently. It was absent her platform until July, when the Ohio EPA announced it was acceptable for data centers to dump their pollution straight into Ohio lakes and streams.
This was her initial message regarding that issue:
Versing that to what Ohio Republican Senator Bernie Moreno said one day earlier:
Don’t get me wrong, Bernie Moreno will never do anything about data centers, full stop. But he bested her here when it comes to simple rhetoric — maybe I’m the only one that took notice, and maybe it’s because I’m an English teacher, but it stayed with me and I think of it often.
The general population in Ohio caused such a ruckus that the Ohio EPA walked it back and attributed their retreat to being a response to the public.
Because the electorate had shown this was an issue they cared about, Acton actually did add it to her platform. I find it to be largely toothless, but my point here is that she responded to public pressure and outrage.
And I’d like her to respond to the public pressure and outrage regarding her ICE comments from this week. More specifically, I’d like her to address to issue of how the terror of ICE impacts our school communities and what she is going to do about it.
This should be a no-brainer for Acton because she often touts “As a kid, public schools saved my life.” Public schools are still saving the lives of children, but her stances on kids with marginalized identities — a.k.a. different than hers — are causing question as to whether she thinks all kids in public schools are worth saving, because immigrant students aren’t the only ones she’s thrown under the bus lately.
Earlier this summer the Supreme Court ruled Title IX does not support trans people, and Acton told the Toledo Blade “I do not support boys playing in girls sports. This is already settled law in Ohio, and as governor I will enforce and uphold the law.” White people have been using oppressive laws to justify their own bigotry since committing the genocide and enslavement that formed this country in the first place, and though it’s not surprising to see it coming from moderate Democrats in 2026, it is exhausting.
It is especially exhausting for educators, because it then falls on us to protect our students, no matter their identities, because they are our students and we see the brilliance and beauty they bring to our classrooms, our communities, and our lives.
But we can’t keep doing this dance. That is why, in my social media clip I asked her if she is aware of the suicide statistics among transgender youth.
After Acton voiced her dedication to upholding anti-trans laws, specifically governing the youth (with her terminology of “girls” and “boys”) the Progressive Caucus of the Ohio Democratic Party, which has emerged over the course of the last year, put out a statement saying her views will cost her both votes and volunteers.
The Ohio Democratic Party forced the Progressive Caucus to take it down, citing that the caucus didn’t have the party’s permission to put up communication regarding the issue (lmfao).
The caucus took the statement down, and the Acton campaign scheduled a meeting with the caucus to ‘listen’. That meeting didn’t go so well, as reported by Erin in the Morning:
Inside sources who have gone public now say the “listening session” was a debacle. Acton did not show up, her campaign manager barred Arienne Childrey—Vice Chair of the party’s Pride Caucus, a transgender candidate for the Ohio House, and Ohio’s first openly trans city council member—from even entering the Zoom call. When another advocate demanded to know why Childrey was barred, she was ejected. The Chair of the Progressive Caucus, Kim McCarthy, was locked in the waiting room during the entire “listening session.” And in the end, the campaign ultimately refused to apologize for calling trans girls “boys,” refused to retract Acton’s support for a transgender sports ban, and ended the meeting with no plans for what come next.
We need to push Amy Acton now. I know what happens when you don’t because I moved here from Denver and if I had more time and more energy to fight the good fight in more than one state I’d take another hour and type out the story of tech-bro-millionaire-but-gay-so-he-was-progressive-enough Colorado Governor Jared Polis who has not helped the people (or the public schools) of the Colorful Colorado.
It won’t be my fault if Vivek Ramaswamy gets elected governor, despite what a small chunk of the internet is claiming. That ideology is preposterous, but highlights the unwillingness that people still have to holding politicians accountable for their own words and actions.
I will be 38 years old next week, I have been voting for 20 years. For two decades I have been told every election is the most important election of my lifetime. …and it’s been true every time.
If Amy Acton loses, it will be because we had yet another corporate Democrat who gave nods and handshakes to the right, thinking it’d get her votes from people that were in “the middle” instead of being willing to answer questions and develop policies with registered democrats.
Either that or straight up voter fraud. But it won’t be because a teacher asked her on camera to make a statement on her ICE stance and how that intersects with public schools.
There’s nothing wrong with asking candidates questions that concern you. It is their job to answer to the people, and Acton doesn’t get to escape the essential duty of a campaigning politician.
There are so many ways Amy Acton could have handled me at that event. Here are three options off the top of my head:
“Thank you for telling me that’s important to you. I have to stuff these backpacks first, and then do a little stump talk, but I’d like to talk with you about this after the event is over. Do you have some time to stick around?” And if I had said no, Amy, I don’t have time because I’m exhausted and I want to go home, she could have set a time for a 15 minute phone call at a later date.
At the end of the event, she could have said this to the group: “I know many of you have been scared for your students regarding ICE. If you have time, I’d like to hear some of your experiences so I can think about how we need to move forward.” And then she could have listened intently and asked questions while her campaign staff took detailed notes.
“Thank you for bringing that up, I know you’re not alone with that concern. I want you to know I’m working on addressing this publicly and you can look for a statement in the next 72 hours.”
Any of those options would have been acceptable to me, and it’s what I would’ve done. This is also how I manage my classroom: I acknowledge, validate, explain why I can’t do the thing right now, but I do the thing, because the student matters to me.
I almost didn’t post that video on the internet, and what gave me the biggest pause was that it was at a “backpack stuffing event”. I welcome that criticism, I understand it and I waffled with it myself. But I have been trying to engage with her and I have had no opportunities except for this one.
And honestly, an event like this should have been the opportunity for me to speak with her. Unions need to be putting on genuine candidate engagement events with their members, especially if they have a PAC, and especially if that PAC has endorsed or is considering endorsing a politician. I firmly believe this genuine engagement is a duty of a union.
A brief word about the backpack stuffing event: We were never told what school or classroom or district the event was benefitting. The backpacks themselves were the cheapest material I’ve perhaps ever held between my fingers with the zippers already jamming on the first pass. While I was filling them with two-pocket folders, composition notebooks, pencils, pens, glue sticks, and scissors, I thought about my own 9th grade English Language Arts students who don’t have notebooks.
The event was never set up for anyone to actually attend with it being on the Friday of the first week of school (teacher-tired is a different level of exhaustion, especially after the first week), from 3:30-4:30 (elementary teachers in Columbus don’t even get out of work until 3:45), and it was downtown (traffic and you have to pay for parking).
Rather, the event was set up for very specific people to attend. It was billed to me, a CEA member, as a “CEA-member-only event” but the invite also went out to a special list of pointed union members around central Ohio.
The invite was only sent out to union members two days prior, which was apparently because that’s when our local union found out about it.
…Probably because the Acton campaign realized they needed some good press after her remarks earlier in the week, and what better press is there than a bunch of teachers, especially during the back to school season?
Some comments have asked me “What’s the point in posting this video?” or “What did you hope to get from this?” and I want people to see the reaction I got from asking a campaigning politician about an issue I care about.
I want other people to know there’s a regular person asking questions. I want other educators to see you can question people in power.
I did it because I know other people are too scared to do it.
I did it because I am not too scared to do it.
I did it because every time I do it, it gets less scary.
I did it because I worry there might be a time when I am too scared to do it.
I did it because I think that time is coming quickly.
…and that scares me most of all.