Dr. Amy Acton and David Pepper Discuss Defeating GOP in Ohio Gov Race

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0:57Ben Meiselas:so that was from this past weekend in columbus ohio people in ohio are scared they are exhausted and they want change it's showing up in all of the polling data a state that was once thought to be ruby red which i've always thought was more kind of voter suppressed and gerrymandered red but it was considered to have turned ruby red they want change you look at the polling data and you see trump as a net negative right now you see vivek ramaswamy who's running for governor as a net negative right now just look at what's going on in the governor's race you have vivek Ramaswamy there in Ohio, sending text messages, alerting his followers that he is losing to Amy Acton in the Ohio governor's race.

1:49Ben Meiselas:Hey, everybody, it's Vivek. Thanks for taking the time to open my note to you. It means a lot. I want to share this with you. And he shares a poll showing that he's losing. It may be the first accurate thing that Vivek has ever actually said, because indeed, he is down in all of the polling there, the Emerson polling, all the latest polling. He is down. And interestingly, too, you look at Trump's approval rating right there, and it is a net negative there. His disapproval is at 51 percent, while only 44 percent approve. And that number has flipped dramatically since the Bowling Green poll that was taken several months back that showed Donald Trump as a net plus right there.

2:30Ben Meiselas:I mean, if you look at what's happening in Ohio, the facts speak for themselves. And it's not a good picture about what this Republican leadership there has done, whether you're talking about Ohio farmers who've seen a one-year 74 % loss in sales due to Trump's tariffs in terms of China buying soybeans and buying other produce there, whether it's just the assault on the community organizations in Ohio. Ohio is known for its strong community organizations that help families stay afloat, whether they're organizations with religious backings or not. It's a very giving state, and the federal government has wanted to control all of it.

3:17Ben Meiselas:And most of the people in Ohio said, why are you getting in the way of us just trying to live our lives and to help people? Well, all of this is going on. Oh, by the way, don't even get me started on the Affordable Care Act subsidies. expiring. You even saw multiple Republican Congress members from Ohio, three. They joined with the Democrats and they extended these subsidies. And meanwhile, people like Vivek and Trump and MAGA leadership, they said that they're going to block any extension of the affordable care subsidies. 500 ,000 people from Ohio can be affected or are being affected. And, you know, People are really seeing their premiums double.

3:58Ben Meiselas:Not good. And what's Vivek doing? It seems that every time I do a story in Ohio and you just Google Vivek, it's something that is more grotesque than the last time I do it. And I'd like to say, oh, I did some incredible research here to find all of this out. But when they headline is that your bodyguard was busted by feds with an alleged fentanyl stockpile. You know, not not a great headline. A bodyguard of top MAGA figurehead Vivek Ramaswamy arrested on suspicion of drug smuggling after investigators said they found fentanyl and meth stashed in his home. OK. And then Vivek taking trips over the weekend to Turks and Caicos as Dr.

4:46Ben Meiselas:Amy Acton, who's running for governor, says Vivek, how's Turks and Caicos? It was warm in Ohio today, by the way. So he's evidently flying his private jet to the Turks and Caicos Island. I mean, it's cold. He needs to get away from the cold. Vivek needs his luxury five-star vacations. You know, he thinks that the people of Ohio are too mediocre to hang out with, I guess. I mean, this follows him canceling speaking engagements amid backlash from online conservatives and right-wing people were saying, why are you speaking at this event that he was supposed to speak at. So then Vivek's most recent move, another op-ed.

5:23Ben Meiselas:That's also the theme. Every time I do an Ohio story, it seems that Vivek writes a new op-ed and changes his personality. So his new personality is that he doesn't like social media. Vivek Ramaswamy, the number one social media troll, his new thing doesn't like social media anymore. I'm swearing off Instagram and X. It's too easy to get a distorted sense of the public's concern. I mean, this was a guy who was like mocking people as being snowflakes if they didn't like being harassed by him online. He goes, on New Year's Eve, I deleted X and Instagram from my phone. I'm going to spend my this guy, the most phony guy in the world.

6:03Ben Meiselas:I'll spend my newfound time listening to more voters in real world Ohio or Turks and Caicos developing more policies to make ours. This guy is such a clown. Okay. I want to bring in Dr. Amy Acton, the democratic candidate for governor there, along with her new pick, her running mate, David Pepper, a longtime friend of mine as well, the Lieutenant governor pick. It's the Acton Pepper ticket. So a lot has, seems like a lot, we spoke like three weeks ago, Dr. Acton, and a lot has happened since that time. So talk to us, I want to talk about your pick of David Pepper as your running mate. Talk to us first about where we are, 2026 in Ohio.

6:49Ben Meiselas:This is the year. This is the election year. It's big. Yeah, I can't say enough. It is so exciting. Everywhere we go in Ohio, there is an energy and there is such a want for change. People are exhausted by this chaos, hate and vitriol. And they are looking for public servants again who solve the problems of our everyday life instead of making problems. And so we are so excited to be out the gate strong. So talk to us about your business, a big pick. You know, big pick. You picked your lieutenant governor. Vivek picked his Turks and Caicos person. So tell us, though, first about your pick and then let's talk.

7:33Ben Meiselas:And then David, I'll bring you in. You know, this is one of the biggest decisions you make is who is going to be your sidekick, who is going to be in the saddle with you. And I couldn't have been more thrilled that David Pipper is my my lieutenant governor. He is a lifelong public servant who has been fighting tirelessly against corruption in our very broken statehouse. People in my state are struggling. There are special interests and bad actors who have been taking our state backwards on nearly every measure. and David has been a voice his entire career, both in his early career in city council, as a councilman in his city of Cincinnati, of which he is so proud, to work he did as a Democratic Party chair to the books and the things he has been writing on what is broken.

8:28And I am just so grateful to have someone who cares about Ohioans the way I do, who has the same passion I have for change.

8:37Ben Meiselas:So, David, in addition to you being a longtime friend of mine, you're actually one of my favorite authors as well. And I'm not just saying that anybody who watches the Midas Dutch Network knows that the phrase that I commonly use is laboratories of autocracy. And whereas states were supposed to be laboratories of ingenuity and democracy, they've been turned upside down. And you gave a case study of how Ohio had essentially been hijacked. And it's not really the ruby red state that it's reported. It is a laboratory of autocracy that was used to do these, you know, experiments that didn't that we know the outcome.

9:17Ben Meiselas:They did not work. And we're seeing them not work. So talk to us about, though, your this campaign, what kind of sets you apart from the other Lieutenant Governor Pick, but also this concept of laboratories of autocracy, I think, is something that I always cited in every one of my shows. Well, thank you. It's an honor to join Dr. Acton. And by the way, we're so glad you're focused on Ohio in the way that you are. We agree completely. This is a state that can be turned around. We used to be a bellwether in terms of political results. Now we are a bellwether in how corruption and gerrymandering can not just destroy the politics, but destroy everyday outcomes for everyday Ohioans.

10:00So one of the things I wrote about is once you have these broken states, they basically take the public assets and hand them over to all the special interests. And so when you're sitting around talking to Ohioans, they're paying more property taxes because of that. They're paying more for child care. They're paying more for utility bills. That's the sort of the method of these state houses. And I'm excited to get in this to make that case and to bring that fight to the other candidate that Vivek picked. You know, the frame could not be more clear. I've been spending years exposing the corruption of state houses and how they're destroying outcomes for everyday people.

10:41Vivek Ramaswamy selected the guy who leads one of the two institutions of that broken legislature, the Senate president. So we have the clear contrast between a change ticket, no more deals where we're giving billionaires breaks while we're talking about four days of school a week in Toledo. Let's change that. Vivek Ramaswamy literally picked a guy who's been one of the leaders of all that. When I testified against gerrymandering, as you know I've been doing, I was staring at the Senate president who was just picked. He did the gerrymander. So I think the contrast for Ohioans could not be more clear between the change ticket, who's going to clean things up and bring some relief for Ohio families, versus the same old status quo broken statehouse ticket.

11:27Ben Meiselas:And Dr. Acton, you put out recently a video of real Ohioans speaking in the words that Vivek used to attack the people of Ohio. I always found it to be a strange strategy that Vivek employed, which is to attack the people of Ohio, attack the people of America, say that they're very mediocre and that they've always idolized all of the wrong things and that they're really bad people. And then say, hey, bad people, I'm going to go to Turks and Caicos and vacation. And my, you know, my bodyguard may get arrested with fentanyl and methamphetamine. And I'm going going to now be Mr. I don't like social media after literally becoming, after making a career of being the social media troll, but I want your vote, you know?

12:18Ben Meiselas:So what do you make of all of that, doctor? You know, you're talking about the very famous Christmas tweet, as it is now called. And this year, one of the wonderful things my team did is they literally just had Ohioans read his quote. and it was everyday Ohioans from every walk of life. And at the end, one woman just said, like I just started laughing. She said, this makes no sense. You know, like it makes no sense to me. You know, it makes no sense that we are putting the wants of billionaires and extreme special interests against the needs of everyday Ohioans. And this campaign is about taking back our state and beginning to address the problems that people actually want us addressing, whether it's childcare or healthcare or property taxes or energy bills going up, people are just longing for us to stop all this nonsense.

13:17You know, we just couldn't have a bigger contrast in our state of somebody who is flying around in that private jet versus David and I, even when we launched, we launched in a working group that we do every day, sitting around a table with small businesses, listening deeply, learning what it is that is needed from us to serve the people of Ohio. And the contrast couldn't be greater.

13:45Ben Meiselas:You know, David, Vivek made his career as being a snake oil salesman. I mean, quite literally, that's how he made his money. He may or may not have actually been selling snake oil or may not have been selling anything at all. But then he invented himself as the MAGA culture war guy who was literally the social media troll who would virtue signal his MAGA culture war. Let's talk about the bathrooms and let's talk about the this and let's talk about the that. You know, and let's not talk about the fact that they're looting most people and giving the money to the billionaires and they're making things less affordable and screwing over people.

14:34Ben Meiselas:And I think and I want to get your take. Vivek has seen what's happened in these special elections. He's seen the blue tsunami that took place back in November. And the message, I think, from a lot of people is we don't want we don't want to do these culture war stuff right now. We want to know what are you going to do for us? You got us with the culture war stuff in 2024. You got us with it there, but like not this time. Like, what are you really going to do for us? So now he does these op-eds once every week as like a new, like everybody, I'm not doing social media anymore. I am now going to be, it's like, dude, you were the Mr.

15:11Ben Meiselas:Troll. Do you think we didn't forget about who you are? David. Yeah. I mean, he's had a really bad year. He launched, I think last January. I think January 20th is the anniversary where he got fired on the first day of Doge. And after that, he decided to run for governor. And he's kind of like Iowa. The longer people see him and hear from him, the worse he does. That's happened to him all year. And as you said, the last month has been especially bizarre. I mean, the most recent things with the bodyguard, almost hard to believe. But reinventing yourself. I mean, here's the thing about Vivek Ramaswamy.

15:46Like, first impressions really count in politics. Dr. Acton's first impression was, I'm a doctor trying to help everybody. She skyrocketed, huge respect, not even in a partisan way. What you described of Mr. Ramaswamy, that first impression is sunken deep. His polling number, he is very well known, and it's quite negative. That's why he always trails Dr. Acton overall, and incredibly so with independence. And I think an effort to reinvent himself will only further make him seem like a snake oil salesman because it's halfway through the campaign. And one other thing, too, by the way, if you dig a little deeper, almost everything he's rolling out on policy, and Dr.

16:31Acton and I are very serious about, we need to build the best schools in America again. We used to have that. We're serious about lowering costs on all the items we talked about. Almost everything he proposes is also snake oil sales stuff. None of it adds up. He's going to get rid of every tax, but he's going to build the greatest. It's all nonsense. It's like clearly was his business sort of M.O., and I don't think that's going to work in politics because I think most Ohioans are smart enough to see through a salesman. It may have worked for him in business. Maybe he sold some books talking about it.

17:04But as a matter of serious issues, it just doesn't fly. And I think people, we hear it every day, people see through it as, again, one more con job. Dr.

17:14Ben Meiselas:Acton, before we go, what's your final message to the people of Ohio and throughout this country right now as we start heading into mid-January 2026? And where can people learn more about the campaign? Thank you, Ben. You know, we continue to see things that are breaking our hearts. We all know that. These are hard and difficult times. But I'm a very hopeful person. But my definition of hope is optimism plus a plan. And I'm so excited because here in Ohio, we have a plan to turn this state around. And we need everyone's help. You can learn a lot more about our campaign at actinforgovernor.com.

18:01Join David. Join me. Ohio is going to be that bellwether state again. We are going to flip this state blue. We have amazing people up and down the ticket. And we're all ready to go back in there and do the work of everyday Ohioans and build the Ohio we actually deserve. Thanks. Thanks so much, Ben, for having us.

18:21Ben Meiselas:Dr. Amy Acton, David Pepper, the Lieutenant Governor Pick, thank you both for joining. Thank you. Take care. Everybody hit subscribe. let's get to 6 million subscribers.

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