Dec 13, 2025
Lisa Parker’s full article is on Substack
Hey y’all,
It’s Mamaw, and this time I’m off the porch in Worthington, Ohio, tucked into a little table at Kitty’s Cakes — coffee, cupcakes, and a big conversation with the woman I believe is going to be our next governor, Dr. Amy Acton.
You may remember her from those early COVID briefings: the calm doctor standing next to the governor, talking to us like we were her neighbors, not numbers on a chart.
You may also hear the whispers of:
“Yeah, but she quit.”
So let’s talk about that. Because after spending time with Amy, I can tell you: this woman has never quit on Ohio.
From a Tent in Youngstown to Med School
Amy is Ohio through and through. She grew up in Youngstown, and her childhood was hard.
She told me about abuse, neglect, bouncing through children’s services, and even living in a tent in the middle of winter. She was what she calls a “frequent flyer” in the system — and here’s the part that stuck with me:
She said, “My story isn’t unique. 50% of our kids in some parts of this state live in poverty.”
The difference in her story came when someone finally stepped in and she got stability — one apartment, one school, six steady years. From there she went straight into med school out of high school, working three jobs to get through.
But she’s still haunted in a good way by:
- The kids she left behind
- The classmates just as smart and kind
- The way a zip code can predict how long you live more than your genetic code ever will
That’s why she went into pediatrics and preventive medicine — the kind where your “patient” is the whole community. And that’s why she’s running now: because Ohioans are doing everything right and still getting crushed by bad decisions made for special interests.
“She Quit”? No. She Refused to Sign Orders That Would Kill People.
Down home, when folks hear “Amy Acton,” I know exactly what some of them say:
“Yeah, but she quit.”
So I asked her directly.
Her answer? Calm. Clear. No spin:
She didn’t quit. She refused to sign orders being pushed by powerful legislators and special interests — orders she believed would cost Ohioans their lives during COVID.
As a doctor, she took the Hippocratic Oath: do no harm. She told the governor she would still advise him (and she has, even after stepping down), but she would not put her name on those orders.
A few weeks later, the legislator driving a lot of that pressure — Larry Householder — was arrested in the largest corruption scandal in Ohio history and is now in federal prison.
In 2021, Amy received a call from Caroline Kennedy and her son Jack telling her she was receiving the Profile in Courage Award, named after JFK’s book about leaders who lose jobs because they do the right thing.
That is not quitting. That is taking a stand.
The Doctor Who Cried on TV
Another criticism you hear:
“We saw her cry.”
My husband has a saying: “When you’ve got a heart, sometimes it leaks out your eyes.”
I told Amy I’m the kind where, if I’m mad as hell, those tears are right there too. She laughed and said she’s the same way — because when you travel all over Ohio and listen to people’s stories, it gets to you.
Here’s what she sees on the road:
- People who don’t care about party labels anymore
- Folks exhausted by chaos, hate, and culture wars
- Voters desperate to talk about real life:
- Cost of living
- Housing
- Childcare
- Property taxes
- Feeling safe in your own community
When people pour out their pain to her, she sometimes cries with them. Not as a show. As a human being.
She told me something I can’t quit thinking about:
We’ve made a huge mistake in this country. We keep mistaking kindness for weakness.
Amy calls kindness a “fierce commitment to justice” — seeing the humanity in one another and refusing to look away when people are suffering.
If that’s weakness, I’ll take a whole government full of the “weak.”
The Forgotten Ohio: Rural, Poor, and Left Behind
You know I’m going to ask the rural question.
There’s a whole piece of this state — Appalachia, rural Ohio, poor Ohio — that has been treated as disposable by the folks running the Statehouse.
So I asked her straight: “What about us?”
She didn’t give talking points. She talked like a public health doctor who has actually done the work:
- Rural hospitals collapsing
- Urban hospitals struggling too
- Families in some counties driving over an hour just to deliver a baby or get a cavity filled
- Medicaid cuts and policy decisions that dump more uninsured people into the system and drive everyone’s costs up
- An opponent taking millions from a billionaire who wants to destroy public education as we know it
In much of Appalachia, public schools are all we have. They saved her life as a kid — the building with teachers, libraries, and adults who saw her.
She’s furious that teachers were kicked off their own pension board and that there’s open talk of ending teachers’ unions. She’s crystal clear: unions are how working people fight for a living wage.
And it’s not just health care and schools. She hears about:
- Lack of broadband
- Kids leaving because there’s nothing to stay for
- A Statehouse obsessed with trickle-down economics that never trickles down
We’re 45th in GDP growth. 45th in unemployment. Our biggest export is our young people.
If this is their “great economy,” I’d hate to see a bad one.
Ohio Actually Could Have Nice Things
Here’s where Amy is different from a lot of candidates: she doesn’t just catalog the pain. She sees the assets.
In Appalachia and rural Ohio, she sees:
- A wonderful integrated park system
- The Ohio River and waterways being reclaimed and designated as national treasures
- Jeep trails, bike paths, hunting land, farms, and small towns that could be the backbone of real local economies, not just extraction zones for out-of-state corporations
She jokes that while her opponent is flying around in a corporate jet, she’s driving an old Jeep down our roads because she wants to listen — actually be where people live, not fly over us.
Her whole way of leading is “get everyone around the table and put the hard cards down”: farmers, teachers, nurses, small business owners, Republicans, Democrats, independents — whoever is ready to work.
Investing in People Who Serve
We talked about the pipeline for nurses, teachers, and other frontline professionals.
She wants:
- Scholarships and fellowships that actually make it possible to go into those careers
- Debt forgiveness for folks who agree to serve in the communities that need them most
- Paths that keep our homegrown talent in Ohio instead of watching them build lives in other states
That’s not abstract to her. She only made it because people invested in her and because she chose to stay in the state she’d fallen in love with.
Kindness, Courage, and Our Common Humanity
As we wrapped up, Amy said the quiet part out loud:
The number one thing she’s fighting for isn’t just health care, schools, or wages — though she’s deadly serious about all of that.
Her top issue is our common humanity.
Because that’s what’s under attack.
That’s what underlies our democracy.
She cannot and will not look the other way when people are suffering. And she doesn’t want anyone in this state to feel unseen the way she did as a kid living in a basement with one light bulb and a stack of library books.
She’s asking us to link arms and push back together — against the extreme wealth and power that thinks it can buy Ohio, and against the politicians who act like public office is a throne instead of a trust.
Why Mamaw’s Porch Is Endorsing Amy Acton
Before we left Kitty’s Cakes, I looked her in the eye and told her plain:
Mamaw’s Porch is formally endorsing Dr. Amy Acton for governor.
Because here’s what I know:
- She has lived real Ohio poverty, not just read about it in a briefing book.
- She led us through a once-in-a-century crisis and told us the truth even when it cost her.
- She refused to sign orders she believed would kill people, even under enormous pressure.
- She believes in public schools, unions, rural hospitals, and working people.
- She treats kindness as a form of power, not a liability.
And she’s not owned by the big donors.
When your campaign is fueled by small donations, you work for the people who chipped in, not the billionaire who wrote one giant check.
What You Can Do (Besides Just Nodding Along)
If you’re fired up reading this, don’t stop at “amen” and scrolling on.
Here’s what you can do right now:
- Visit her campaign site: https://actonforgovernor.com
- Sign up for one of her Zoom huddles and tell her what’s happening in your corner of Ohio: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/gE_sDU8ARuS-AuC_iAZ_BA#/registration
- Chip in any amount — because every small donor is a voter saying, “I’m in.”
- Share this article with a friend who still thinks “she quit”
- Talk to your people in rural Ohio, in the cities, at church, at the beauty shops and school functions.
- Make sure you’re registered and ready to vote, and help one other person do the same
Ohio, we don’t have to settle for chaos, corruption, and leaders who sneer at us as “lazy and mediocre.”
We can choose a governor who:
- Knows what it’s like to be poor, cold, and unseen
- Will fight like hell for our kids
- And still believes we can have nice things again
I’m Mamaw, and I’m proudly salty for Dr. Amy Acton.
Let’s take our state back, y’all.
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