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- Ramaswamy rebrands as Amy Acton
Ramaswamy rebrands as Amy Acton
Kay W.
March 16, 2026
Greetings from Copenhagen! Here’s a pic of the place we’re renting until July.
We went thru a licensed, taxed rental agency rather than the Air BnB style outfits so paid a little more but it’s perfect for our needs. We even have a small spare room for visitors, along with a terrace that is right on a canal. I try not to be a gross libertarian type in a country not my own so resisted the do it yourself rental agent route, although I am a cheapskate so it hurt.
Housing is tight in Copenhagen (as in all desirable cities) but they are building like crazy. The apartments are solid too – very spare design, which Scandinavians prefer, but well built. Most of the housing in Copenhagen is limited to 5 stories (although there are high rises in the business district) which is very human-scaled and approachable.
Back in the US, a LOT is happening in Ohio politics. This is the context:
Acton leading Ramaswamy in race for Governor; Brown leading Husted in U.S. Senate race. This snapshot of Likely November 2026 voters finds Democrat Amy Acton leading Republican Vivek Ramaswamy by 53% to 43% in the race for Governor, and former Senator Sherrod Brown leading Senator Jon Husted 51%-47% in the race for U.S. Senate. While Acton has consolidated the support of Democratic voters with 82% of their vote, Ramaswamy is underperforming among Republicans with only 65% support, and independent voters are breaking 51%-46% for Acton. Similarly, Brown garners 84% support among Democrats, while Husted is drawing 70% of the Republican vote, and independent voters are split with 48% for Brown and 49% for Husted.
Most of the Bluesky chat on this is “of course she’s ahead, Ramaswamy is brown!”, doing our usual self-congratulatory circle jerk of “look at me, I’m not a racist, but all other voters are!” but I think that’s facile bullshit that unfairly takes credit from Acton. She is a good candidate running a good campaign in a year that may be tough for Republicans. Trust me, Ohio conservatives loathe powerful, liberal white women as much or more than they loathe wealthy wingnut South Asians. Too Ramaswamy has (supposedly) “reinvented” himself as a moderate, which likely enrages the Trump base. Acton, OTOH, has always been a moderate and is running as one. In addition, Acton’s campaign has consistently focused on affordability, well before Mamdani made that the template for every pol. She has good instincts! She’s also VERY pro labor, which I love and which is a well deserved show of loyalty for labor voters, who were the ONLY group of voters who increased their share from Biden to Harris.
So here comes Ramaswamy, with a desperate rebrand that actually has his wife with a newborn, much like how JD Vance drags his wife and kids into his campaigns in a desperate attempt to be “likeable”:
The biographical pivot is also hard to separate from what NBC News and other outlets have documented as a broader Ramaswamy rebranding effort. The candidate who in 2024 invoked the “great replacement theory,” proposed stripping voting rights from 18-to-24-year-olds, and positioned himself at the far-right flank of the Republican presidential field has spent 2026 calling for “consensus” and publicly condemning racism and bigotry within his own supporter base.
Acton’s campaign is not letting the rebranding go uncontested. In response to the ad launch, the campaign called Ramaswamy an “out of touch billionaire” and said the ads represent his “continued attempt to reinvent himself,” according to cleveland.com. The campaign specifically targeted Apoorva Ramaswamy’s line about wanting “a state where hard work means you can afford your home, your groceries, and your future” — a message Democrats argue rings hollow from a candidate whose signature policy proposal would create a nearly $10 billion hole in the state budget and whose company relocated from Columbus to Dallas.
Anyway, good news for Acton – I think she’s the real deal.
I’ll do a post on Sherrod later- the Brown/Husted race has GOP scandals galore and I’m fairly certain Sherrod’s campaign has worked hard to tie all of them to Husted, so it’s a lot of fun.
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