This story was originally reported by Amanda Becker of The 19th. Meet Amanda and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.

It took mere minutes for the U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding state bans on trans athletes competing in women’s and girls’ sports to reverberate in Ohio’s competitive governor’s race — and the reactions from the Republican and Democratic nominees were all but indistinguishable.

“Ohio has barred men from competing with women in women’s sports and the Supreme Court now held that it’s constitutional,” Republican Vivek Ramaswamy told a Toledo newspaper.

Ramaswamy, a pharmaceutical entrepreneur, called the ruling “common sense” and pledged to enforce an Ohio law containing a ban on trans athletes in school-age sports. It was vetoed by the state’s current Republican Gov. Mike DeWine and opposed by every Democrat in the state legislature.

Then, Democrat Dr. Amy Acton weighed in.

“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,” the physician, who served as DeWine’s public health director, said in a statement to the same newspaper.

“As a doctor, public servant, and a mom, I will always stand up for fairness and protect kids’ health and safety,” she added.

Two candidates, from two different parties, taking the same public position, using the same language — wording favored by President Donald Trump’s MAGA movement that misgendered transgender athletes by referring to them as men instead of trans women. And in Acton’s case, language that misgendered trans children.

Democrats have been trying to figure out how to respond to Republicans’ anti-trans attacks since former Vice President Kamala Harris lost to Trump in the 2024 election. Republican campaigns and allied political groups spent more than $215 million that election cycle on ads targeting Democratic candidates’ past support for trans people and LGBTQ+ issues, according to data from AdImpact, which tracks political ad spending. In the final weeks of the campaign, tens of millions of dollars worth of these ads targeting Harris blanketed key suburbs in battleground states. They ended with the line: “Kamala is for they/them; President Trump is for you.” Harris never figured out how to respond. Internal research from the top super PAC supporting Harris showed that the “they/them” ads, on average, moved viewers 2.7 points in Trump’s favor.

The conversation among Democrats about how the party’s candidates should — or should not — respond to anti-trans attacks has since taken up a lot of oxygen in Washington as party strategists debate the best course forward.

Now, the conversation is consuming Democrats in Ohio.

Acton’s initial statement on the day of the Supreme Court ruling landed like a lead balloon with the state’s LGBTQ+ groups and leaders, the vast majority of whom were enthusiastic about her candidacy and the potential to beat Ramaswamy, who said during a GOP presidential primary debate in late 2023 that being trans was a “mental health disorder.”

Several Ohio-based LGBTQ+ leaders told The 19th that they expected to hear more from the candidate herself. They hoped she might clean up the inarticulate language she used misgendering trans children, or offer additional reassurances to LGBTQ+ Ohioans that she would have their backs.

But no public or private reassurances came.

Equality Ohio, one of the state’s largest groups working to protect the rights of LGBTQ+ people, updated Acton’s status on its 2026 Candidate Scorecard to “pending” from an “A” grade.

Ramaswamy’s “F” rating has remained unchanged.

“This reflects our belief that accountability is still possible, and that the door remains open at this time. Should Dr. Acton choose to take meaningful steps forward, we will update the status accordingly,” the group said in a statement.

The ratings change was announced during what was initially branded as a “conversation” between Acton’s campaign, the state party and LGBTQ+ stakeholders that only further inflamed the situation. The meeting — and its fallout — was first reported by the Buckeye Flame, a Cleveland-based news site focused on Ohio’s LGBTQ+ community.

The vice chair of the Ohio Democratic Party’s Pride Caucus, who is trans, was not admitted to the meeting and had to participate on speakerphone via the chair. It quickly became clear that it was less a conversation than a chance for participants to air concerns without any response from the campaign, attendees told The 19th. One described Acton’s campaign manager, Philip Stein, as “looking like someone who wanted to crawl under the table.”

Another participant said they went into the meeting thinking it could be a “teachable moment” that could repair relations between the campaign and Ohio’s LGBTQ+ community; they left feeling like the misgendering of trans children was intentional and a “cynical, consultant-driven play” to appeal to conservative voters.

“It felt like they were trying to throw trans people under the bus to provoke a backlash,” the person added.

Meeting participants who spoke to The 19th all asked to not be identified because the campaign has told them that talking to the press precludes future conversations.

Acton’s campaign wrote in an email to The 19th that she “will always stand up for Ohioans, including the LGBT community. As governor, she is committed to standing up to discrimination and ensuring all Ohioans receive equal protection under the law.”

More than 11 percent of Ohio’s adult population is LGBTQ+, according to an analysis released this month by the Human Rights Campaign, and research shows that queer people vote at higher rates than the overall adult public. While LGBTQ+ voters tend to favor Democrats, participants on the Zoom call told The 19th that the fallout would likely dampen queer voters’ willingness to support Acton by donating money, putting signs in their yards, going door-to-door in the final push or phonebanking.

Recent opinion polls show Acton and Ramaswamy nearly tied, trading single-digit leads well within polls’ margins of error.

Governors are uniquely positioned to defend or reject anti-trans bills: Congress remains deadlocked on all but the most pressing, must-pass legislation; the U.S. Supreme Court decided that state-legislature passed bans on trans athletes in sports can stand.

The law at issue in Ohio, H.B. 68, also prohibits minors from receiving gender-affirming care. DeWine vetoed it for that reason, but the GOP supermajority in the state legislature overrode his veto. The legality of the ban on gender-affirming care is a live question before the state Supreme Court.

Acton, in an interview with The 19th following the U.S. Supreme Court ruling but before the campaign’s Zoom meeting with LGBTQ+ leaders, offered a more nuanced position on the law than she has shared publicly:

“This is a political battle,” Acton said, “and sadly, people are using people’s healthcare and personal decisions and choices as a way to pit us intentionally against one another, and it has been a successful tactic politically to scare people and frighten everyday Ohioans.”

“I’m also here to fight for our common humanity,” she continued. “The governor vetoed pretty draconian legislation, and the way he did that is he took advice from folks: I, amongst many people, gave advice. He listened to families. As governor, I will always research issues, listen to the absolute best experts in the field, as he did, talk to families and understand their personal decisions and what’s going on with their healthcare, with their physicians.”

She added that Democrats needed to break the GOP supermajority in the statehouse so gubernatorial vetoes could not be overridden.

Acton’s campaign did not explain why she has not incorporated a more holistic approach to LGBTQ+ issues, like the one she described to The 19th, during campaign trail discussions. The campaign, as well as Acton herself, often point out that she is trying to become the first Democrat to lead Ohio in 15 years. A single Ohio Supreme Court justice is the only elected Democrat in statewide office; Ramaswamy is a billionaire self-funding his campaign with the backing of Peter Thiel, a tech billionaire and Trump ally.

Still, Acton’s public statement on trans athletes puts her at the conservative end of an array of approaches being taken by Democrats on issues impacting trans people in the country’s five most competitive gubernatorial races.

In Georgia, which has a ban on trans athletes competing in public school and college sports, Keisha Lance Bottoms is trying to flip the governor’s seat for Democrats in a race against Republican healthcare executive Rick Jackson. Shortly after the Supreme Court ruling, Bottoms’ campaign told a local news outlet that, as a mother, she “understands that there are important differences between male and female athletes in competitive sports. However, Keisha believes decisions about athletic participation should be made by appropriate athletic governing bodies — not by politicians.” Bottoms, the former mayor of Atlanta, also told a local editorial board regarding gender-affirming care: “I do not believe the government should weigh in on medical decisions by Georgians and their physicians,” and that those decisions should not be “dictated by politicians looking to score political points.” Nearly every reliable poll has shown Bottoms ahead of Jackson since they won their respective primaries.

In Wisconsin, term-limited Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has repeatedly blocked bans related to trans athletes and gender-affirming care from taking effect. Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, the Democratic nominee for governor, has said that decisions regarding trans athletes should be left up to the state’s high school athletics association. He told HuffPost: “We don’t have to throw out our morals, our ethics … we don’t have to capitulate and get involved in these cultural wars Republicans try to throw out there because they don’t have anything to run on.” Polling conducted after the state’s Aug. 12 primaries shows Crowley with a slight lead over his Republican opponent, U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, who is also a small business owner.

In Nevada, where sitting Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo tried but failed to get a “Protect Girls’ Sports” initiative onto 2026 ballots, Democratic Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Aaron Ford has differentiated between his own beliefs and how he would govern. “I personally do not support trans athletes competing in sports opposite their gender assigned at birth,” Ford told a Nevada newspaper, using language preferred by LGBTQ+ rights groups. “But let’s be clear, Lombardo doesn’t care about this issue; he’s only using it as a political ploy to drum up support for his flailing reelection campaign.” Polls show Lombardo with a lead in the race.

In Iowa, Democrat Rob Sand responded with a simple “no” when a conservative radio host asked him in May 2025 whether “biological males” should play women’s sports — another way to describe trans women that many in the LGBTQ+ community find offensive. But Sand, the state’s auditor, has also backed protections for trans people. He said at a town hall that it was “wrong” for Iowa Republicans to repeal state civil rights protections for trans people — Iowa was the first state in the country to do so. “You should not be fired from your job in the state of Iowa for being different. You should not be evicted from your apartment,” Sand said. Polls have for months shown Sand with a lead over Republican businessman Zach Lahn. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report last week moved the Iowa gubernatorial contest from the “toss up” category to “leans Democratic” in its competitiveness rankings.

John Neffinger, a Democratic strategist and past communications director for the Democratic National Committee, said Democrats should remember that, beyond sports, a majority of voters believe trans people should be protected from discrimination. Candidates shouldn’t be afraid to highlight their desire to support basic protections for LGBTQ+ people, he added.

Polling consistently shows, for example, that more than half of voters prefer the Democratic Party’s approach to handling issues impacting trans people over solutions offered by the Republican Party. That includes polls conducted by Fox News.

The political challenge for Democratic candidates is that nearly three-quarters of American adults say they are “uncomfortable” with trans athletes competing on sports teams that align with their gender identities, according to data from the nonpartisan Pew Research Center. Republicans have used Democrats’ past pro-LGBTQ+ stances to highlight this perceived vulnerability with voters in widespread attack ads. The dynamic has put many battleground Democratic candidates in between a voting populace not ready to largely embrace trans athletes in kids’ sports and many LGBTQ+ and progressive groups that want candidates to offer full-throated support for trans people as they face existential threats from the Trump administration.

In focus groups of a dozen or so undecided voters, Neffinger said, there might be one person who objects to LGBTQ+ protections on moral grounds, but the vast majority show a high level of empathy for the challenges trans people face in public life — especially trans children and their parents.

“When you talk about sports, what you get from people is, ‘Now, that’s not right,’” Neffinger said. “But even then, they don’t want politicians picking on kids, they get that that’s not cool.”

For several years now, Neffinger has been in a cohort of Democratic strategists trying to help and encourage the party’s candidates and lawmakers to figure out how to meet Republicans’ anti-trans attacks head on. There are ways for candidates to walk the line between where the average voter is and where LGBTQ+ and other progressive advocacy groups want them to be, he said. They just have to be willing to do it.

Neffinger pointed to a 2025 statement from Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto shortly after the Nevada Democrat voted against the Republican-offered “Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act,” as an effective example of messaging that resonates with middle-of-the-road voters.

Cortez Masto’s statement read: “I support fair play and safety and do not support transgender athletes competing in girls’ and women’s sports when it compromises those principles. I believe local schools, student athletes, coaches, and parents are much better equipped to implement fair, strong policies on this issue than politicians in Congress.”

Staking out a fairness-based position — for everyone — paves the way for politicians to offer different policy solutions as circumstances demand, Neffinger said. That could mean allowing prepubescent athletes to compete on teams that match their gender identities, or on a case-by-case basis permitting trans athletes who received gender-affirming care before going through puberty, he added.

“Saying ‘no boys in girls sports’ feels like the latest way to dodge — ‘don’t make me talk about this.’ It doesn’t look like leadership, it looks like a cop-out, and it actually feels like you’re picking on trans kids,” he added.

Democrats of all stripes — centrists, progressives and LGBTQ+ advocates — also point to the 2025 governor’s race in Virginia, when Democratic former Rep. Abigail Spanberger beat Republican Winsome Earle-Sears, the state’s former lieutenant governor who spent as much as $9 million attacking Spanberger’s support for trans rights. Spanberger beat Earle-Sears by more than 15 points, and by nearly 30 points in Loudoun County, an exurban area near Washington, D.C., where anti-trans ads were believed to have hurt Harris the year before. Harris won Virginia, but only by about 5 points.

The various Democratic factions agree that what made Spanberger’s approach successful was that she introduced voters to her values early on, then took on anti-trans attacks as a matter of discrimination. Spanberger also emphasized that parents and doctors should make decisions for children, and she took voters’ concerns about fairness in sports seriously.

“Leaders must take a joint approach: fiercely defending LGBTQI+ people from discrimination and advocating for policies that will lift up families across the country,” the Center for American Progress, a Democratic policy organization, concluded in a recent analysis that caused ripples in Washington by recommending the party’s base accept some restrictions on trans athletes in youth sports.

Nan Whaley, the former Democratic mayor of Dayton, Ohio, and the party’s gubernatorial nominee in 2022, acknowledged that the political landscape related to LGBTQ+ issues has shifted to the right since her unsuccessful bid. She is an enthusiastic supporter of Acton and believes that, despite the falling out between her campaign and LGBTQ+ groups, voters should trust her. Whaley said that trans Ohioans have shared fears with her about their safety; some have asked whether she thinks they should leave the state, given its politics.

“If Vivek Ramaswamy wins, I don’t know what I can say to them, but I know what I can say if Amy Acton is governor,” Whaley said.“That’s what’s at stake.”

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