Amy Acton, the 60-year-old Democrat running for governor of Ohio, married her son's high school cross country coach just five months after the coach finalized his own divorce, a timeline now drawing renewed attention as her race against Republican Vivek Ramaswamy tightens.
Court records and public filings, as reported by The Post, lay out a sequence of events that unfolded in the small Columbus-area community of Bexley, Ohio, between 2008 and 2010. The details paint a picture of two marriages dissolving in close succession, followed by a swift union between Acton and Eric Acton, the man who had been coaching her son's team at Bexley High School.
The story matters now because Acton is the presumptive Democratic nominee for governor in a state that hasn't elected a Democrat to that office since Ted Strickland won in 2006. Recent polls show Acton holding a slim 1-point lead over Ramaswamy, the former 2024 presidential candidate. Character, judgment, and personal conduct tend to become campaign issues in tight races, and this one has all the ingredients.
Acton had been married to Douglas Beech, a psychiatrist, since 1989. Court records show the couple separated in June 2008. Four months later, they filed for divorce, citing "irreconcilable differences."
That split came as Acton's son, then a junior, was beginning his cross country season at Bexley High School. His coach was Eric Acton, now 64, a lifelong teacher and coach in Bexley Public Schools.
In November 2008, Amy Acton bought a house. Seven months after that, in May 2009, Eric Acton's wife, Barbara Davis-Acton, filed for divorce from him. The filing declared the couple was "incompatible" and had lived "separate and apart" for one year. That one-year separation period, if taken at face value, would place the start of their estrangement around mid-2008, roughly the same window in which Amy Acton's own marriage was ending.
Eric and Barbara finalized their divorce in February 2010. The terms were modest: Barbara kept her 2001 Acura, and Eric kept his 2000 BMW. Each couple had three children of their own.
Five months later, on July 2, 2010, Eric Acton married Amy. They had applied for the marriage license a month earlier.
Bexley is described as a tiny bedroom community outside Columbus, the kind of place where a coach dating a student's mother would not go unnoticed. It didn't.
A former Bexley High student told The Post the relationship was an open topic among teammates and their families:
"Folks were talking about it on the team. It was kind of the gossip not only for the teenagers but probably all the parents, too."
The same former student added:
"My recollection of it was that it was controversial. It was definitely kind of some gossip in the community."
Eric Acton resigned from coaching at the end of the season. When the Columbus Dispatch reported on his departure at the time, Eric framed it as a personal decision rather than one forced by the situation:
"It wasn't just one thing. As a teacher, I always try to evaluate where I am professionally. Between teaching and coaching, I just needed more time for myself."
He did not mention a relationship with a team parent. The Post reported that a school yearbook photo showed Eric Acton and Amy's son together on the cross country team.
Acton's public profile rose sharply a decade later. In 2019, retiring Republican Governor Mike DeWine selected her to lead Ohio's state health department. She had previously served as an associate professor of public health at Ohio State University.
During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, Acton appeared alongside DeWine at press conferences and became a nationally recognized figure. She also drew sharp criticism from Ohio Republicans over coronavirus measures that included stay-at-home orders and gym closures. She resigned from the director role in June 2020.
Now she wants the top job. Her campaign website describes Eric Acton as a lifelong teacher and coach in Bexley Public Schools and says the couple together have six children. The site also touts her work helping launch the Center for Human Kindness at the Columbus Foundation, a credential that may invite its own ironic scrutiny given the personal history now resurfacing.
The Post reported that Acton's campaign did not respond to a request for comment. Ramaswamy's campaign also declined to comment on the story.
That silence leaves the court records and the community recollections to speak for themselves. No one has alleged anything illegal. But the sequence, a coach and a team parent, two marriages ending in close succession, a resignation, and a wedding five months after the coach's divorce was final, raises straightforward questions about judgment and transparency that voters in a governor's race are entitled to weigh.
Several questions remain unanswered. When exactly did the relationship between Amy and Eric Acton begin? The divorce filings establish separation dates but do not address when the two became involved. Barbara Davis-Acton's filing stated she and Eric had lived apart for a year before May 2009, which overlaps with the period Eric was coaching Amy's son. Neither Amy Acton nor Eric Acton has publicly addressed the timeline of their relationship's origin.
The names of the polls showing Acton's narrow 1-point lead over Ramaswamy were not identified in The Post's reporting. But the margin itself underscores the stakes: Ohio is a state where Democrats have struggled for nearly two decades at the gubernatorial level, and Acton's viability makes her personal record fair game for the kind of scrutiny any serious candidate should expect.
This is not a criminal matter. No law was broken. But campaigns are about more than policy papers and poll numbers. They are about whether voters trust a candidate's character and judgment, especially when that candidate is asking for the power to govern an entire state.
Amy Acton built her public brand on compassion and public health expertise. She touts a "Center for Human Kindness" on her campaign website. The court records and community memories from Bexley tell a more complicated story, one involving two broken families, six children, and a coach who quietly stepped down before marrying a player's mother.
Ohio voters can decide for themselves what that timeline means. But they deserve to know it exists, and they deserve a candidate willing to address it directly rather than ducking press inquiries.
Voters tend to forgive a lot. What they don't forgive is being treated like they don't deserve an honest answer.
