04/19/2026
OPINION: Media Parrots Amy Acton’s ‘Simple Argument’ Line on 2019 Incident – Questions Go Unasked
This is my opinion.
When the 2019 Bexley police report on a domestic dispute at Dr. Amy Acton’s home hit the national news over the weekend, too many Ohio outlets did exactly what the Acton campaign wanted: they ignored the report, published puff pieces such as The Columbus Dispatch’s photo gallery story on Acton, and then parroted the “simple argument” and “smear” script written by Acton campaign insiders before moving on. No real digging. No tough questions. Just the breadcrumb trail left by the campaign.
I know how this goes.
When I posted a balanced opinion report on alleged tweets first resurfaced by OutKick and republished by Fox News (an OpEd that contained the fact that Acton supporters were calling the tweets fake out of the gate), Acton’s campaign fired off a cease-and-desist letter from Elias Law Group in Washington, D.C. — the same high-powered Democratic firm run by Marc Elias, the architect of the Clinton campaign’s Steele dossier that fueled the Russia collusion probe against Trump and led to FISA court abuses against Trump associates. Acton insists she’s “not a politician” but a doctor fighting special interests and insiders. Yet her campaign cut checks to the top Democratic outfit in the D.C. swamp for what should have been a routine Ohio legal matter. How much more “insider” does it get?
Here’s what the Bexley Police Department field interview report says: Acton and her husband were in a “verbal argument” over her “extended work hours.” She felt he was “antagonizing” her. While walking down the stairs, she “grabbed hold of the mirror on the wall and pulled it down, shattering the glass.” Both “admitted to drinking earlier,” and “Acton stated that she had taken an unknown amount of prescription medication.” She wanted to leave, went to the garage, but her husband “talked her out of it.” A Columbus fire medic checked her, recommended she go to the hospital, and she “refused.” Police noted “no evidence of any physical violence” and called it a “verbal dispute only.”
Acton’s running mate, David Pepper, called it “just a simple argument between husband and wife.” He said Acton “only had one glass of wine and wasn’t drunk” and that “someone called because they believed that Dr. Acton was under threat.” The campaign said the prescription was for migraines and that she had been taking it as prescribed for 20 years.
Let me ask the question any fair-minded person should ask: Does any of that actually sound like a “simple argument”?
Is it a simple argument when someone yanks a mirror off the wall and shatters the glass? Is it simple when one spouse tries to drive off after drinking and taking an unknown amount of prescription medication? Why did someone outside the home feel the need to call the police? Why did a paramedic recommend a hospital visit — and why did a trained medical doctor refuse it?
As a doctor, Acton knows alcohol is a common trigger for migraines in many people. So why mix the two that night? And why tell the police one version about the medication and the press another?
These aren’t gotcha questions. They’re basic. Yet journalists ran with the campaign’s framing under the headline about a “simple argument” or a “smear” attempt and don’t seem to have pressed on any of it. instead, they are quite content republishing my personal opinion posts on X along with critiques from the Acton campaign.
Pepper even tried to blame the whole thing on Vivek Ramaswamy: “What do you do when you’re a desperate billionaire and underwater? You use your money and your resources to try and smear the other person.”
Is Pepper really suggesting that six years later Ramaswamy paid NBC to report a public police record? Or paid Bexley police to write it? The deflection says more than the facts. And how would Pepper know how much and of what Acton had to drink that night — was he there?
Acton wants Ohioans to trust her judgment as governor. Fine. Then answer the questions the report itself raises — with straight answers, not spin from D.C. lawyers or your lieutenant governor pick. And the press? Do your job. Stop carrying water for the campaign narrative and start asking the questions Ohio voters deserve.
