Amy Acton drinks wine? That’s supposed to scare Ohio voters? | Opinion

Aren’t suburban wine moms a pretty strong target audience?

That was one of my first thoughts when I saw the latest attacks against Dr. Amy Acton, accusing her of being an alcoholic, a drug addict, and even of causing the death of an elderly woman during the pandemic.

The ads are shocking. They are also designed to do something very specific. Take complicated moments from Acton’s past and package them into a simple picture of a woman who is supposedly disheveled, unstable, and unfit to lead.

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Acton flatly denies having an alcohol or drug-abuse problem. And while the circumstances behind the ads are certainly fair game for voters to examine, I think the broader message says something more interesting than the Ramaswamy campaign intended.

It says something about who gets to decide what ordinary life looks like.

When did having a drink become disqualifying?

When I was growing up, even with parents who did not keep alcohol in the house, there was still a very American idea that I understood from an early age: “I’d have a beer with that guy.”

It was never really about the beer. It meant someone seemed normal. Someone seemed approachable. Someone seemed like the kind of person you could sit down with after a long day and talk to without needing a translator.

So, in responding to an ad that tries to turn a glass of wine into a disqualifying character flaw, perhaps the soundest response is:

So what?

Think about the person who comes home after a long shift and pours a glass of cheap red wine from Trader Joe’s. The blue-collar worker who kicks off his boots and grabs a Busch Light from the refrigerator before dinner. Or the parents who finally get the kids to bed, sit down on the couch and have a drink because, frankly, it has been a day.

The attack tries to turn ordinary life into shame

None of that excuses drinking on the job. None of it excuses addiction. And nobody running for governor should be above scrutiny. But something is revealing about an ad campaign that seems to believe the mere existence of alcohol in someone’s life is enough to make them unfit for public office.

For someone so removed from everyday life, what looks disastrous can be a pretty typical Tuesday night for a lot of Ohioans. And maybe that is the real problem with this attack. It asks Ohioans to look at something familiar and see something shameful.

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Recently, Acton spoke at New Vision United Methodist Church in Cincinnati. In the corner of the room stood a wooden cross with a white cloth draped across it.

As she spoke, I thought about the old hymn:

On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross,

the emblem of suffering and shame.

There is plenty of suffering in Ohio right now.

People are struggling to make ends meet. They are working longer hours. They are watching grocery bills climb. They are worrying about their kids, their parents, their mortgages, and whether the next paycheck is going to stretch as far as the last one.

And Acton’s stump speech spoke to that shared humanity. Her message did not come across through slurred words. It did not come across through some caricature of a woman plagued by a stupor. It came through a genuine understanding of people and the lives they are living.

Give me the scrappy girl from Youngstown

I saw a candidate who looked like someone I could share a glass of wine with in discipleship.

I am not looking for a prude as governor. Nor am I looking for someone dependent on the bottle.

But I also don’t think Ohio needs a governor who has never understood why someone might want a drink at the end of a hard day.

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As Ramaswamy sips a rare red on his private jet at 10,000 feet, Acton is hitting the ground. She is sitting in church basements and community rooms. She is looking people in the eyes and seeing the exhaustion that comes with trying to hold a family, a career, and a life together in tumultuous times.

One candidate is trying to make a glass of wine a scandal. The other is talking to the people who might need one.

And between the two, I know who I’d rather grab a drink with.

Give me the scrappy girl from Youngstown.

Nick Anderson lives in Walnut Hills and is a member of the Enquirer Board of Contributors.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Amy Acton drinks wine? That’s supposed to scare Ohio voters? | Opinion