Dr. Amy Acton resigns; guided governor to praise on pandemic

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — The health director who helped Ohio's Republican governor earn glowing reviews for his pandemic response resigned Thursday after a few polarizing months during which she became beloved for her soothing expertise and loathed — even threatened — for exercising her emergency powers.

Dr. Amy Acton played a highly public role in Ohio’s early and aggressive fight against the coronavirus, transcending the confines of the laboratory to appear daily on television screens during Gov. Mike DeWine's updates and issuing his administration's health orders.

“It’s true not all heroes wear capes,” DeWine said at the news briefing at which he made the announcement. “Some of them do, in fact, wear a white coat, and this particular hero’s white coat is embossed with the name Dr. Amy Acton.”

Acton also faced harsh and sometimes ugly pushback for her orders that closed businesses and kept people home for weeks, including lawsuits, a legislative effort to strip her of authority and protests outside her suburban Columbus home that included some people carrying guns.

Some demonstrations at the Statehouse featured signs bearing anti-Semitic messages. Acton is Jewish, and one lawmaker referenced her with an anti-Semitic slur. More recently, organizers of music festivals and restaurant owners sued her as the slow reopening unfolded.

The tactics used against Acton were not confined to Ohio, but the universal commendations from her peers contrasted perhaps more sharply than anywhere with the vitriol.

DeWine shook the state to attention March 4, when he announced at a briefing — with Acton by his side — that spectators would be banned from an international fitness festival whose visitors bring a lot of money to Columbus each year. The state had yet to...