I want people to remember the speech. That is the point of writing this. Not the tent at the Canfield Fair. Not the man with a phone in his hand and pistols on his belt who never took them out. Not the Labor Day parade the next morning where the cameras decided she was a warrior because she walked a route and helped two people who fainted in the heat, get back up. I want the speech. The one they needed a diversion for, because it was that bad.
Over the Labor Day weekend Amy Acton stood in front of a union crowd and tried to take Vivek Ramaswamy to the finish line by yelling that he could not buy Ohio. She said it until the words stopped meaning anything. You cannot buy this state. You can’t buy us. You can’t buy us. You can’t buy us. Pete Buttigieg was in the frame. She sounded unhinged. She sounded like a candidate who had seen internals that were not doing what the press releases promised and decided volume would substitute for a theory of growth.
Then, the same weekend, a thirty-eight-year-old Canfield man named Patrick Havas shoved through a Democratic Party tent at the Canfield Fair, phone up, calling her name, knocking elderly people off mobility scooters. Highway Patrol grabbed him. After the fact they found two handguns, a Taser, brass knuckles. He never brandished a weapon. He never touched her. The charges that stuck were misdemeanor assault and disorderly conduct. That is a serious enough mess. It is not the movie they sold by Monday morning. It is a chaotic lunge by a man trying to get a picture and a word in, dressed up as an assassination attempt so nobody would have to replay the chant.
I have watched this trick before. When the product is bad, change the channel.
People Who Have Money Have Been Successful. That Is Not a Confession.
The attack they wanted the speech to carry is the oldest cheap shot in a democracy that still pretends it hates results. He is rich. He is not like you. He flew to a tennis match. He has a court at his house. He sits three rows back at the U.S. Open while you pack a lunch. David Pepper and the background choir have been working that note for months. It did not work on Donald Trump. It will not work on Vivek Ramaswamy unless Republicans help them play it.
We put Trump in the White House three times, through every mechanism designed to stop him, in no small part because he was rich. Means is not a moral defect. Means is how you survive a lawfare state that bills by the hour. Trump never ran away from golf. Golf is a sport wealthy people play. He likes it. He kept playing it. Every time they pointed at the clubhouse he doubled down. Here is the gold. Here is the silk. I have done well. Vote for me and I will make it so you can do well too.
Vivek likes tennis. He is good at tennis. He has a court. He flew to watch tennis. That is allowed. A man who can get on a plane without checking a savings account is not required to apologize to a woman whose closing argument is that independence itself is suspicious. Wealthy people enjoy things. That is one of the reasons people become wealthy. Fluidity gives you permission to be your own person. I would rather a governor who already has a life than a governor who needs the mansion to feel like somebody.
I have been talking lately about the Apostle Paul and why he was so effective. Part of it was independence. A man who can move, speak, and refuse a bribe because he is not waiting on a stipend is a different kind of missionary than a man who needs the collection plate to land. The Christian movement was not hurt by personal means. Politics is not hurt by it either. The people who tell you otherwise are usually standing between you and the next job.
She Is Preaching the Loser Mentality. That Is Why She Is Yelling.
Listen to the pitch underneath the chant. He is not like you. He has money. You cannot trust him. I am like you. I am not a politician. My last election was in high school. I am a doctor becoming a common one right in front of your eyes. The subtext she cannot help leaking is uglier. I have problems. I have chaos in the house. I am the lockdown saint who will steal from the people who made wealth and hand you a government job and a PlayStation afternoon.
There will always be some people who want that. They will vote for Amy Acton because they think she will pick a pocket that is not theirs and call it justice. That is her crowd: the discontent, the union hall that never got off the wagon, the people who believe the state’s highest purpose is a transfer. They know they are running behind. They need a few points. So they scream.
I said she was a con before the family-police stories made the rounds. I said it when she was DeWine’s health director, the Dr. Fauci of Ohio, the woman in the white coat in the Statehouse briefing room telling a free people that the long haul would be managed from her clipboard. Lockdown. Recovery after her stent. A governor who let her run because the cameras liked the lab coat. Anybody who doubts that record can read the last six years of Ohio and stop pretending it was a seminar.
She cannot raise money the way a winner raises money. She can scrape small-dollar piety and then announce she outraised the billionaire in a quarter if you leave his own check out of the math. Vivek put tens of millions of his own dollars on the table. Elon Musk wrote a super PAC a check. Jeff Yass and Bill Ackman showed up. Allies are outspending her on television by a brutal multiple. That is not “buying Ohio.” That is what happens when people who build things decide the state should not be handed back to the clipboard.
When you cannot compete in the only currency that buys airtime, you moralize the currency. You cannot buy us. Translation: please stop outspending us.
The 2016 Rhyme They Think We Forgot
I have been on stages with this type before. Going into 2016, John Kasich was still out there. Establishment machinery was still chipping. Mitch McConnell’s world was still working the edges against Trump. They said you could not vote for him because of this, because of that, because the lawyers had a theory. Trump did not run away from being Trump. He went around and spoke to people. He was proud. His crowds were better. He won anyway.
The same habit is alive in this race. Republicans still fight each other after the primary. A few voices would rather be right about Vivek’s swing in a batting cage than right about Ohio’s tax climate. Tucker-adjacent complainers who want the demise of the party more than they want a governor will always find a clip. Shame on them. They are doing what Kasich did in 2015 and what a slice of the donor class tried again in 2024. Trump won anyway. The people who stayed tight when it was hard have a special place with me. The late arrivals who discovered their conscience after the primary should know I have a memory.
Democrats do not have that problem. They made a fool of even the Democrats who privately know she is a weak closer, and they will still show up. That gives Amy Acton the feeling she can scream her way into a conversation. Republicans, meanwhile, donate opposition research to the other team and call it principle.
I Support Vivek. I Will Miss One Fundraiser. That Is Not a Taper.
I love Vivek Ramaswamy. I have said it. I will keep saying it. There was a fundraiser I was not at. I am usually at these things. This one I could not make, and it is not a cooling. I had something else that night. I will tell people privately what it was. Everybody will get a kick out of it. I expect to make an announcement in about a month, and I have to stay inside a contract until I know what I am allowed to say. When I am not in the room it is not personal. He will raise more at that party than she will raise in the next month. That is how the ball bounces when one candidate can fill a room with people who have already built something and the other candidate is asking the room to resent the builder.
The early people who stayed with him when it was not fashionable have my loyalty. I will always support them. The rock-throwers who showed up late to explain why a winner is insufficient should sit with that.
What Ohio Votes for When the Noise Stops
When the chant dies and the fairground movie is over, the choice is not mysterious. Do you want a state that brings job creators in so you can get hired, keep a paycheck, and climb, or do you want a state whose highest pitch is that the man with the plane should be ashamed of the plane?
Vivek flying to a tennis match is not a scandal. It is a demonstration that he does not need the job. “I don’t need the chair. I want the state to work so you can have what I have.” That is a better sentence than “I want to give everybody a government job.” One of those sentences produces a tax base. The other produces a line.
The public polls as of mid-September still bounce around a coin flip in the averages—Fox had him at 50–48 in August, Wedgewood had her up a point, Siena had them tied in June. Forecast models that bother with Ohio’s fundamentals still give him the better chance in a state Donald Trump carried by double digits. Tight is not tied in the soul of the electorate. Tight is what a bad weekend of Republican infighting and a successful media diversion can manufacture.
She sounded like the goalie of a team that knows the third period is going badly. I doubt she was drinking on the camera that caught the chant. She sounded like it. She cannot get out of her own way. That only helps him, and he does not need the help as much as she needs the noise.
Go vote for Vivek. If you want Ohio to prosper, he is the only logical candidate on the ballot. Do it enthusiastically. Remember that Amy Acton locked you down, and remember that she also stood in front of a crowd and tried to make success sound like theft. Do not let a fairground shove erase the sentence. The speech happened. The Amy Acton speech was bad.
Footnotes
[1] Amy Acton’s Labor Day-weekend appearances included a rally clip, circulated widely beginning about September 6, 2026, in which she repeated that Vivek Ramaswamy “cannot buy this state” and “can’t buy us,” with Secretary Pete Buttigieg in the orbit of the event. Conservative and independent clips branded the delivery a rant.
[2] On September 6, 2026, at the Canfield Fair in Mahoning County, Patrick Havas, 38, of Canfield, pushed through a crowd at the Mahoning County Democratic Party tent while Acton was speaking, phone raised, calling her name. Ohio State Highway Patrol detained him. Acton was unharmed. Two elderly attendees were knocked down. After the arrest, officers reported two pistols, a Taser, and brass knuckles on his person; he never brandished a firearm. Charges: misdemeanor assault, disorderly conduct, inducing panic. He pleaded not guilty.
[3] Acton marched the next morning, Labor Day, September 7, 2026, in Cleveland’s Labor Day parade, called Sunday a “rough day,” and assisted two women who collapsed on the route. The fair story dominated the weekend news hole.
[4] David Pepper is Acton’s 2026 running mate. He has used Ramaswamy’s wealth and a mocked batting-cage video as attack lines.
[5] Ramaswamy attended the U.S. Open in early September 2026. Acton’s campaign posted video and stills and accused him of “jetting off” the trail. He is a documented tennis player. Tennis was the sport they were afraid looked “too fancy.”
[6] Donald Trump’s refusal to apologize for golf, clubs, and wealth is the relevant precedent, 2016 through 2024. Ohio voted for Trump by 11.2 points in 2024.
[7] Acts of the Apostles presents Paul as a Roman citizen of Tarsus, a tentmaker who could travel, appeal to Caesar, and support himself. The argument here is independence, not a bank statement. See Acts 18:3, 22:25–29, 25:11.
[8] Acton served as Ohio Department of Health director under Gov. Mike DeWine from 2019 into 2020 and was the public face of Ohio’s COVID orders. Columbus Dispatch, September 14, 2026.
[9] Acton has at times outraised Ramaswamy in donor receipts for calendar 2026; Ramaswamy loaned his campaign on the order of $25 million plus later sums. A super PAC drew large checks including $5 million from Elon Musk. September reporting described allies outspending Acton on television by roughly six to one.
[10] Fox News / Beacon-Shaw, August 6–10: Ramaswamy 50, Acton 48. Wedgewood, August 11–13: Acton 47, Ramaswamy 46. NYT/Siena, June 15–28: 47–47. Aggregators in early September clustered near a dead heat.
[11] John Kasich remained a critic of Trump through the 2016 cycle as Ohio’s sitting governor. The parallel is factional Republican fire directed at a nominee after the fight should have ended.
Selected Bibliography
“2026 Ohio gubernatorial election.” Wikipedia. Updated September 14, 2026.
“2026 Polls: Ohio Governor.” 270toWin.
“Who Is Ahead in the Ohio Governor’s Race?” New York Times. Updated September 14, 2026.
Balmert, Jessie. “Amy Acton’s COVID response at center of race for Ohio governor.” Columbus Dispatch, September 14, 2026.
WKYC; Akron Beacon Journal; News 5 Cleveland. Labor Day parade and Canfield Fair coverage, September 6–7, 2026.
BBC; Reuters; NBC News. Havas arrest and charging, September 6–8, 2026.
Washington Examiner; NBC4; Cleveland.com / Jeremy Pelzer; New York Times (Musk/V-PAC). Fundraising and ad spend, June–September 2026.
Newsweek; The Independent; Mediaite; James Surowiecki on X. Tennis, U.S. Open, batting-cage video, September 2026.
The Holy Bible. Acts 18, 22, 25.
Hoffman, Rich. The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business. Liberty Hill, 2021.
Hoffman, Rich. The Politics of Heaven. Forthcoming.
Rich Hoffman
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About the Author: Rich Hoffman
Rich Hoffman is an author, political consultant, and strategic advisor based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the creator of The Politics of Heaven—a unique framework that connects biblical theology, ancient history, and modern power structures to explain how moral alignment and spiritual forces shape global events. Blending real-world political experience with deep research into archaeology, UFO phenomena, and suppressed historical narratives, Hoffman offers compelling commentary on topics ranging from ancient civilizations and the Dead Sea Scrolls to modern populist movements, paranormal continuity, and leadership strategy in chaotic environments. As the author of The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and the forthcoming Politics of Heaven, he brings a grounded yet provocative voice to media discussions, supported by firsthand experiences and a cross-disciplinary approach that bridges science, history, and theology. For interviews, speaking engagements, or expert analysis, visit richhoffmanbooks.com or contact directly via phone at 513-307-5815 or email at rhoffman@richhoffmanbooks.com. If you’ve seen the movie, Disclosure Day and want to talk about it and the implications of Presidnet Trump’s UAP disclosures, let me know and we can bring some color to your coverage. https://richhoffmanbooks.com/media-inquiries-broadcast-topics-and-contact-info/?frame-nonce=ad51e7ecba I do have a firsthand UFO encounter to discuss.
