WASHINGTON — An armed assailant charged toward the Democratic candidate for Ohio governor, Amy Acton, on Sunday during a campaign stop at the Canfield Fair, injuring several people before he was stopped by troopers, the Ohio State Highway Patrol said.
The Highway Patrol said in a statement that a man it identified as Patrick Havas, 38, forced his way through a crowd, knocking over members of the audience as he moved toward Acton, the state’s former public health director. He had a taser and two pistols, the statement said.
The Mahoning County Sheriff’s Office said two handguns and a set of brass knuckles were recovered after his arrest, and “no weapons were ever brandished or even removed from their holsters.”
Havas was taken to the county jail and booked on charges of disorderly conduct and two counts of assault, the Highway Patrol statement said, adding that no other details were available pending an investigation. Online court records didn’t yet list the case, and it wasn’t clear as of Sunday night whether Havas has an attorney.
Republican Gov. Mike DeWine said in a statement that the man “tried to forcefully push himself” toward Acton as she was speaking at the fair in Canfield, in northeastern Ohio.
“Violence or the threat of violence at political or public events is always unacceptable,” DeWine added.
The attack is the latest act of political violence to roil the United States. The Ohio gubernatorial contest is one of the most high-profile races this year as the campaigns enter the final six weeks of campaigning before the election in November.
Acton is facing Republican Vivek Ramaswamy, who has parlayed his national name recognition from his 2024 presidential run, tech industry connections and alliance with President Trump into a record fundraising haul that he is tapping for advertising spots. He is using campaign rallies and advertising to criticize Acton.
Ramaswamy’s campaign called Sunday’s attack unacceptable.
“Candidates should be able to meet with voters without having to worry about threats or violence. What happened today is completely unacceptable and has no place in politics, and we hope that no one was hurt,” Ramaswamy’s communications director, Connie Luck, said in a statement Sunday.
Addie Bullock, communications director for Acton’s campaign, said in a statement that the assailant lunged at Acton. She said the candidate “will always stand up to the chaos, hate and vitriol that pits us against one another.”
The incident brought condemnation from Ohio Republican Sen. Jon Husted, who said on X that he and his wife were “disturbed by the attempted attack on Amy Acton today at the Canfield Fair. We are grateful for law enforcement’s quick response. There is no place for this kind of behavior, and it must never be tolerated.”
The country has seen a rise in political violence over the last decade, including assassination attempts against Donald Trump at a rally in 2024 and at the White House Correspondents Assn. dinner in April, and the Jan. 6, 2021, riot by a pro-Trump mob at the U.S. Capitol.
Other examples include a 2017 shooting at a Republican congressional baseball team practice in Alexandria, Va., a 2022 hammer assault on then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband at the couple’s San Francisco home, and the fatal shootings last year of a Democratic Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband and of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk in Utah.
Federal political committees spent more than $40 million on expenses labeled as security during the 2023-24 campaign cycle, the most recent one for which data are publicly available, according to a report released in April from the Public Service Alliance, a nonpartisan group that focuses on security for public officials.
Before running for governor, Acton had been recruited by DeWine in 2019 to lead the Ohio Department of Health while serving as an associate professor of public health at Ohio State University. As the COVID-19 pandemic ramped up in early 2020, she was thrown into the state and national spotlight — becoming a source of comfort to many viewers of the governor’s daily news conferences.
For her service as health director, Acton earned the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation’s Profile in COVID Courage Award, the Columbus Foundation’s Spirit of Columbus Award and Ohio State’s highest alumni honor, the Alumni Medalist Award.
Her position as the face of the DeWine administration’s aggressive stance against the coronavirus also earned Acton many enemies, among them statehouse Republicans and conservative Ohioans who opposed pandemic public health restrictions.
Fields writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Ryan J. Foley in Iowa City, Iowa, contributed to this report.
