WASHINGTON (AP) — 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 Ohio State Highway Patrol said in a statement that a man it identified as Patrick Havas, 38, forced his way through a crowd, knocking over multiple 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,” he added.
The attempted attack is the latest political violence to roil the United States. And the Ohio gubernatorial race 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, tech industry connections and alliance with President Donald Trump into a record fundraising haul that he is tapping for advertising spots aimed at the November election. He is using campaign rallies and advertising to criticize Acton.
Ramaswamy’s campaign called the incident Sunday 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 hope that no one was hurt,” Ramaswamy’s communications director, Connie Luck, said in a statement.
Addie Bullock, communications director for Acton’s campaign, said in a statement that the suspect “lunged” at Acton. She said the Democratic 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 past decade. That includes the 2017 shooting at a Republican congressional baseball team practice in Alexandria, Virginia; the 2022 hammer assault on the husband of Democratic then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in California; the 2024 assassination attempt on Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally during his presidential campaign as well as another on the president at this year’s White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner in April; and the assassinations last year of a Democratic Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband and of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk in Utah.
READ MORE: How recent political violence in the U.S. fits into ‘a long, dark history’
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 is publicly available, according 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 was 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 virus also earned Acton many enemies, among them Statehouse Republicans and average Ohioans who opposed pandemic restrictions.
Associated Press writer Ryan J. Foley in Iowa City, Iowa, contributed to this report.
