Earning Grassroots Trust: Why Ohio’s Candidates Must Face Constitutional Accountability
Dr. Amy Acton, Democratic candidate running for Ohio Governor, spoke at the City Club of Cleveland on June 25. (Screenshot)
We must be crystal clear about the political realities shaping our elections. In 2024, former Vice President Kamala Harris lost the presidential race driven in key part by strategic campaign commercials and national ad buys highlighting her California prosecutorial record. These campaigns explicitly targeted Black communities by focusing on tough-on-crime messaging, aggressive prosecutions, and systemic wrongful convictions—contributing to over 21% of Black men voting for Donald Trump. Voters refuse to offer unearned loyalty when concerns surrounding prosecutorial histories, mass incarceration, and systemic injustice are ignored.
Candidates running for statewide office in Ohio—including gubernatorial candidate Dr. Amy Leigh Acton—will not get a free pass. Grassroots support is earned, not assumed. With over 1,000,000 registered Black voters across Ohio, our collective voice carries the power to decide elections. We will not remain silent while our movements for fundamental rights are bypassed. Any candidate seeking statewide office must earn our support through concrete commitments to systemic justice, civil rights protections, and constitutional accountability.
To understand the legal standard we are fighting for, consider statutory precedents elsewhere: legislative measures like Colorado’s SB 21-217 explicitly permitted law enforcement and correctional officers to be sued personally in civil court. However, those specific words do not exist anywhere in our proposed ballot initiative language.
Dr. Acton owes Protecting Ohioans' Constitutional Rights and The Ohio Coalition to End Qualified Immunity (OCEQI) a public apology for providing false information to the press regarding our campaign. Spreading misstatements to the media minimizes real human lives and creates irreparable harm to our committee, coalition, volunteers, and supporters. When political figures frame our ballot campaign as a narrow effort centered on "suing police," they completely fabricate and misrepresent the plain text of our proposed constitutional amendment. A candidate who opposes ending qualified immunity and supports unchecked state overreach does not truly support the Ohio Constitution or the fundamental principles of liberty.
What our ballot text actually establishes is clear:
Accountability Across ALL Government Agencies: Our amendment does not single out police; it applies equally to all state departments, municipal authorities, county entities, public officials, regulatory boards, and government employees operating within public service.
Ending Systemic Immunity Defenses: The initiative systematically eliminates specialized legal shields—including qualified immunity, sovereign immunity, and statutory protections—that block citizens from seeking justice in state court when any government entity violates state constitutional rights.
Equal Enforcement of Constitutional Rights: When a public entity or public employee deprives a citizen of their rights under the Ohio Constitution, a direct legal remedy must exist. Without state-level civil liability, government actors face zero legal consequences when they infringe upon individual rights. Real accountability requires ending self-policing mechanisms—a system that perpetuates wrongful convictions, as seen in the case of former committee member Derrick Jamison, who spent 20 years on Ohio’s death row for a crime he did not commit due to official misconduct.
Elected officials and state actors do not rule us—they work for us. As the foundational governing documents of our nation establish, ultimate authority resides in We the People. A candidate who shields state actors from legal accountability while expanding government access to monitor everyday citizens fails the basic test of constitutional leadership. It is time to stand on our foundational principles, correct the false narratives, and hold every candidate for public office accountable to the citizens they serve.
We believe: "Liberty without accountability is just state privilege. If a candidate does not stand up to end qualified immunity for every public official, they do not stand for the Constitution, and they do not stand for the liberty of the people of Ohio."