Democrats’ likely 2026 nominee for governor (likely, not certain: Remember, “Three Democrats, five opinions”) is Dr. Amy Acton, of Bexley, who served in GOP Gov. Mike DeWine’s Cabinet as state Health director during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic. (DeWine can’t seek re-election due to term-limits.)
If you’re an Ohioan who wears a pocket-protector and keeps an HP 12C financial calculator as handy as your iPhone, you might – might – be able to make sense of recent General Assembly show-biz to supposedly hold down crushing Ohio property taxes.
Don’t bother: The legislature’s Republicans got the photo-ops they wanted and are returning to their real agenda: Further bloating Ohio fat-cats, trying to subordinate women, and demonizing LGBTQ+ Ohioans.
Trouble is, as to property taxes, Ohioans don’t have time for “complex” or “complicated.” Backers are circulating petitions to place on November 2026’s ballot – at the gubernatorial election – a ballot issue to abolish all real-estate taxes in Ohio and forbid any new ones. That, if Ohioans OK’d it, would destroy funding for public schools as well as as libraries; Children Services Boards; and Boards of Developmental Disabilities.
Given voter rage about real-estate taxes, and General Assembly cluelessness, it’s more than merely possible the abolish-property-taxes plan could reach Ohio’s the 2026 ballot: Then, political frustration, state and national, might goad Ohioans into property-tax repeal.
If Ohioans did that, it’d create a national news-quake even bigger than 1978’s when California voters OK’d Proposition 13, the Jarvis-Gann plan severely limiting property tax increases – but Jarvis-Gann, unlike the Ohio proposal, didn’t forbid property taxes altogether.
Ohio’s gubernatorial election will be on Nov. 3, 2026. If voters OK’d a property-tax ban, it’d take effect on Jan. 1, 2027. Ohio’s next governor – Acton, Ramaswamy, whoever – will be sworn in on Jan. 11, 2027. Then she or he must fashion a new, two-year Ohio budget by July 1, 2027.
Ramaswamy, age 40, is no slouch in the brains department, He was valedictorian of his 2003 class at the Jesuits’ St. Xavier High School in Cincinnati; earned degrees at Harvard (biology) and Yale (law); then made a fortune in bioscience. He knows a thing or two about money.
He also may know a thing or two about Ohio property taxes. According to Franklin County data, property tax on the Upper Arlington house where Ramaswamy resides is about $49,000 a year (with roughly 70% of that going to Upper Arlington’s schools).
If Ramaswamy’s entourage is brainy as it’s said to be, it’ll energetically prepare plans for what a Gov. Ramaswamy would do if voters ban property taxes just six months before he must pass a 2027-29 state budget that’d have to fill deep holes in, for example, school funding.
Moreover – as to Ramaswamy’s White House quest – how would national media assess his management of Ohio’s budget in what could be a state’s likely unprecedented attempt to ban property taxes? If Ramaswamy succeeded, the contrast with congressional incompetence could become a huge plus for him.
That is, Ohio’s potential property tax story could make or break Ramaswamy’s presidential quest. If he and his aides shrewdly frame the issue, Ramaswamy could have a clear path to the White House. If not, well, Upper Arlington is a nice place to live.
Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University. You can reach him at tsuddes@gmail.com.
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