{"id":154927,"date":"2025-09-19T18:39:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-19T18:39:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/154927\/"},"modified":"2025-09-19T18:39:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T18:39:08","slug":"former-ohio-state-football-coach-jim-tressel-decides-not-to-run-for-governor-in-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/154927\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Ohio State football coach Jim Tressel decides not to run for governor in 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) \u2014 Former Ohio State football coach and current Lt. Gov. Jim Tressel said Friday he won\u2019t run for Ohio governor in 2026, easing the path toward a Republican nomination for biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.<\/p>\n<p>A bid by Tressel could have shaken up a race that many have seen as a shoe-in for the Cincinnati-born Ramaswamy, who has been\u00a0endorsed by President Donald Trump\u00a0and the Ohio Republican Party. Amy Acton, who led Ohio\u2019s health department early in the COVID-19 pandemic, is\u00a0running as a Democrat.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/newshour\/politics\/sherrod-brown-expected-to-seek-his-return-to-the-senate-in-2026\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">READ MORE: Sherrod Brown expected to seek his return to the Senate in 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Term-limited Republican Gov. Mike DeWine chose Tressel, 72, as\u00a0his lieutenant governor\u00a0to fill a vacant role in February. Though Tressel was a political newcomer, he has lots of prior leadership experience as a championship-winning college football coach and as an administrator in higher education \u2014 plus star power among the state\u2019s many Buckeye football fans.<\/p>\n<p>Former Lt. Gov. Jon Husted had long been viewed as the front-runner to be Ohio\u2019s next governor, but he\u00a0took an appointment\u00a0to fill the remainder of JD Vance\u2019s U.S. Senate term when Vance was elected to be vice president. Tressel was chosen by DeWine and confirmed by lawmakers to succeed Husted, who has pledged to run for Senate rather than governor next year.<\/p>\n<p>Former Democratic U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan, who made a strong bid for U.S. Senate in 2024, has said he would not seek the governorship if Tressel ran. Ryan played football for Tressel at Youngstown State and considers him a mentor.<\/p>\n<p>\n                    We&#8217;re not going anywhere.\n                <\/p>\n<p class=\"invite_body\">\n                    Stand up for truly independent, trusted news that you can count on!\n                <\/p>\n<p>                <a href=\"https:\/\/give.newshour.org\/page\/85597\/donate\/1?ea.tracking.id=nh_july_2025_rescission_article&amp;supporter.appealCode=N2507QW07000AA\" class=\"donation-link ga-click-funding ga-click-ender-funding\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><br \/>\n                    Donate now<\/p>\n<p>                <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) \u2014 Former Ohio State football coach and current Lt. Gov. Jim Tressel said Friday he&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":154928,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-154927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154927\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}