Vivek Ramaswamy opens run for Ohio governor
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In his speech, Mr Ramaswamy cast his candidacy as an extension of Mr Trump’s efforts in Washington.
PHOTO: AFP
Charles Homans
OHIO - Mr Vivek Ramaswamy, the biotech entrepreneur and former Republican presidential candidate who briefly aided US President Donald Trump’s government-restructuring efforts, announced his candidacy for governor of Ohio on Feb 24, vowing to place the state at the forefront of a “second industrial revolution” in the United States.
Addressing a crowd of hundreds of supporters at an aerospace company’s industrial facility in West Chester Township, a suburb of his home town Cincinnati, Mr Ramaswamy cast his candidacy as an extension of Mr Trump’s efforts in Washington.
“This is not a one-man job,” he said, referring to Mr Trump’s election. “If we’re all going to be saved as a people, it’s going to be because all of us here step up and save ourselves, and that starts with the states.”
Mr Ramaswamy, 39, who rose to prominence as a conservative critic of liberal corporate governance, was a long-shot but high-profile candidate in the 2024 Republican presidential primary.
He dropped out of the race after a distant fourth-place finish in the Iowa caucuses, and quickly rebranded himself as a tireless booster of Mr Trump and his agenda.
In West Chester, Mr Ramaswamy’s speech focused heavily on traditional Republican priorities like cutting taxes and regulation in Ohio, and he described educational achievement as “the single-most important crisis that frankly neither major political party is talking or doing enough about”.
Among other things, he promised to ban cellphones in schools.
The president has not yet endorsed a candidate in the primary contest, which will be held in 2026, but he had urged Mr Mike DeWine, Ohio’s Republican governor, to appoint Mr Ramaswamy to finish Vice-President J.D. Vance’s Senate term.
Mr DeWine chose Mr Jon Husted, his lieutenant-governor, to fill the seat instead – a decision that set off a game of musical chairs in the governor’s race, where Mr Husted was expected to be a favourite for the Republican nomination. Mr Dave Yost, Ohio’s attorney-general, and Mr Robert Sprague, the state treasurer, both declared candidacies.
Mr Sprague dropped his bid and endorsed Mr Ramaswamy in February.
In his speech, Mr Ramaswamy promised to be “conservative without being combative” in his primary contest with Mr Yost.
He criticised the “Anthony Fauci knock off who allowed our public schools to be closed” during the Covid-19 pandemic – an apparent reference to Ms Amy Acton, the former director of the state Department of Health, the only declared Democratic candidate in the governor’s race so far. NYTIMES
