Almost a year before the May 5 Republican primary, Vivek Ramaswamy, the loquacious billionaire entrepreneur and former presidential candidate, had almost completely cleared the field contending to become Ohio’s next governor. That alone made him the favorite, since a Democrat has not held the office for 15 years.
He has been endorsed by trade unions, farm associations, dozens of county sheriffs and President Trump. He has visited every county in the state, often feted as a celebrity by local Republican leaders. Perhaps most formidably, his campaign and the super PAC backing him have amassed nearly $40 million — a record-breaking sum that does not include the many millions he’s ready to spend from his own pockets.
The only matter remaining is whether a majority of Ohioans will vote for him.
While there is not much suspense heading into the Republican primary, recent polls suggest a surprisingly competitive race in November. Several polls show a lead for Dr. Amy Acton, the former state health director and presumptive Democratic nominee. Last month, prognosticators shifted the race from a likely Republican victory to one that merely leans red.
That’s surprising, because Dr. Acton begins with a number of challenges. For one, she is a Democrat. She is best known as the face of Ohio’s Covid-era health policy, a sign of bipartisan bona fides, given that she was working for a Republican governor, the term-limited Mike DeWine, but also a throwback to a traumatic time that many voters may prefer not to recall.
And while the $9.3 million her campaign has raised to date is impressive when compared with past Democratic campaigns for governor in Ohio, it is far less impressive than Mr. Ramaswamy’s haul. And his $40 million figure comes before the mandatory disclosure of his fund-raising so far this year.
Perhaps Mr. Ramaswamy’s showing in the polls is simply a function of the current national mood, as rising costs, economic uncertainty and an unpopular war drag down the popularity of the president and his party.
Or perhaps Mr. Ramaswamy, 40, is facing a challenge he faced in his campaign for the presidency in 2024: that his fast-talking self-assurance just rubs some people the wrong way. “Honestly,” Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor said in one of the Republican presidential debates, “every time I hear you, I feel a little bit dumber.”
Supporters of Mr. Ramaswamy are supremely unfazed, brushing aside these polls as dubious indicators, especially so early in the race. They point out that Mr. Ramaswamy has already started releasing ads and has the funds to saturate the airwaves, an edge that Republicans believe will be very difficult for Dr. Acton to overcome.
“He has worked the state harder than any politician I’ve seen,” said Caleb Stidham, the chairman of the Republican Party in Erie County, about fifty miles west of Cleveland. “All the fundamentals are there.”
Mr. Ramaswamy’s swagger and drive have been core to his brand since he first entered the public eye. Born and raised by Indian immigrants in Cincinnati, he made his fortune as a young financier, starting and running a pharmaceutical firm before leaping into the culture wars as a crusader against “woke” capitalism.
At 37 years old, he decided to run for president, joining the 2024 Republican primary for a short-lived but high-profile campaign, in which he did “worse than I thought I would do, but better than everyone else thought I would do,” as he told the crowd at a recent town hall. His campaign speeches are shot through with this entrepreneurial self-confidence, as he promises to make Ohio, the birthplace of astronauts and inventors, a powerhouse of innovation and wealth again.
“This idea of doing economic abundance is something that really animates me,” he said in an interview before an event in Cleveland. Dismissing the Democrats’ emphasis on affordability as a “buzzword,” Mr. Ramaswamy insisted that his vision went far beyond that, preaching of tech-driven growth that would lead to “spiritual” abundance.
His presidential campaign speeches veered into grim jeremiads about contemporary American life, lamenting the “black hole in our hearts.” Now, in the banquet halls and event spaces of small-town Ohio, Mr. Ramaswamy speaks with the sunny positivity and techno-optimism of a Silicon Valley evangelist.
“If you’re spending less time having to worry about how you’re going to take care of your kids as a working family and do the dishes and who’s going to do the laundry, and instead you can use increasing wealth to take care of those things, use the technology of the future to enhance productivity,” he said in the interview, “I think you’re going to have people who in Ohio are experiencing that sense of true, not just economic abundance, but an abundance of purpose and meaning.”
Democrats acknowledge Mr. Ramaswamy’s considerable financial resources, but they suggest that this is part of the reason he has the more difficult campaign task ahead.
“Vivek Ramaswamy is an out-of-touch billionaire,” Addie Bullock, a spokesman for the Acton campaign, said in an email.
Dr. Acton and other Democrats are eager to highlight his proposals to eliminate school summer breaks or consolidate some of the state’s colleges; his frequent travel on a private jet; and his comments, in a 2024 social media post about H-1B visas that triggered the fury of right-wing nationalists, that American culture “venerated mediocrity over excellence.”
Mr. Ramaswamy has not entirely shied from this argument, pointing out in recent speeches that students in China and Korea are “doing better in not only math and reading, but in some cases, even English proficiency than our own students.” This does not appear to bother many of his supporters, nor does his copious wealth; on the contrary, many described it as proof that he knows how to run a business.
Still, Democrats are banking on the notion that a youthful billionaire who made his money in pharmaceuticals and finance might be a tough sell for some struggling, blue-collar Ohio voters.
A discomfort is evident among at least some voters on the right. Two other candidates are running in the Republican primary, and while both are very long shots, they reflect a frustration about how quickly the state Republican establishment has rallied around Mr. Ramaswamy. The party voted to endorse him last May, though other high-profile Republicans were already running or considering the race.
“People don’t like having an anointed one,” said Roger Gilcrest, 70, a lawyer who had come to a German restaurant in Columbus to hear from Casey Putsch, a car enthusiast who is running in the primary’s far-right lane.
With little money, Mr. Putsch is not a serious threat, but he is a conduit for the populist anger that could complicate Mr. Ramaswamy’s efforts to consolidate his party’s support. Mr. Putsch rails against data centers, “billionaire tech bros” and foreigners, Indians in particular, who are granted H-1B visas for high-skilled jobs in Ohio. Mr. Ramaswamy, Mr. Putsch said to his supporters, “is a globalist Trojan horse.”
Mr. Ramaswamy has said he does not think that anti-Indian bias will be much of a factor in his race, nor does he appear worried about the uneasiness or even resistance some voters have toward his most ambitious, and most disruptive, proposals.
“Change is always a little scary,” he said. “But at the same time, when I go across the state, do people want net change in the direction of higher-paying jobs and a better education? They do, so I think most people intuitively understand that.”
John Adams, a retired pastor in Erie County who is active in local Republican politics, said that people were still learning about Mr. Ramaswamy. Most everyone knew him as a figure in Mr. Trump’s orbit, but many didn’t know he had grown up in Cincinnati.
“For some folks, I hear them say, ‘Well, he’s an outsider, we really don’t know him very well,’” he said. People are impressed when they learn of his accomplishments, Mr. Adams said, though some wonder if he will be able to translate that success to governing.
“Anybody’s a gamble who’s not been in that mansion before,” Mr. Adams said. But, he added, “some people are just risk averse.”
Kevin Williams contributed reporting from Columbus.
Campbell Robertson reports for The Times on Delaware, the District of Columbia, Kentucky, Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia.
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