Vivek Ramaswamy, a billionaire pharmaceutical entrepreneur vying to become Ohio’s next Republican governor, has been an enticing target for Democrats. They have derided him daily as “out of touch” with regular Ohioans. They point to his international vacations, his $2 million mansion and most of all, the private jet he has used to turn two-hour drives into 23-minute flights.
But Mr. Ramaswamy, much like the president who has endorsed him, has chosen to lean into his wealth.
“Our opponents, they believe that success is something that we should villainize and penalize,” he told a packed bar in Parma, Ohio, on a recent Saturday. “If we celebrate success, we get more of it. If we villainize success, we get less of it.”
The midterms are coming in a year when inflation has left many Americans struggling to keep up with the rising prices of groceries and gas, but a rising stock market and artificial intelligence industry have made the rich far richer. The world’s first trillionaire, Elon Musk, surpassed that milestone as ordinary workers claimed the smallest percentage of the nation’s wealth since 1947.
Both parties have their share of well-to-do candidates, including Senator Mark Warner, a Democrat of Virginia and one of the richest members of Congress, who is cruising toward re-election. But Democrats have sought to highlight candidates from blue-collar occupations — a firefighter in Pennsylvania, a lumberjack in Maine and a waitress in Wisconsin — while Republicans are fielding some notable candidates of significant means.
They include the scion of the Ameritrade fortune, Senator Pete Ricketts, running for re-election in Nebraska; a billionaire health care executive, Rick Jackson, running for governor in Georgia; and Mr. Ramaswamy running against Dr. Amy Acton, a public health doctor, in Ohio, which has not elected a Democratic governor since 2006.
The Ohio race, which has surprised many with its close margins, has this question at its heart: At a time when everything feels hard to pay for, do voters want a governor who says his success proves he can bring prosperity to others, or one who says she can solve struggles because she’s been through them herself?
Throughout the race, the contrast between the two candidates has been embodied by their modes of transportation. While Mr. Ramaswamy has spent at least $689,000 leasing private jets since declaring his candidacy, according to campaign finance reports, Dr. Acton has emphasized that she travels the state in a 2018 Jeep Wrangler that was made in Toledo.
The Jeep, with its dashboard rubber ducks and a license plate that says “SOOOHIO,” is a frequent star of Dr. Acton’s social media posts and advertisements. In her telling, it allows her to be on the ground with voters, while Mr. Ramaswamy is treating Ohio “like a flyover state.”
When campaign security increased after the primaries, Dr. Acton stopped driving the Jeep to events herself. It came anyway, driven by staff members so that it could continue to serve as a symbol of what she represents.
Dr. Acton, who regularly trades blazers for T-shirts and visors, has declined Mr. Ramaswamy’s calls for a debate. At rallies and roundtables, she delivers her affordability proposals with a subtle side of billionaire blaming. She has promised to take aim at predatory lenders, corporate corruption and dark money lobbyists if elected.
“There is a feeling like, why are the rich running our government?” said Ted Berry, the City Council president in Grove City, Ohio, a lifelong Republican who is supporting Dr. Acton. “We need candidates that are like us, that feel the same pains we do.”
Mr. Berry, who voted for Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican who is term limited, but not President Trump, said Dr. Acton’s messaging is making inroads with moderates like him, even while his party works to paint her as unqualified and even unstable.
To Dolly Vigneulle, a retired nurse who came to see Mr. Ramaswamy at the bar in Parma, his wealth is far from a failing.
“I think he probably worked hard to achieve that,” she said.
She cheered as Mr. Ramaswamy, dressed in slacks and a golf-style vest, talked about making sweeping tax cuts and told the story of his parents, who “came from southwest India to southwest Ohio with nothing to their name.” He said his success — rooted in a drug development company he started — was the result of an American dream that he wanted to make a reality for others. The solution to rising costs, he argued, is to have a businessman find ways to get more cash into voters’ pockets.
When clips evidencing Mr. Ramaswamy’s past enthusiasm for data centers gained traction on social media, he proposed that anyone living near one should no longer have to pay their electric bills.
After treating the bar crowd to multiple rounds of free beer and pierogies, Mr. Ramaswamy was driven away in a black S.U.V. It was unclear if he was headed for his jet. Mr. Ramaswamy’s campaign declined to let a New York Times reporter see the jet or to answer questions about his transportation.
Though many fans of Mr. Trump have enjoyed the president’s expressions of opulence, including the “Trump Force One” jet he campaigned with, Mr. Ramaswamy has kept his aircraft to himself. He does not photograph in front of it, nor does he bring it to events. That has not stopped his opponents from gleefully trying to track whenever he uses it.
One day last week, both candidates were traveling on foot in London, Ohio — trudging through the mud at the Farm Science Review, an exhibition of the latest in farming technology. Mr. Ramaswamy, in hiking boots, posed with an Ohio dairy milkshake. Dr. Acton, in rain boots, made a show of consuming a pork chop sandwich.
“Hi, I’m Amy, and I’m running for governor,” Dr. Acton said as she walked up to voters in the pork tent.
“I’ve seen you on TV,” said Joe Falgner, a hay, corn and soybean farmer who shook her hand.
Mr. Falgner didn’t like to tell his neighbors in Blanchester, Ohio, that he was a Democrat. But lately, when his friends complained about the cost of groceries and gasoline, Mr. Falgner had been saying, “Well, everybody in Columbus is a Republican, and they have been for 15 or 20 years. Who are you to blame?”
In a barn a few hundred yards away, Mr. Ramaswamy told reporters about his plan to suspend the state’s gas tax for 90 days — a plan he unveiled six hours after Dr. Acton had called for an emergency gas tax holiday.
But when Mr. Ramaswamy began taking questions, a reporter from NBC returned to the topic of the jet, saying, “I’ve talked to a number of Republicans who say — including Republican leaders in this state — who say, ‘Just park the jet, man.’ Why are you still flying around on a jet in Ohio?’”
“Amy Acton likes to talk a lot about my bank account,” Mr. Ramaswamy responded. “She doesn’t like to talk about helping yours.”
He again spoke of upward mobility and the American dream, and then he walked out of the barn to talk to voters. He didn’t have to search for hands to shake; men young and old asked him for selfies. Then a staff member for Mr. Ramaswamy saw a social media opportunity in another type of transportation.
A huge tractor was parked in the grass. He posed Mr. Ramaswamy in front of it and pressed record.
The post His Jet vs. Her Jeep: How Wealth Is Playing in the Midterms appeared first on New York Times.
