WEST UNION, Ohio — Before a campaign commercial this month embroiled Vivek Ramaswamy’s bid for Ohio governor in controversy, the Indian American Republican faced widespread speculation that prejudice was undermining his candidacy in a state that has been reliably red in recent years.
Nearly 1 in 5 voters in the GOP primary backed a candidate who hurled racist taunts at Ramaswamy, assailed “third worlders” and invoked “blood and soil” language used by Nazis. Ramaswamy’s campaign coincides with a backlash to growing Indian American communities and their rising presence in the tech and health care industries. Conservative influencers and some politicians are showing open hostility toward Indian Americans.
Ramaswamy, who was born in Cincinnati to Indian immigrants and would be the nation’s first Hindu governor, has stressed his Catholic schooling before college and love for America on the campaign trail. He is narrowly behind in polls in a state that Donald Trump won by 11 percentage points in the 2024 presidential election.
Interviews with more than a dozen voters in rural Appalachian Monroe and Adams counties, where Ramaswamy had lower margins of victory in the primary than his statewide 82 percent victory, showed mixed feelings about the Republican candidate. No one said they wouldn’t vote for an Indian American, and some Republican voters who expressed concerns about Ramawamy’s religion, ultimately, said they cared more about his political identity than his personal identity.
Mike Williams, 64, said he would prefer a Christian governor.
“Being Christian is what keeps the U.S. going,” Williams said in an interview outside a Walmart in Adams County.
But he said he planned to vote for Ramaswamy to keep “the loony left,” which he fears would abolish police and release prisoners, out of power. “It’s the lesser of two evils,” Williams said.
Some in Adams County who say they have noticed few campaign signs for Ramaswamy, even in yards plastered with signs for other Republicans, wonder whether their neighbors are more leery of Indian Americans than they let on.
“On the surface, you probably won’t notice that people are as racist and unaccepting as they are here,” Kyra Akers, 19, said during a break from her job as a cashier at a market in Adams County. “It’s pretty shocking.”
Ramaswamy’s campaign came under scrutiny, including from some Republicans, this month after debuting an ad featuring the mother of his Democratic opponent, Amy Acton, accusing her daughter of lying about her upbringing. Acton and her brother were removed from their mother’s home in 1978 after their stepfather was indicted and charged with raping Acton when she was 12. Ramaswamy’s critics say the commercial is an ugly sign of desperation.
Spokespeople for Ramaswamy and Acton did not return requests for comment.
It’s difficult to say exactly why Ramaswamy is in a toss-up race. Voters who are fed up with the rising cost of living are rebelling against Republicans nationwide, including in many red states. Sen. Jon Husted (R-Ohio), a White Catholic, is also in a tough race, with polls showing both he and Ramaswamy slightly behind their Democratic opponents.
Ramaswamy has never held office or worked in Ohio government, while Acton guided the state through the covid-19 pandemic when she was its top public health official. Ramaswamy is also a billionaire former biotech executive whom Trump appointed to co-lead the U.S. DOGE Service with Elon Musk. He resigned to run for governor — in a time of anti-elite sentiment.
Brian Meyer, 55, who lives in Adams County, said the “billionaire thing,” rather than race or religion, comes up first when he talks to people about Ramaswamy. Since retiring as a public school teacher, Meyer said, he has relied on odd jobs to make ends meet. The cost of filling up his gas tank has begun to outstrip what he earns while delivering groceries.
“The problem is when you get rich, you don’t know the day-to-day of people’s struggles,” Meyer said in an interview outside Walmart.
Race and class are intertwined in politics.
“Indian Americans’ success is very visible, which can be a double-edged sword,” said Devesh Kapur, a professor of South Asian studies at Johns Hopkins University. Indian Americans have one of the highest annual household incomes of any ethnic group, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.
“For a long time, that was seen as realizing the American Dream,” Kapur said. “But now that very success seems to have created this backlash.”
Social media users routinely hurl racist insults and comments at Ramaswamy, and some white supremacists have publicly backed Acton over him. He addressed the bigotry in an essay published in the New York Times in December, accusing those fixated on his identity of being no different from a race-obsessed “woke” left.
In the general election campaign, Ramaswamy has not explicitly addressed anti-Indian sentiment. He remained silent following a social media post from Bo French, the Republican nominee for Texas railroad commissioner. French drew criticism for commenting that a photo of South Asian students at the University of Texas at Austin, who were celebrating a football game, exposed “how many Americans have been displaced by foreigners.” French later said he wasn’t criticizing them for their race but because he believed they were the children of immigrants on H-1B visas getting preferential treatment for public university admissions.
Other Indian Americans have found success in the Republican Party, including former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley and former Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal. But unlike Ramaswamy, they converted to Christianity and did not go by their birth names that are more common among Indians.
Nationwide, more than half of likely voters said that being Hindu would hurt a candidate’s chance of winning in a U.S. election, according to a September Bowling Green State University/YouGov poll.
Voters who constitute important parts of the Republican base — those in rural areas, those older than 65 and those without college educations — were the most likely to say that being Hindu would hurt a candidate’s chance of winning. But anti-elite sentiment could be more likely to harm Ramaswamy than racism, according to Robert Alexander, a political science professor at Bowling Green.
Throughout his campaign for governor, Ramaswamy has spoken openly about his faith, which he said instructed him to use his “blessings” to help others, while emphasizing his education at Cincinnati’s St. Xavier High School, an all-boys Jesuit school. When he ran for president in 2023, he similarly showed his biblical knowledge to skeptical voters, weaving Bible stories into speeches. He draws a contrast between his family and immigrants who came to the country illegally.
“I’m the kid of legal immigrants to this country, who did it the right way,” Ramaswamy told a crowd of about 50 at a town hall gathering in Monroe County. “You work hard, you play by the rules, you live the American Dream.”
In interviews with voters at the event, several people insisted that they had no problems with Hindus but acknowledged a prejudice against Muslims.
“There’s a difference between a Hindu and a Muslim,” said Carol Coleman, 61, a member of the Ohio GOP State Central Committee. “A lot of Muslims — but not all in our country — have a lot of hate. When you see the beheading of women and children, that’s different: Hindus don’t believe in murdering women and children.”
Advocates for Muslims say it is a hateful trope to broadly suggest Muslims support violence.
Ricky Farley, 65, who attended Ramaswamy’s Monroe County event, said Ramaswamy’s Hindu religion did not matter to him because the candidate embodies “the traditional and family values we are missing a lot in the U.S. these days.”
“I’m a Baptist pastor, and we are required by Christ to love everyone, including our enemies, including the Muslims,” said Farley, dressed in a shirt emblazoned with the American flag wrapped around a Christian cross. “But the problem is that Islamists radicalize the Muslims in every country they are in. In my own opinion, there shouldn’t be a Muslim in the country.”
During the gubernatorial primary, Ramaswamy, who has long condemned identity politics and a growing GOP obsession with race, warned young Republicans against adopting a mindset that blamed minorities for individual failings.
“It’s not the Jews,” Ramaswamy said in a May rally about the need to take individual responsibility. “It’s not the White people. It’s not the patriarchy. It’s not the Black people. It’s not the foreigners.”
On Wednesday, he used Dearborn, Michigan — the nation’s first Arab American majority city and which has a large Muslim population — among other cities with large non-White populations to exemplify the consequences of “communism.”
“Look what’s happening in Dearborn, Michigan,” he said at a rally in Chillicothe, without specifying what is happening or referring to Muslims. “We’re not going to let that come to our state of Ohio.”
His campaign did not immediately reply to requests to clarify his remarks.
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