Businessman, former Republican presidential candidate, and MAGA personality Vivek Ramaswamy announced he is seeking the Republican nomination for governor of Ohio, with endorsements by Donald Trump and Elon Musk, over Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost.
(LifeSiteNews) – Businessman, former Republican presidential candidate, and MAGA personality Vivek Ramaswamy announced Monday that he is seeking the Republican nomination for governor of Ohio, with the apparent backing of the MAGA machine.
“There are conservative solutions and approaches that have not yet been tried in any of the other 50 states,” Ramaswamy declared in an interview with the New York Post, particularly on education policy. “I want Ohio to set the standard.”
President Donald Trump quickly endorsed Ramaswamy, who nominally ran against him in the 2024 Republican presidential primary but has been one of his most vocal boosters. “I know him well, competed against him, and he is something SPECIAL,” Trump said. “He’s Young, Strong, and Smart! Vivek is also a very good person, who truly loves our Country.”
Presidential adviser Elon Musk, with whom Ramaswamy was originally slated to run the Department of Government Efficiency before shifting gears to a political run, quickly echoed that endorsement:
Also running for the GOP nod to replace outgoing, term-limited Republican Gov. Mike DeWine is state Attorney General Dave Yost and former Morgan Local School Board member Heather Brazell-Hill. The sole Democrat candidate so far is former Ohio Department of Health Director Dr. Amy Acton.
The news has already provoked debate online over the best choice to succeed DeWine, particularly given Ramaswamy and Yost’s respective positions on COVID-19:
In December 2023, Ramaswamy said that the “winning path for the GOP on abortion isn’t to compromise on our principles, it’s to practice what we preach” by making men legally responsible for the babies they conceive. By July 2024, however, he was touting the fact that Trump's rewritten GOP platform “does NOT support a federal abortion ban,” which Democrats were “freaking out” about because “we’re picking off your voters.” Last September, he said that the “most important point of the debate (against former Vice President Kamala Harris) was Trump stating with crystal clarity to voters that he’s against a federal ban on abortion & he’s a champion for IVF.”
