Vivek Ramaswamy barreled into politics as a flame-thrower willing to offend just about anyone. He declared America was in a “cold cultural civil war,” denied the existence of white supremacists, and referred to one of his rivals as “corrupt.”
Now, he says he wants to be “conservative without being combative.”
Ramaswamy is rebranding himself both for the Ohio governor’s race, where he hopes to succeed the conservative but mild-mannered Gov. Mike DeWine, and to establish a clear lane for himself in the ongoing Republican Party debate over racial and political identity.
He took the stage at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest this month to criticize Nick Fuentes and the so-called “groyper right.” He’s denounced what he called the “rising prevalence of the blood-and-soil view” within his party.
Having once rejected a famous line from Ronald Reagan by declaring it was “not morning in America,” Ramaswamy cited the 40th president before the Turning Point audience.
“Ronald Reagan understood this,” he said. “He famously said, you know, you could go to Italy, but you would never be an Italian. You can move to Germany, but you would never be a German. You could pack your bags in China or Japan. You would never be Chinese or Japanese. But you can come from any one of those countries to the United States of America, and you can still be an American.”
A lot has changed since 2023, when the 40-year-old biotech entrepreneur launched his bid for president and made himself into a national figure.
Briefly a co-chair of Elon Musk’s program to slash government, Ramaswamy left Washington before President Donald Trump took office and entered the race for governor of his native Ohio. And as the recent Turning Point gathering made clear, the nationally conservative movement is riven by infighting over whether to denounce or “de-platform” figures promoting racism and antisemitism.
Ramaswamy distinguished himself during the last GOP primaries with radical policy proposals — among them, raising the voting age to 25 and abolishing the FBI — and confrontational interviews and debate performances. He decried the “climate change hoax,” called TikTok “digital fentanyl,” and wholeheartedly embraced Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement while still running against him.
Ramaswamy accused opponents of being “bought and paid for.” Several opponents fired back.
“I’ve had enough already tonight of a guy who sounds like ChatGPT standing up here,” Chris Christie said during one debate. After Ramaswamy suggested in another debate that Nikki Haley was a hypocrite for proposing a ban on TikTok despite her daughter using the app, Haley called Ramaswamy “scum.”
Chris Christie calls Vivek Ramaswamy a ‘misogynist’
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie joins “CNN This Morning” to discuss his 2024 presidential opponents Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy after facing off in the fourth GOP debate hosted by NewsNation.
Now, Ramaswamy is attempting to succeed DeWine, who hails from a different era of GOP politics.
Notably, despite no other major Republicans running in the gubernatorial primary, DeWine has declined to endorse Ramaswamy yet. DeWine told Cleveland’s WEWS-TV that he wanted “to get a better understanding of his positions, what his vision is.”
“For me, I want to get to know him. I’m still doing that,” DeWine said.
Ramaswamy, a Cincinnati native, has focused his campaign on state issues, offering critiques of Ohio’s budget, taxes and education policies.
“If you care about your kids living the American dream, in this state, and getting a world-class education in this state – then I’ll tell you this, we’re on the same team,” he said in March.
Jai Chabria, advising Ramaswamy’s campaign, said that “obviously, he has a national platform, but you know, he’s actually gone out this last year, and he’s actually traveled to all 88 counties in the state of Ohio. So he is going there. He’s going where voters are. He’s meeting them in person. And I think that that grassroots effort is a really big deal.”
Terry Casey, a veteran conservative commentator in Ohio, said Ramaswamy “is a curious guy who listens and learns better than a lot of other politicians.” And former Rep. Jim Renacci, speaking to CNN’s Audie Cornish, said it was still early in the process ahead of Ohio’s May 5 primary and that Ramaswamy was still introducing himself to voters.
“This governor’s been very interesting over the years,” said Renacci, who challenged DeWine four years ago in the GOP primary and lost. “I ran against this governor because in many ways, I didn’t believe he was a conservative Republican either. And I think Vivek in a way is calling him out at the same time.”
Democrats, meanwhile, are increasingly confident that Ramaswamy’s potential nomination gives them an opening to win again at the statewide level. While Republicans backed Trump in the last three presidential elections, Barack Obama won the state twice, and longtime former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown is making a comeback bid next year after losing in 2024.
Ramaswamy is likely to face Amy Acton, a physician and public health expert who is running virtually uncontested for the Democratic nomination after playing a key role in the DeWine administration’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
In the same interview in which he declined to endorse Ramaswamy, DeWine came to Acton’s defense as she’s faced criticism from Ramaswamy over her support for pandemic restrictions.
“The decisions about what to do were mine,” DeWine said. “Buck stops with the governor… Buck stops with me. I made the decisions.”
Former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, the last Democrat to hold the top office, told CNN that his state “may surprise a lot of people.”
“I will admit that Ohio has historically been a slightly center-right state, even in the times when Democrats were winning. I felt like Ohio was, you know, a little to the right but contestable and winnable,” Strickland said. “I think that very well may be true this election season.”
Democrats are also energized by Brown’s 2026 comeback campaign, optimistic that with strong candidates for governor and Senate gliding through uncontested primaries, they can put Ohio back in play.
“I think they chose their weakest candidate. I don’t think (Ramaswamy is) well-liked,” Strickland said. “He’s an arrogant guy.”
Acton on Friday posted on X a video of Ohioans reading aloud the text of a widely shared Ramaswamy post from 2024 in which he argued U.S. engineers were losing jobs to immigrants and their children because “our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long.”
The video ends with the text: “Vivek Ramaswamy thinks you’re lazy.”
Republicans maintain they have the upper hand.
“I feel very confident, even up to the gubernatorial level,” said Matt Dole, chair of the Republicans in Licking County, east of downtown Columbus. “And I know there’s people who look at that race and see it being nationalized because of who (Ramaswamy) is, right? I understand that. But at the end of the day, he’s going to appear on an Ohio ballot in a statewide election year with an ‘R’ after his name.”
Just before his Turning Point speech, Ramaswamy took to the editorial pages of The New York Times, a vanguard of the legacy media he’s often derided, to chastise the GOP for not denouncing racism and extremism.
“Older Republicans who may doubt the rising prevalence of the blood-and-soil view should think again. My social media feeds are littered with hundreds of slurs, most from accounts that I don’t recognize, about “pajeets” and “street s**tters” and calls to deport me ‘back to India’,” wrote Ramaswamy, the Ohio-born son of Indian immigrants. “Pajeet” is a racist term for Indians that Fuentes used to describe second lady Usha Vance.
It was a striking shift for Ramaswamy. Two years ago, he told an Iowa crowd that “I’m sure the boogeyman White supremacist exists somewhere in America, I’ve just never met him. Never seen one. Never met one in my life. Right. Maybe I’ll meet a unicorn sooner. And maybe those exist too.”
But for months, Ramaswamy has seemed eager to pull back from the tenor that distinguished his presidential campaign.
“I think the more deep lesson that I took away about the future direction of the country is that – we’re sold this myth of national division. That we’re deeply divided as a people. I began my presidential campaign with that premise as well,” he said on an episode of the “13th and Park” podcast over the summer.
“One of the things I learned is that we are not nearly as divided as the media would have you believe. I think most people in this country actually share the same foundational values in common.”
Elisao Calderon, a 24-year-old Texas A&M University student and self-described “Ramaswamy guy,” told CNN at Turning Point USA’s recent event that the party needs to plan for the future by embracing figures who resonate with younger voters.
While the youth conservative organization has begun lining up behind Vance as a 2028 contender, Calderon said it would be a mistake to overlook Ramaswamy.
“He’s really good with Gen Z,” Calderon said. “That’s why he relates so much to me and to a lot of people in the younger generation.”