Vivek Ramaswamy

Fired

Running for Governor in Ohio

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Wants to Strip Health Care from Ohioans
Wants to Take Food from Ohio Families
Won't Say Whether He Backs the Tariffs Hurting Ohio's Farmers
Thinks Climate Change that Threatens Ohio's Farms is a 'Hoax'
Called American Workers 'Mediocre'
Got Rich While Investors Lost Their Savings
Wants to End Birthright Citizenship and Deport U.S. Citizens
Bought His Own Campaign, and Billionaires Bought the Rest
Built DOGE and Let it Wreck Ohio
Has Extreme Anti-Abortion Views
Engaged in Election Denial and Defended January 6
Called Juneteenth a "Useless" Holiday
Used His Wealth to Hide His Record
Took Money from a Donor with a History of Anti-Muslim Discrimination
Spread 9/11 Conspiracy Theories
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Wants to Strip Health Care from Ohioans

We all deserve access to quality, affordable health care. Vivek Ramaswamy wants to take it away from hundreds of thousands of Ohioans.

Asked whether Medicaid and Medicare were mistakes, Ramaswamy answered "I believe they were" — "particularly Medicaid" — and said of the welfare state that "it has harmed the very people that it was created to actually help." Medicaid covers one in four Ohioans, about 3 million residents.
Ramaswamy says it is "time to transition from permanent welfare to common-sense work requirements" for Medicaid. The Medicaid cuts congressional Republicans passed are separately projected to cost 255,000 Ohioans their Medicaid coverage.
During his presidential campaign, Ramaswamy criticized Trump for not repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act — a repeal that would strip coverage from 469,000 Ohioans.

Vivek Ramaswamy wants to strip health care from hundreds of thousands of Ohioans. We deserve better.

Wants to Take Food from Ohio Families

Nearly 1.4 million Ohioans rely on SNAP food assistance to feed their families. Vivek Ramaswamy wants to make them earn it. "We will reattach work requirements to Medicaid & welfare," he wrote in March 2025. But the premise behind those requirements is a myth:

Most people on SNAP who can work already do. 85% of families receiving SNAP had at least one person working in the past 12 months — their wages are simply too low to keep up with rising food costs.
Work requirements don't create jobs — they create paperwork. Research shows stricter work requirements do little to help people find work and don't increase employment. They mainly push eligible families off the rolls through added red tape.
Nearly 1.4 million Ohioans currently rely on SNAP benefits — the families Ramaswamy's policy would put at risk.

Vivek Ramaswamy wants to make food more expensive and harder to get for Ohio families. We deserve better.

Won't Say Whether He Backs the Tariffs Hurting Ohio's Farmers

Trump's tariffs are costing Ohio's farmers and manufacturers real money. Asked point blank whether he supports them, Vivek Ramaswamy would not answer.

In April 2025, reporters asked Ohio's governor, its two U.S. senators and four likely candidates for governor whether they supported Trump's tariffs. Only three responded at all — and Ramaswamy's campaign answered without ever saying, offering instead that he is "laser-focused on an America First, Ohio First agenda" and that after decades of manufacturing losses "it's time to hit back."
Ohio's soybean farmers were already paying for those tariffs. That September, the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation's communications director told the Statehouse News Bureau that China had bought nothing from U.S. farmers all year, though not long before a third of the soybeans grown in Ohio went to China — leaving commodity prices where they were in 1974. Ramaswamy was at that same Farm Science Review courting farmers. What he offered them was a property tax plan.
A fourth-generation Pickaway County farmer told 10TV that China had been one of his biggest buyers, but that "with the 20% tariff, our beans just aren't competitive" — one to two dollars off every bushel, on the roughly 100,000 bushels he grows.
Ohio's manufacturers were paying too. A Grove City company, Tosoh SMD, lost millions of dollars to the tariffs in a single year and started cutting costs to absorb it.

Ohio's farms and factories are absorbing the cost of Trump's tariffs, and Vivek Ramaswamy still won't tell them where he stands. We deserve better.

Thinks Climate Change that Threatens Ohio's Farms is a 'Hoax'

The climate crisis is real and it threatens Ohio's farms and communities. Vivek Ramaswamy calls it a hoax. At the first 2024 Republican presidential debate, Ramaswamy declared that "the climate change agenda is a hoax" and claimed "more people are dying of bad climate change policies than they are of actual climate change" — a claim fact-checkers found false.

Vivek Ramaswamy denies the climate science that affects Ohio families. We deserve better.

Called American Workers 'Mediocre'

Ohio's workers build things, grow food, and keep the state running. In December 2024, Ramaswamy attacked American workers, writing that "American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long" as he defended companies that hire foreign-born engineers over American ones, arguing that a culture "that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ" will not produce the best engineers.

Vivek Ramaswamy looks down on the American workers he now wants to govern. We deserve better.

Got Rich While Investors Lost Their Savings

Vivek Ramaswamy made his fortune on a Wall Street playbook, not by building anything Ohioans can count on.

After founding Roivant Sciences, Ramaswamy spun off a company called Axovant around an Alzheimer's drug, intepirdine, and took it public in June 2015, raising $315 million — the most lucrative IPO in biotech history at the time — before the drug's pivotal trial was finished.
In September 2017, the drug failed its late-stage trial. Axovant, valued at more than $2.8 billion, saw its share price fall more than 75%, wiping out the investors who had bought in.
Ramaswamy called it "the single greatest failure of my career" — then told a biotech conference months later that he would not have done anything differently. He had already sold part of his stake in Axovant's parent company in 2015, the year of the IPO, reporting $37 million in capital gains.

Vivek Ramaswamy got rich while ordinary investors lost their savings. We deserve better.

Wants to End Birthright Citizenship and Deport U.S. Citizens

Ramaswamy — himself the U.S.-born son of immigrants — called to end birthright citizenship and said he would deport U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants, declaring "the family unit will be deported" — despite the 14th Amendment and the Supreme Court's 1898 ruling guaranteeing citizenship to anyone born on American soil.

Vivek Ramaswamy would strip citizenship from Americans born in this country. We deserve better.

Bought His Own Campaign, and Billionaires Bought the Rest

Our elected officials should work for us, the people.

Vivek Ramaswamy is buying this election, and billionaires are buying it with him. In April 2026 he wrote his own campaign a check for $25 million - 83% of everything it raised in 2026. Only $5 million came from actual donors. He is a biotech billionaire worth an estimated $1.8 billion, and he is spending it to make himself governor.

On top of that, a super PAC run by his allies - V-PAC: Victors, Not Victims - reported raising $41,774,674 this cycle, with $37 million of it, roughly 88 cents of every dollar, coming from just five men. None of the five lists an Ohio address. In June alone V-PAC spent $8,211,114 attacking his opponent - more in one month than it had spent promoting Ramaswamy in the eighteen months before it - and just over $10 million of its Ohio spending, including a single $7,963,282 payment for those ads, appears in Ohio's public database with the purpose field left blank.

Look at who is buying this election:

Vivek Ramaswamy himself - $25,000,000. His own money made up 83% of his 2026 fundraising. His campaign advertises 120,000 small donors giving an average of $63 - a total that quietly excludes the $25 million check the candidate wrote himself.
Jeffrey Yass - $20,000,000 to V-PAC, given across three contributions. The Pennsylvania investor co-founded the Wall Street trading firm Susquehanna International Group and is one of the largest political spenders in the country.
Elon Musk - $5,000,000 to V-PAC in May 2026. Ramaswamy co-built DOGE alongside Musk, and DOGE went on to plan the closure of more than a dozen federal offices in Ohio and cancel $29 million in Ohio State research grants. Now the man he built it with is paying to make him governor - see Built DOGE and Let it Wreck Ohio below.
Ross Stevens - $6,000,000, Ratmir Timashev - $5,000,000 and William Ackman - $1,000,000 - the rest of V-PAC's backers, a New York financier, a donor listing a Connecticut address, and a hedge fund manager. Ohioans will be governed by the man they picked; none of them lives in Ohio.
The energy industry - $97,468. Utility, gas, oil and solar PACs gave his campaign $97,468.91 during 2026. Ohio's governor appoints all five members of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio and designates its chair - the body that decides electricity rates and who pays for data centers. Amy Acton's campaign received nothing from those PACs.
And the energy money doubled after it was caught. A watchdog reported the utility donations in May; $65,603 more arrived in the ten weeks after, from a wider set of companies. The biggest checks landed on July 31, the final day of the reporting period: $16,615.67 from the Utility Scale Solar Energy Coalition of Ohio - matching Ohio's per-election ceiling to the penny - plus $16,615 from Vistra's employee PAC and $10,000 from Diversified Gas & Oil.
AEP's Committee for Responsible Government - $17,000. Ohio electricity bills have climbed 53% since 2021, and AEP's Ohio Power disconnected 15% of its customers in the year ending May 31 - the worst rate of any utility in the state.
The Ohio Republican Party - $513,069, the largest outside contributor to his campaign committee - and about a fortieth of what Jeff Yass alone put behind him.

Ramaswamy also stands to profit from his own platform: his April 2026 ethics filing disclosed $768,968 in capital gains from a single stock sale, and he wants to phase out Ohio's income tax starting with the capital gains tax - a cut the Ohio Legislative Service Commission estimates would cost the state up to $645 million a year, with nearly 82% of the benefit going to Ohioans earning more than $200,000. His property tax plan would take a further $4 billion a year from Ohio's schools, police and fire departments.

Vivek Ramaswamy bought his own campaign, and billionaires bought the rest. No wonder he's not working for us. We deserve better.

Built DOGE and Let it Wreck Ohio

Vivek Ramaswamy didn't just support DOGE — he co-built it. Ohio paid a steep price.

Trump asked Ramaswamy to co-lead DOGE. Ramaswamy called it an "honor to help support the creation of DOGE" — which planned to close more than a dozen federal offices in Ohio and cost Ohio State University $29 million in grants.
In 2023, Ramaswamy called for a 75% reduction of the federal workforce. Ohio has about 83,000 federal workers whose jobs DOGE's cuts put at risk.
Ramaswamy left DOGE in January 2025 to run for governor — walking away just as it began gutting Ohio, but only after he'd designed the blueprint and championed firing most of the federal workforce.

Vivek Ramaswamy helped build the machine that hurt Ohio workers, veterans, and communities. We deserve better.

Has Extreme Anti-Abortion Views

Ohio voters passed Issue 1 in 2023, protecting abortion rights in the state constitution. Vivek Ramaswamy would override what Ohioans voted for.

Ramaswamy called himself "unapologetically pro-life" and called abortion "murder."
Ramaswamy came out in favor of an abortion ban "around six weeks" of gestation at the state level.
Ramaswamy said the Supreme Court should overturn the FDA's approval of mifepristone, the abortion medication.
Ramaswamy called to defund Planned Parenthood.

Vivek Ramaswamy would override what Ohio voters decided and threaten the reproductive rights Ohioans voted to protect. We deserve better.

Engaged in Election Denial and Defended January 6

Vivek Ramaswamy spread conspiracy theories about American democracy and defended the January 6 insurrectionists.

Ramaswamy said it was "unproductive" to blame Trump for January 6 and entertained the theory that the attack was an "inside job."
Ramaswamy said the prison sentences the Proud Boys received were "wrong," and vowed to pardon all "peaceful, nonviolent" January 6 participants.
Ramaswamy said Mike Pence missed a "historic opportunity" on January 6 and that, in Pence's place, he would have withheld certification of the 2020 election to force his own election-law changes — a maneuver fact-checkers noted the Constitution gives the vice president no power to make.
Ramaswamy proposed a constitutional amendment to raise the voting age from 18 to 25 unless young people take a naturalization test, serve in the military or work as emergency responders — which would strip the vote from millions of young Americans.

Vivek Ramaswamy undermined faith in American democracy and defended those who attacked the Capitol. We deserve better.

Called Juneteenth a "Useless" Holiday

Juneteenth marks the end of slavery in America. Vivek Ramaswamy wants to cancel it. Campaigning in Iowa in 2023, Ramaswamy called Juneteenth a "useless" holiday and said "cancel Juneteenth or one of the other useless ones we made up" — just two months after he had posted a video celebrating the holiday.

Vivek Ramaswamy wants to erase a holiday that honors the end of slavery. We deserve better.

Used His Wealth to Hide His Record

In 2023, a Wikipedia editor disclosed being paid to delete references to Ramaswamy's involvement in Ohio's COVID-19 Response Team — all while publicly pushing COVID-19 vaccine skepticism.

Vivek Ramaswamy says one thing in public while doing another in private. We deserve better.

Vivek Ramaswamy paid to have his COVID-era role scrubbed from Wikipedia

Took Money from a Donor with a History of Anti-Muslim Discrimination

Vivek Ramaswamy took a campaign donation from a man with a documented record of discriminating against Muslims. His 2024 presidential campaign committee accepted $250 from Peter Zieve in May 2023, and did not say whether it would return the money. Zieve's aerospace company, Electroimpact, had paid a $485,000 civil rights settlement in 2017 after Washington's attorney general found Zieve screened Muslim applicants out of hiring.

Vivek Ramaswamy took money from a donor with a record of anti-Muslim discrimination. We deserve better.

Spread 9/11 Conspiracy Theories

In an August 2023 interview, Ramaswamy questioned "how many federal agents were on the planes that hit the Twin Towers" on September 11 — floating the baseless idea that the government was behind the attacks. He then claimed he had been misquoted, until the outlet released audio confirming he was quoted accurately.

Vivek Ramaswamy peddled conspiracy theories about the deadliest terror attack on American soil, then lied about it. We deserve better.

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