Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy capped his two-day gubernatorial kickoff Tuesday night with a packed rally at a bar in a Strongsville strip mall.

Though he won’t appear on the GOP primary ballot for more than a year, he displayed the confidence of a politician who’s already won, thanks in part to the endorsement from President Donald Trump and top local and statewide officials, which came within 24 hours of his announcement.

The Strongville Republican Party, which in recent years has jumped early behind winning conservative candidates, made up a large part of the energized –  and at times adoring – crowd. 

Ramaswamy, a native of Ohio who lives in New Albany, rewarded them with a message reflective of the party’s base and the Trump administration’s policies and political narrative. 

“We are celebrating tonight, but we are also talking about some serious issues we need to address as a state and as a country,” he said, claiming that the United States has suffered an identity crisis. “Faith in God, patriotism, hard work, family – these disappeared only to be replaced by these new religions – woke-ism, transgender-ism, climate-ism, covid-ism.’

He then sniped at the only announced Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Dr. Amy Acton, the former state health department director. 

“Never again will we shut down the schools and bend the knee to some Anthony Fauci knockoff,” he said, referring to the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ramaswamy, whose only major GOP challenger is Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, kept the crowd cheering with red-meat GOP promises that include eliminating the state income tax, lowering property taxes, adding work requirements for those receiving Medicaid and tying raises for teachers and administrators to performance rather than seniority. 

Ramaswamy, 39, who has never held elected office, boasted that it was an asset. After the November election, he was named to co-lead the Department of Government Efficiency, a project to cut the federal government’s workforce and spending. But he left just a couple months later, after losing what national media described as a power struggle with Elon Musk, the initiative’s other leader. Musk has since endorsed Ramaswamy for governor.

Taking a page from the cost-cutting initiative, Ramaswamy pledged he would reduce Ohio’s government spending, which he described as fraud, waste and abuse, a sentiment echoed by the statewide candidates who warmed up the crowd. These and other GOP lawmakers have controlled the state’s spending for more than the last decade.

Ramaswamy described the need to reform government as the need to “move faster” than his GOP predecessors.