Vivek Ramaswamy grew up in Southwest Ohio. But he spent much of his adult life on the East Coast, first attending Ivy League schools and then founding a business in New York City.
The 39-year-old billionaire now plans to really get to know Ohio as he works to get elected governor in 2026. He vows to not only visit all 88 counties during his campaign but also to visit each county annually throughout his tenure as governor.
“I grew up in Cincinnati, seeing even the three C’s are different, sometimes in a different set of issues that are on their minds than the rest of the state,” Ramaswamy said in an interview late last week with Signal Statewide. “And if I’m a governor for the state of Ohio, I’m going to be a governor for the whole state of Ohio.”
Ramaswamy has spent years getting ready to run for something — seemingly everything all at once at times. After passing on the U.S. Senate race in 2022, he mounted a quixotic, unsuccessful run for president in 2024. But that campaign makes more sense in retrospect in that he emerged with national celebrity, a relationship with President Donald Trump and an endorsement from the president in his current race, which he seems much more likely to win.
That experience has left Ramaswamy with unusually high political polish for someone who’s never held elected office. During this early phase of his campaign, Ramaswamy is sticking to disciplined talking points that he unveiled at his campaign launch events last month.
Ramaswamy said he began thinking about running for governor in the early part of last year, shortly after he ended his presidential campaign. The idea solidified toward the end of the year, he said, around the time he held a September town hall in Springfield to discuss — to put it succinctly — immigration issues.
“I was pitched on a lot of different ideas of what I could do next. This one really stuck, and I felt eventually a calling to do it,” Ramaswamy said.
Since around the time he launched his campaign last month, Ramaswamy has visited 20 counties. He’s booked keynote appearances at 28 county Republican Party annual fundraiser dinners, a rite of passage for every state political candidate. His only major Republican opponent is Attorney General Dave Yost, while the only Democratic candidate so far is Dr. Amy Acton, the former state health department director.
A big part of Ramaswamy’s campaign so far has been calling for increases in public education standards. He has said this is something both parties have failed to address – but the main solution he’s proposing is not exactly a new one.
Signal Statewide spoke with Ramaswamy for about 15 minutes on Thursday. Here’s a rendition of that conversation. (Note: Questions and answers have been edited for clarity and brevity.)
How do you conceive of Ohio? There are very different communities with different needs, so how do you balance those interests?
We’re a cross-section of the country. We have true diversity in Ohio, true diversity of experience, of perspective, which I think is a great thing.
And so I think the way we’re going to lead Ohio to be the leading state in the country, to raise a family, to create and generate wealth, to give your kids a world-class education isn’t by pretending to be Texas or Florida or Silicon Valley for that matter. It’s going to be by being the best version of ourselves.
And the way I want to lead our state is, we are one of the better states in the Midwest on many of those metrics. I don’t just want to lead Ohio to be one of the better states in the Midwest. I want to lead Ohio to be the top state in the country when it comes to economic excellence and educational excellence for our kids.
There are things about your life that differ from many average people in Ohio, such as your personal wealth, your religion and your time living out of the state. How will you relate to people with different life experiences than yours?
I am grateful for the American Dream that I’ve lived, but I also recognize that my path to the American Dream cannot be the only path, either. I want us to be the state where the paths to success are plural.
I was a kid of legal immigrants to this country who came here with nothing. My father faced down the layoffs at the GE plant in Evendale, Ohio. When my mom was working at nursing homes around the southwest part of the state, treating elderly patients, she worked at the VA for a while too.
I went to [St. Xavier] for high school and ended up going to some of our most prestigious universities, and then living in other parts of the country, before deciding we wanted to raise our kids here, which brought us back.
That, to me, is a diversity of experiences in my own life that I believe will give me, I think, the same texture that I believe our state has, and the ability to connect with people who have a wide range of different experiences and to care for every one of them equally.
You’ve described Republicans not focusing enough on educational achievement.
I would say all, all parties. I mean this in a bipartisan sense. So it wasn’t that Republicans don’t focus enough, it’s that we as Americans have, I think, not yet focused enough on educational achievement.
Was that a point you were trying to make in that tweet thread that blew up about Saved by the Bell and all that stuff?
Well, I mean, I mean, I tweet a lot of stuff.
But what I believe is that we have an educational system that now is falling behind other countries, and I think that’s a major problem right now.
In the long run, I think it is a great threat to the future leadership position of our country. And the reality is that has to be addressed by the states, not the federal government in our system, our system of federalism. And so I feel a sense of calling and responsibility to rectify that.
And so I want to create that culture of excellence in our school system, from let’s just say sports fields to the classrooms to the arts to music, in every domain, that is.
That is something that a good governor can and should do through through school choice, which brings greater competition to our schools and holds our public schools accountable, while also allowing every parent to send their kids to the best possible school they can, but also through directly improving the quality of our public schools themselves, through merit-based pay for teachers and administrators in our public schools, getting the cell phones out of classrooms to bring in physical education.
John Kasich attempted to implement merit pay for years and failed, even though he had a lot of wind at his back at the time. What makes you think the political conditions are right now?
I’m not saying this to criticize any of my predecessors, but just to describe the obvious, Senate Bill 5 contained unions that shouldn’t have been touched, compared to focusing on impediments to public education.
I also think that I’m a governor who comes from a different generation, who was educated in the schools of this state but has gone on to live the American dream with that and to be able to pursue it with a personal passion and level of prioritization that I think matters.
I think public opinion has shifted in our direction, as well as more parents are recognizing that achievement crisis in our schools. So I think it’s a different era. I’m a different type of leader, and I think I’ll be able to unite the state.
How important is the CHIPS Act to Ohio? I’m sure you saw President Donald Trump called for it to be repealed.
I want to be Ohio on its own terms, to be a leader in the sectors of the future, right? And so that includes semiconductors to nuclear energy to biotech to Bitcoin to our defense industrial base.
I think that a lot of the manmade obstacles that have accumulated over the decades in the state, it’s going to take a governor who’s willing to cut through a lot of that red tape. That’s where I think the real gains are, and I think that that’s going to be a more lasting way of catapulting our state to a leadership position than relying on any type of nannyism.
Now, obviously I want where there are opportunities, I want to pursue them in the way that’s best for our state. But my leadership of our state to excellence is not going to depend on any particular act getting passed in Congress.
You’ve said you expect the Cleveland Browns stadium financing issue to be resolved by the time you would take office if you’re elected. But philosophically, do you think professional sports stadiums should be publicly funded?
I do have a general vision that’s pro-liberty, getting government red tape out of the way and allowing our economy to flourish.
But I’m going to be very pragmatic in how we do that on a case-by-case basis as well. So that’s what I’d say.
Note: an earlier version of this story, due to a transcription error, incorrectly quoted Ramaswamy as saying he “was pitching” a lot of different ideas before he decided to run for governor. He actually said “pitched on.” It has been corrected.