Trump’s post essentially cleared what had been expected to be a crowded GOP field, boxing out the likes of state Attorney General Dave Yost, state Treasurer Robert Sprague, and Lieutenant Governor Jim Tressel in a state where Republicans felt dominant. It also effectively gave Ramaswamy almost two years to focus on keeping the Governor’s mansion in GOP hands. But the very connections to Trumpism that fueled Ramaswamy’s fast political rise are now giving his party reason to worry, as polls show him trailing Democrat Amy Acton, a former state health chief and a first-time candidate.
On the campaign trail, Ramaswamy occasionally moderates his image as the brash MAGA warrior railing against “the woke left,” pitching tax cuts and economic development when he’s with suburban crowds and chamber of commerce types. But he can still come off at times as a pugilistic troll. He has promised to be "the most conservative Governor in Ohio's history,” defying Ohio’s history of moderate conservatives who have governed the Heartland homebase. He has embraced AI data centers in a state where they are far from popular. And he has not shrunk from Trumpian hardline immigration policies, especially when he appears with Trump.
Ramaswamy has not developed a thicker skin than when he ran for the White House just two years ago. In July, when confronted by hecklers at Xavier University in Cincinnati, he simply walked off stage: “Peace out, see you guys.”
Acton and groups supporting her have spent about one-third of the Ramaswamy media wave, much of it describing Ramaswamy as a “swindler” who conned his way to a fortune and harnessing anti-billionaire sentiment.
Dr. Amy Acton speaks with supporters during a rally in Cincinnati on April 28, 2026. —Jon Cherry_Getty Images
If Democrats can show a rebound in Ohio, the state may actually wind up back on the must-visit list for 2028 contenders from both parties. After all, states like Georgia and Arizona were also once solidly red until break-out candidates—backed by party spending—upended those assumptions.
For a while there two years ago, Ramaswamy seemed like the most obvious heir to Trumpism. When he launched his presidential bid in 2025, he couched it in effusive praise for the then-former President, to the point that he sometimes sounded like a Trump surrogate in the GOP debates that Trump refused to attend.
But the talent for going viral that helped Ramaswamy gain a national profile has proved less successful this election cycle in Ohio. Social media videos of him hitting tennis balls and baseballs while listing his policy proposals have provided a font of online mockery. He hastily left Ohio State’s season opener after being booed and heckled. Later, he faced criticism for having worn a knock-off Ohio State jersey to the game.
While Ramaswamy easily won his party’s nomination, almost one-in-five votes in the primary were for Putsch, a hint that Ramaswamy’s appeal had its limits even within his own party. “One of the storylines here is a man who is Indian American and whose religion is Hindu,” says Christopher Devine, a political science professor at the University of Dayton, says. “There are a lot of members of the Republican base who may have difficulty voting someone of his demographic profile.”
Devine says the tone of the attacks is a shift from the Senate race, where former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown and current Republican Sen. Jon Husted both have extensive records for each side to focus on. “In the Governor’s race, there’s no record to pick apart. Without much of a track record in politics to run on, they’re focusing on personal attacks against the other,” Devine says.
Ohio polling raises questions
Republicans, heading into a make-or-break stretch of voting, are repeating those statistics to make the case that the polling once again is under-counting Republican voters.
Democrats, for their part, are viewing the race as a tie, at best. Among their reasons for concern is Ohio’s poor track record when women are on the ballot. The state’s voters have never elected a woman as Governor and rejected both Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris as presidential contenders.
Yet given the strong headwinds against Republicans’ national brand, they can’t hide their bullishness toward the races for Governor and Senate, where polls show Brown up over Husted. “I haven’t felt this good, like we have a chance, in a while,” says a second Ohio Democratic strategist. But, he adds, given how tight both races may be, no one should expect an early race call once the polls close.
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