But white trash racism in this country is constitutive: It came with the first intolerant and puritan English peasants who arrived here and has been there ever since. They said they were fleeing persecution in the Europe of the 17th century, but they came with persecution in their luggage and began dispending it to others like the slaves they brought with them from Africa and the native Amerindians they encountered. Just like the Zionist invaders of Palestine who said they were fleeing racism in Europe and were merely seeking a shelter-homeland, only to turn around and inflict racist hatred of pure colonial vintage on the indigenous Palestinians who had welcomed them at first.
Good luck, Vivek, in trying to turn fossils back to life.
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Vivek Ramaswamy Preaches the American Dream. Will White Christians Accept It?
Samuel Benson
Sat, June 13, 2026
Vivek Ramaswamy Preaches the American Dream. Will White Christians Accept It?
PIKETON, Ohio — It looked like a scene out of a Norman Rockwell painting: a school gym transformed into an Americana-themed party venue; families at round tables, eating steak and potatoes; red-white-and-blue tablecloths with flowers at the center. This tiny Appalachian town, population 2,000, turned out several hundred for the county GOP's Lincoln Day dinner. The guest of honor, Vivek Ramaswamy, liked what he saw.
"We call it the American dream for a reason, because there is no Canadian dream, there is no British dream, there is no Chinese dream," Ramaswamy, 40, told attendees, standing on a makeshift stage underneath a balloon arch and an American flag. "I understand why many are skeptical, but what I'm talking about tonight is how we are going to turn Ohio into the cradle of the American dream once again."
Not everyone bought it. At the back table, Setys Kelly, who is the Ramaswamy campaign's captain in nearby Clark County, clapped throughout his speech. But when he brought up the notion that anyone could come to the United States and achieve the American dream, she shook her head. "I'm going to be a hard no on that. You need to be an American to do the American dream," said Kelly, a white woman. "I come from Springfield, land of the Haitians. … I just don't want any more of that kind of immigration where they just dump them on you."
It's this sort of sentiment that Ramaswamy must navigate as the Republican nominee to be Ohio's next governor, with issues of race and identity swirling in the campaign.
Ramaswamy, an Indian American with immigrant parents, left a lucrative career in biotechnology to run for president in 2024 and immediately won prominence on the national stage. He won the GOP primary for Ohio governor comfortably last month after batting down Casey Putsch, a far-right challenger who attacked him over his race and religion. His November faceoff against Democrat Amy Acton, who is white, is poised to be one of the marquee governors' races this cycle.
Ramaswamy's central message is that anyone can be a part of the American dream if they just work hard enough. But even as he waxes poetic, he's discovering that not all of his fellow Ohioans see him as part of that dream. In interviews with more than 20 voters and strategists across Ohio — a state that is 80 percent white and two-thirds Christian — Ramaswamy's background was seen as a real political hurdle to overcome. Few admitted their uneasiness with Ramaswamy's race, but several said they knew a neighbor who won't vote for him because he isn't white. None said they would reject him because of his religion (Ramaswamy is Hindu), but several said they know people at church who will.
"Most of us, the only time we've ever been in a room with someone of color like him was when you went to see your doctor," said Denny Malloy, a white man and Trumbull County GOP chair, who supports Ramaswamy. "When you get to eastern Ohio, they look at him like they don't know how to accept him."
In response to questions about potential voter resistance based on Ramaswamy's race or religion, Connie Luck, a campaign spokesperson said, "Vivek believes in the American Dream because he has lived it. He's running for governor of Ohio because he's grateful to his home state and his country for giving him opportunities that wouldn't be imaginable in any other nation on Earth. He's on a mission to revive that American dream for the next generation of Ohioans, and he isn't going to let anyone stand in his way."
In some ways, the issues Ramaswamy faces in Ohio reflect broader debates about identity and pluralism on the right. A chorus of online influencers is pushing the Republican Party to embrace "heritage Americanism," the belief that only those who trace ancestry to the U.S.' founding generations are truly American. Second lady Usha Vance, a Yale Law School classmate of Ramaswamy's and an Indian American, has faced racist attacks online from far-right white nationalists; Ramaswamy, too, has faced so much racism from the online right that it's one reason he deleted social media accounts from his phone. In the Republican Party's fight over "heritage Americans" and blood-and-soil nationalism, Ramaswamy has stood up in favor of pluralistic democracy. The response, from some on the online right, has been outrage.
In real-world Ohio, Ramaswamy hasn't confronted the same level of vitriol, but the underlying issues remain. He survived a far-right challenger who was explicit about attacking his race; now, he faces a more subtle uneasiness about his religion. There's also the matter of his extraordinary wealth and elite pedigree, which further set him apart. The bottom line: Some voters feel that Ramaswamy's background is not just removed from, but fundamentally at odds with, their own.
Many Ohioans — union members in the Rust Belt, factory workers in Appalachia — see Ramaswamy, the Ivy Leaguer with tech-fueled wealth, as antithetical to the world they know: They've seen the prospect of economic prosperity and self-sufficiency for them and their children slip away after years of vanished jobs and hollowed out industries. They view with deep skepticism a billionaire who insists they, too, can get ahead if they just work hard enough.
Ramaswamy grew up in a middle-class household, attended a private high school, earned degrees from Harvard and Yale and struck it big as an entrepreneur in biotechnology. Perhaps surprisingly, he's racked up support from many of the state's trade unions. But Democrats, riding nation-wide concerns over affordability and critiques of the ultra-wealthy, see an opportunity to paint Ramaswamy as a rich, out-of-touch billionaire. He provides them plenty of ammo. Since he burst onto the national stage as a presidential candidate in 2024, he's leaned hard into his background as a hedge fund manager worth ten figures with two Ivy League degrees. He calls disgraced investor Martin Shkreli a "friend" and blames the TV show "Friends" for American laziness and "mediocrity." He crisscrosses the state in a private jet and proposes consolidating "subpar" state universities, including some that are economic backbones in blue-collar towns.
To Ramaswamy, upward mobility is a choice, and the leading factor is an individual's will.
"We have to do our part as leaders to recreate the conditions for the American dream, and I'll do my part, but your job is to view yourself as empowered," Ramaswamy said in a brief interview with POLITICO Magazine on the trail in Ohio. "The number-one factor that determines whether you achieve your goal in life is ultimately you."
But that message, to many, rings inauthentic coming from someone with such elite credentials. "People that have… wealth, they are going to talk that exact same way," said Marty Loney, a white business manager at UA Local 396, a union outside of Youngstown for plumbers and pipefitters. "They don't even know what work boots are, you know?"
Piketon, Ohio, a small town nestled against the Appalachians not far from the Kentucky border, has long struggled: The unemployment rate is nearly double the state and national averages. Clean water and clean air are not guarantees. And a string of industries skipping town has left scars.
But the town's residents, 93 percent of whom are white, see hope on the horizon. A nearby uranium enrichment facility reopened in 2023, and in April, the federal government announced a partnership with a Japanese company to construct one of the world's biggest natural gas power plants, potentially ushering in 35,000 construction jobs. Construction has begun on what is expected to be the world's largest data center nearby.
A major goal of outgoing GOP Gov. Mike DeWine's was reviving Ohio's manufacturing industry. He'll leave office with a catalog of new investments under his belt: An aviation manufacturing site in Dayton, a defense manufacturing facility outside of Circleville, a pet food plant in Lewisburg. "That's going to create a new industrial boom, where I understand why the last 40 years have been tough in many parts of the state," said Ramaswamy, who earned DeWine's endorsement. "We're going to turn it around. And my pledge is we're going to usher in the next industrial revolution."
On that point, Ramaswamy received widespread support. He's scooped up the backing of a number of the state's building trades unions, who are desperate for a blue-collar boom.
"So often we think that the American dream is out of reach for people my age," said Jordan Leatherwood, the 29-year-old Pike County GOP chair, who is white. "[Ramaswamy] brings a fresh new perspective of allowing us to pursue the American dream by bringing down costs and increasing salaries."
Leatherwood's grandmother, Elaine Birkhimer, sat at a front table during Ramaswamy's speech; she said she was "impressed" by Ramaswamy's charisma.
"When I first heard his name I was a little concerned," said Birhimer, who is white. "But after hearing what he stands for, it's no longer an issue to me."
Ramaswamy's background seems to be a sticking point for others, however. "Somebody told me today that they ran into someone who said, 'I don't know why they keep lying about him being a Hindu,'" said Kelly, the Ramaswamy campaign's Clark County captain. "And the lady said, 'Well, they're not lying. He is a Hindu.' And the older lady is like, 'Well, I can't vote for him.'"
"I think it's important for him to keep emphasizing that you're in America, you can practice what you want," Kelly continued. "I think if he stays on that messaging, he's OK."
She said his Hinduism isn't an issue to her: "It's not actually that different from living as a Christian. It's got the same moral compass."
Julia Shutt, the former GOP chair in Trumbull County, who is white, has heard similar stories. "For me as a Christian, it's not an issue," she said. "There's some people that go to my church, it's an issue. They're like, 'He's a Hindu? Is that what he is?' 'Yeah.' 'That's not gonna work.'"
Race- and religion-based attacks have arisen in recent statewide Ohio races. In 2021, Mark Pukita, a GOP Senate candidate, raised then-frontrunner and former state treasurer Josh Mandel's Jewish faith in a radio ad and on the debate stage. In 2022, Vice President JD Vance — then running for Senate — accused the state's largest newspaper of racism against his wife, Usha. Ohio has also elected people of various backgrounds to office before — including Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno, who was born in Colombia.
Ramaswamy's allies say voters, even those who are initially hesitant, warm up when they hear him out.
"I'm not at all surprised that folks here in Appalachia are curious and even some skeptical, but to a man when I explain his background and where he grew up and where he stands on the issues, they say, 'Oh, I like that, I can support that,'" said Douglas Preisse, a Ramaswamy ally and longtime GOP strategist in the state, who is white. "When Vivek announced, I wondered, too, how will people react? That's how they're reacting."
"This is another place where it just very much reminds me of Donald Trump," said Aaron Baer, president of the Columbus-based Center for Christian Virtue, who is white. "I think Christian voters understand the men or women that we are electing are there to enact the policies that align with our values. Does Donald Trump live and operate in the most Christian way? Certainly not. But does he lead and enact policies that align with Christian worldview? Absolutely."
But Republican strategists across the state are quietly pointing to the 2006 gubernatorial campaign as a warning sign for Ramaswamy. The party was similarly dealing with an uncertain economy and an unpopular war in the Middle East. Then, Republicans nominated Ken Blackwell, an accomplished politician and Black man who'd served as Ohio secretary of state, treasurer and mayor of Cincinnati.
He was the first Black major-party gubernatorial nominee in Ohio's history — a fact that some say caused him difficulties in Appalachia, where Democrat Ted Strickland trounced him. "People said, 'This guy is Republican, but he's not really our guy,'" recalled Malloy, the Trumbull County GOP chair. "Here's a guy, Strickland, that looks like them, talks like them, eats like them, recreates like them. [Blackwell] didn't resonate well with Eastern Ohio, because he wasn't their demographic." (Blackwell did not respond to a request for comment.) More recently, Republican nominee Winsome Earle-Sears, who is Black, lost the Virginia gubernatorial election last year to a white woman, Democrat Abigail Spanberger, thanks in part to Spanberger's overperformance in deep-red rural areas.
Ohio has gone from being a swing state back in 2006 to reliably Republican in the Trump era, but Republicans still see some parallels with the past, both in the national environment and in their nominee.
"[Ramaswamy] is untested in terms of running a political campaign, and we're in the worst political environment since 2006 for Republicans," said one longtime Ohio GOP strategist, granted anonymity to discuss the race openly. "The economy is bad. Inflation, rising costs, a war."
Appalachia is where Ramaswamy's overtly racist primary challenger fared best, notching as much as 30 percent of the vote in some counties. Putsch, a white auto mechanic who calls himself "The Car Guy," raised only about $120,000 to Ramaswamy's $50 million. He tried to focus the election on two issues: Ramasawmy's race and his wealth. A provocateur who described the campaign as "cowboys versus Indians," he garnered over 140,000 votes statewide, even as Ramaswamy won 82 percent of the vote.
"Despite the negativity online that he gets, those people don't matter," said Anang Mittal, an Indian American GOP strategist. "The people who matter are the voters of Ohio, who will, I hope, give him the governorship in November."
Democrats are not leaning into racist attacks. But they see hope in breaking through in Ohio for the first time in years with Acton, who is Jewish and served as director of the Ohio Department of Health during the Covid pandemic.
"Dr. Acton overcame a tough childhood, put herself through college and med school by working three jobs, and has dedicated her career to fighting for Ohio. She is running for governor because she wants to build a state where all of us can get ahead," said Addie Bullock, spokesperson for the Acton campaign. "Dr. Acton wants to build an Ohio where everyone can pursue their dreams; Vivek Ramaswamy thinks we're lazy and mediocre. The choice is clear."
Ramaswamy is trying to present himself as the working-class fighter that Ohio needs.
"I didn't grow up in generational wealth myself, and so I can empathize with the struggles, especially in a state where a lot of high-paying jobs have left, a lot of young people have left," Ramaswamy said in an interview. "Deindustrialization has hit so much of our state hard. We're not going to turn it around by just complaining about it. We're going to turn it around by enacting policies that ultimately bring those new, high-paying jobs to the state."
Ramaswamy's life story runs through Evansdale, the affluent suburb north of Cincinnati where he grew up. The son of an engineer father and geriatric psychiatrist mother, the young Ramaswamy attended public schools until eighth grade, when his parents made the decision to transfer him to St. Xavier, a private Catholic school, after "a big black kid" — per Ramaswamy's description — pushed him down the stairs, requiring hip surgery. ("Whether our races were relevant, I don't know, but I've learned that others think it's part of these stories," Ramaswamy later wrote in his 2022 book, "Nation of Victims.")
He studied at Harvard, then at Yale Law School, where he met Vance, a fellow Ohioan, and Usha. He also became involved with Shabtai, a Jewish intellectual society run by a gregarious young rabbi and his wife. A Jewish classmate took Ramaswamy to a Shabbat dinner with the society's members one Friday night; he has recalled being enthralled by the group's debates on morals, values and current events. The experience exposed him to Judaism, but also served as a sort of refuge from Yale's secularism and helped cement him and his future wife, Apoorva, in their Hindu faith. (Apoorva was a medical student at Yale and often accompanied Ramaswamy at Shabtai events.)
The experience also helped solidify Ramaswamy's belief in individual will and the danger of embracing victimhood. "He believes in self-motivation. He believes in individuals," said Rabbi Shmully Hecht, a co-founder of Shabtai. "He believes in liberty. And he's not a person, in my opinion, that really thinks or cares a lot about what your racial profile is, what your ethnicity is and what your religion is. He thinks about your contribution to society and to the world."
That self-motivation, Ramaswamy believes, is adequate in the face of any challenge — including attacks based on religious identity. "Even if somebody is throwing dirt at you, it is up to us to use that dirt to lift ourselves up," he told a group of Jewish students at the grand opening for the Ohio State University's new Chabad House in February. "Who lifts you up? Whose responsibility is that? Is that somebody else's responsibility, or is it your responsibility? I think our faith teaches us alike that it is our responsibility to lift ourselves up." He referenced a Super Bowl ad about fighting antisemitism, that portrayed a non-Jew standing up for a Jewish teenager being bullied: "A well-intentioned ad that would say, 'OK, the job of fighting antisemitism is somebody else's job.' I say, 'No, no. You are strong enough to protect yourself.'"
After Yale, he bounced around in tech and investment banking before striking gold with a biotech startup that eventually netted him millions. He threw himself in the ring for the Republican presidential nomination in 2023, despite the long odds. His campaign hit a high point that August, when one poll showed him in second place — behind Trump — in Iowa. But he ended up finishing fourth, and dropped out before the New Hampshire primary — though not before he established himself as a rising star in the GOP and a fierce Trump loyalist who could speak to the younger generation. He was the first presidential candidate to get on TikTok; he was a guest on podcasts like Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson.
But on the ground in Iowa, he faced stiff winds. The overwhelmingly white, largely evangelical state had questions. At almost every campaign event, he'd get asked about his Hinduism, to the point that Ramaswamy developed a memorized line about religious tests for office and the commonalities between Hinduism and Christianity. ("I believe in one true God," he'd say. "I believe that God put each of us here for a purpose.") He even brought on a pair of former Mormon missionaries to help steer his campaign, figuring if the duo — who'd worked for Mitt Romney in 2012 — could help a Latter-day Saint win over Iowa evangelicals, they could do the same for a Hindu. (Romney narrowly lost Iowa and struggled in many evangelical-heavy parts of the country in the primary).
Ramaswamy's 2024 bid offered a relatively novel challenge: Indian Americans had run for president before as Republicans, but Ramaswamy was the first who was Hindu. Bobby Jindal, the first Indian American to run for president in 2016, converted to Catholicism; Nikki Haley, an enemy of Ramaswamy's in 2024, grew up Sikh before converting to her husband's Christianity.
Ramaswamy's openness about his faith has earned him respect from even some ideological foes. "We've had strong philosophical disagreements, but I've always appreciated his being proud of his heritage, his faith, [and] making it clear that the Constitution has no religious test for public office," said Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), a proud progressive and a fellow Hindu son of Indian immigrants.
In the end, Ramaswamy struggled in the presidential polls and earned a reputation as being an overzealous know-it-all. He later showed some introspection about his performativeness, especially at debates, where his antics struck many as unnecessarily snide. "Being unsparing as I was, I think that I wouldn't change," he said on Tucker Carlson's show in late 2024. "But to be able to combine that a little bit more with — if there's a way for me to allow a lot of people to know me the way that my employees at my businesses know me or my closest friends know me, I would love to think about how to do that."
That reputation — as a smug podcast bro, someone more interested in getting on Rogan than getting to the White House — still haunts him in some corners. Even as he scoops up endorsements from statewide or regional labor unions, individual members or local chapters remain skeptical.
Travis Mariast, vice president for Millwrights Pile Drivers Local Union No. 1090 who is white, told me he isn't sold on Ramaswamy, though his union, Central Midwest Regional Council of Carpenters, backed him. And while the Ohio State Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters endorsed Ramaswamy, locals are still deciding whether they want to sign on.
Loney, the business manager at UA Local 396 for plumbers and pipefitters, said Ramaswamy's pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps attitude can seem out-of-touch: "When it's four o'clock in the morning, you're getting up and driving 120 miles to go to a job site to feed your family — little bit different than daddy and mommy giving you money and sending you to Harvard or wherever."
At the Trumbull County GOP's Lincoln Day dinner in April, almost all of the questions Ramaswamy took from voters dealt with their personal economic situation.
"We've seen [the American dream] be diminished, if not lost," said Alicia Angelo, a local real estate agent, who is white. "I was able to buy a home at 24, but I don't think a single one of my peers is able to do that."
One issue that did not come up, perhaps mercifully for Ramaswamy, was any debate over H-1B visas for temporary workers. Ramaswamy has criticized the program before, but back in December 2024, he sparked backlash online by declaring that American culture had long "venerated mediocrity over excellence," which was a key reason why Silicon Valley often hired foreign-born engineers. It was an episode that divided Trump's coalition and enraged the kind of populists and immigration opponents who might be skeptical of a Ramaswamy bid.
Hours after Ramaswamy left the Trumbull County dinner, attendees lingered, snacking on the Italian cookie bar and sipping drinks. Behind them, projected onto the wall, was an image of Abraham Lincoln and an image that, well, sort of looked like Ramaswamy. The former county GOP chair, Shutt, told POLITICO she lost patience while attempting to Photoshop Lincoln and Ramaswamy side-by-side; "Forget this," she recalls telling herself. "I've got stuff to do. I'm just going to have AI give me the images."
"Close enough," she said.
At a round table, the remaining guests discussed whether their county — which flipped red in 2016, and has never looked back — could go for a Republican like Ramaswamy.
If Barack Obama could win the county in 2008, one person suggested, Ramaswamy could: "I think that opened the door now for another guy with a funny name, that's not our color, even though he's in our party," said Malloy, the county GOP chair. "In some weird way, if we can elect Barack Hussein Obama, we definitely can elect Vivek Ramaswamy."
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Vivek Ramaswamy Preaches the American Dream. Will White Christians Accept It?
Samuel Benson
Sat, June 13, 2026
Vivek Ramaswamy Preaches the American Dream. Will White Christians Accept It?
PIKETON, Ohio — It looked like a scene out of a Norman Rockwell painting: a school gym transformed into an Americana-themed party venue; families at round tables, eating steak and potatoes; red-white-and-blue tablecloths with flowers at the center. This tiny Appalachian town, population 2,000, turned out several hundred for the county GOP's Lincoln Day dinner. The guest of honor, Vivek Ramaswamy, liked what he saw.
"We call it the American dream for a reason, because there is no Canadian dream, there is no British dream, there is no Chinese dream," Ramaswamy, 40, told attendees, standing on a makeshift stage underneath a balloon arch and an American flag. "I understand why many are skeptical, but what I'm talking about tonight is how we are going to turn Ohio into the cradle of the American dream once again."
Not everyone bought it. At the back table, Setys Kelly, who is the Ramaswamy campaign's captain in nearby Clark County, clapped throughout his speech. But when he brought up the notion that anyone could come to the United States and achieve the American dream, she shook her head. "I'm going to be a hard no on that. You need to be an American to do the American dream," said Kelly, a white woman. "I come from Springfield, land of the Haitians. … I just don't want any more of that kind of immigration where they just dump them on you."
It's this sort of sentiment that Ramaswamy must navigate as the Republican nominee to be Ohio's next governor, with issues of race and identity swirling in the campaign.
Ramaswamy, an Indian American with immigrant parents, left a lucrative career in biotechnology to run for president in 2024 and immediately won prominence on the national stage. He won the GOP primary for Ohio governor comfortably last month after batting down Casey Putsch, a far-right challenger who attacked him over his race and religion. His November faceoff against Democrat Amy Acton, who is white, is poised to be one of the marquee governors' races this cycle.
Ramaswamy's central message is that anyone can be a part of the American dream if they just work hard enough. But even as he waxes poetic, he's discovering that not all of his fellow Ohioans see him as part of that dream. In interviews with more than 20 voters and strategists across Ohio — a state that is 80 percent white and two-thirds Christian — Ramaswamy's background was seen as a real political hurdle to overcome. Few admitted their uneasiness with Ramaswamy's race, but several said they knew a neighbor who won't vote for him because he isn't white. None said they would reject him because of his religion (Ramaswamy is Hindu), but several said they know people at church who will.
"Most of us, the only time we've ever been in a room with someone of color like him was when you went to see your doctor," said Denny Malloy, a white man and Trumbull County GOP chair, who supports Ramaswamy. "When you get to eastern Ohio, they look at him like they don't know how to accept him."
In response to questions about potential voter resistance based on Ramaswamy's race or religion, Connie Luck, a campaign spokesperson said, "Vivek believes in the American Dream because he has lived it. He's running for governor of Ohio because he's grateful to his home state and his country for giving him opportunities that wouldn't be imaginable in any other nation on Earth. He's on a mission to revive that American dream for the next generation of Ohioans, and he isn't going to let anyone stand in his way."
In some ways, the issues Ramaswamy faces in Ohio reflect broader debates about identity and pluralism on the right. A chorus of online influencers is pushing the Republican Party to embrace "heritage Americanism," the belief that only those who trace ancestry to the U.S.' founding generations are truly American. Second lady Usha Vance, a Yale Law School classmate of Ramaswamy's and an Indian American, has faced racist attacks online from far-right white nationalists; Ramaswamy, too, has faced so much racism from the online right that it's one reason he deleted social media accounts from his phone. In the Republican Party's fight over "heritage Americans" and blood-and-soil nationalism, Ramaswamy has stood up in favor of pluralistic democracy. The response, from some on the online right, has been outrage.
In real-world Ohio, Ramaswamy hasn't confronted the same level of vitriol, but the underlying issues remain. He survived a far-right challenger who was explicit about attacking his race; now, he faces a more subtle uneasiness about his religion. There's also the matter of his extraordinary wealth and elite pedigree, which further set him apart. The bottom line: Some voters feel that Ramaswamy's background is not just removed from, but fundamentally at odds with, their own.
Many Ohioans — union members in the Rust Belt, factory workers in Appalachia — see Ramaswamy, the Ivy Leaguer with tech-fueled wealth, as antithetical to the world they know: They've seen the prospect of economic prosperity and self-sufficiency for them and their children slip away after years of vanished jobs and hollowed out industries. They view with deep skepticism a billionaire who insists they, too, can get ahead if they just work hard enough.
Ramaswamy grew up in a middle-class household, attended a private high school, earned degrees from Harvard and Yale and struck it big as an entrepreneur in biotechnology. Perhaps surprisingly, he's racked up support from many of the state's trade unions. But Democrats, riding nation-wide concerns over affordability and critiques of the ultra-wealthy, see an opportunity to paint Ramaswamy as a rich, out-of-touch billionaire. He provides them plenty of ammo. Since he burst onto the national stage as a presidential candidate in 2024, he's leaned hard into his background as a hedge fund manager worth ten figures with two Ivy League degrees. He calls disgraced investor Martin Shkreli a "friend" and blames the TV show "Friends" for American laziness and "mediocrity." He crisscrosses the state in a private jet and proposes consolidating "subpar" state universities, including some that are economic backbones in blue-collar towns.
To Ramaswamy, upward mobility is a choice, and the leading factor is an individual's will.
"We have to do our part as leaders to recreate the conditions for the American dream, and I'll do my part, but your job is to view yourself as empowered," Ramaswamy said in a brief interview with POLITICO Magazine on the trail in Ohio. "The number-one factor that determines whether you achieve your goal in life is ultimately you."
But that message, to many, rings inauthentic coming from someone with such elite credentials. "People that have… wealth, they are going to talk that exact same way," said Marty Loney, a white business manager at UA Local 396, a union outside of Youngstown for plumbers and pipefitters. "They don't even know what work boots are, you know?"
Piketon, Ohio, a small town nestled against the Appalachians not far from the Kentucky border, has long struggled: The unemployment rate is nearly double the state and national averages. Clean water and clean air are not guarantees. And a string of industries skipping town has left scars.
But the town's residents, 93 percent of whom are white, see hope on the horizon. A nearby uranium enrichment facility reopened in 2023, and in April, the federal government announced a partnership with a Japanese company to construct one of the world's biggest natural gas power plants, potentially ushering in 35,000 construction jobs. Construction has begun on what is expected to be the world's largest data center nearby.
A major goal of outgoing GOP Gov. Mike DeWine's was reviving Ohio's manufacturing industry. He'll leave office with a catalog of new investments under his belt: An aviation manufacturing site in Dayton, a defense manufacturing facility outside of Circleville, a pet food plant in Lewisburg. "That's going to create a new industrial boom, where I understand why the last 40 years have been tough in many parts of the state," said Ramaswamy, who earned DeWine's endorsement. "We're going to turn it around. And my pledge is we're going to usher in the next industrial revolution."
On that point, Ramaswamy received widespread support. He's scooped up the backing of a number of the state's building trades unions, who are desperate for a blue-collar boom.
"So often we think that the American dream is out of reach for people my age," said Jordan Leatherwood, the 29-year-old Pike County GOP chair, who is white. "[Ramaswamy] brings a fresh new perspective of allowing us to pursue the American dream by bringing down costs and increasing salaries."
Leatherwood's grandmother, Elaine Birkhimer, sat at a front table during Ramaswamy's speech; she said she was "impressed" by Ramaswamy's charisma.
"When I first heard his name I was a little concerned," said Birhimer, who is white. "But after hearing what he stands for, it's no longer an issue to me."
Ramaswamy's background seems to be a sticking point for others, however. "Somebody told me today that they ran into someone who said, 'I don't know why they keep lying about him being a Hindu,'" said Kelly, the Ramaswamy campaign's Clark County captain. "And the lady said, 'Well, they're not lying. He is a Hindu.' And the older lady is like, 'Well, I can't vote for him.'"
"I think it's important for him to keep emphasizing that you're in America, you can practice what you want," Kelly continued. "I think if he stays on that messaging, he's OK."
She said his Hinduism isn't an issue to her: "It's not actually that different from living as a Christian. It's got the same moral compass."
Julia Shutt, the former GOP chair in Trumbull County, who is white, has heard similar stories. "For me as a Christian, it's not an issue," she said. "There's some people that go to my church, it's an issue. They're like, 'He's a Hindu? Is that what he is?' 'Yeah.' 'That's not gonna work.'"
Race- and religion-based attacks have arisen in recent statewide Ohio races. In 2021, Mark Pukita, a GOP Senate candidate, raised then-frontrunner and former state treasurer Josh Mandel's Jewish faith in a radio ad and on the debate stage. In 2022, Vice President JD Vance — then running for Senate — accused the state's largest newspaper of racism against his wife, Usha. Ohio has also elected people of various backgrounds to office before — including Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno, who was born in Colombia.
Ramaswamy's allies say voters, even those who are initially hesitant, warm up when they hear him out.
"I'm not at all surprised that folks here in Appalachia are curious and even some skeptical, but to a man when I explain his background and where he grew up and where he stands on the issues, they say, 'Oh, I like that, I can support that,'" said Douglas Preisse, a Ramaswamy ally and longtime GOP strategist in the state, who is white. "When Vivek announced, I wondered, too, how will people react? That's how they're reacting."
"This is another place where it just very much reminds me of Donald Trump," said Aaron Baer, president of the Columbus-based Center for Christian Virtue, who is white. "I think Christian voters understand the men or women that we are electing are there to enact the policies that align with our values. Does Donald Trump live and operate in the most Christian way? Certainly not. But does he lead and enact policies that align with Christian worldview? Absolutely."
But Republican strategists across the state are quietly pointing to the 2006 gubernatorial campaign as a warning sign for Ramaswamy. The party was similarly dealing with an uncertain economy and an unpopular war in the Middle East. Then, Republicans nominated Ken Blackwell, an accomplished politician and Black man who'd served as Ohio secretary of state, treasurer and mayor of Cincinnati.
He was the first Black major-party gubernatorial nominee in Ohio's history — a fact that some say caused him difficulties in Appalachia, where Democrat Ted Strickland trounced him. "People said, 'This guy is Republican, but he's not really our guy,'" recalled Malloy, the Trumbull County GOP chair. "Here's a guy, Strickland, that looks like them, talks like them, eats like them, recreates like them. [Blackwell] didn't resonate well with Eastern Ohio, because he wasn't their demographic." (Blackwell did not respond to a request for comment.) More recently, Republican nominee Winsome Earle-Sears, who is Black, lost the Virginia gubernatorial election last year to a white woman, Democrat Abigail Spanberger, thanks in part to Spanberger's overperformance in deep-red rural areas.
Ohio has gone from being a swing state back in 2006 to reliably Republican in the Trump era, but Republicans still see some parallels with the past, both in the national environment and in their nominee.
"[Ramaswamy] is untested in terms of running a political campaign, and we're in the worst political environment since 2006 for Republicans," said one longtime Ohio GOP strategist, granted anonymity to discuss the race openly. "The economy is bad. Inflation, rising costs, a war."
Appalachia is where Ramaswamy's overtly racist primary challenger fared best, notching as much as 30 percent of the vote in some counties. Putsch, a white auto mechanic who calls himself "The Car Guy," raised only about $120,000 to Ramaswamy's $50 million. He tried to focus the election on two issues: Ramasawmy's race and his wealth. A provocateur who described the campaign as "cowboys versus Indians," he garnered over 140,000 votes statewide, even as Ramaswamy won 82 percent of the vote.
"Despite the negativity online that he gets, those people don't matter," said Anang Mittal, an Indian American GOP strategist. "The people who matter are the voters of Ohio, who will, I hope, give him the governorship in November."
Democrats are not leaning into racist attacks. But they see hope in breaking through in Ohio for the first time in years with Acton, who is Jewish and served as director of the Ohio Department of Health during the Covid pandemic.
"Dr. Acton overcame a tough childhood, put herself through college and med school by working three jobs, and has dedicated her career to fighting for Ohio. She is running for governor because she wants to build a state where all of us can get ahead," said Addie Bullock, spokesperson for the Acton campaign. "Dr. Acton wants to build an Ohio where everyone can pursue their dreams; Vivek Ramaswamy thinks we're lazy and mediocre. The choice is clear."
Ramaswamy is trying to present himself as the working-class fighter that Ohio needs.
"I didn't grow up in generational wealth myself, and so I can empathize with the struggles, especially in a state where a lot of high-paying jobs have left, a lot of young people have left," Ramaswamy said in an interview. "Deindustrialization has hit so much of our state hard. We're not going to turn it around by just complaining about it. We're going to turn it around by enacting policies that ultimately bring those new, high-paying jobs to the state."
Ramaswamy's life story runs through Evansdale, the affluent suburb north of Cincinnati where he grew up. The son of an engineer father and geriatric psychiatrist mother, the young Ramaswamy attended public schools until eighth grade, when his parents made the decision to transfer him to St. Xavier, a private Catholic school, after "a big black kid" — per Ramaswamy's description — pushed him down the stairs, requiring hip surgery. ("Whether our races were relevant, I don't know, but I've learned that others think it's part of these stories," Ramaswamy later wrote in his 2022 book, "Nation of Victims.")
He studied at Harvard, then at Yale Law School, where he met Vance, a fellow Ohioan, and Usha. He also became involved with Shabtai, a Jewish intellectual society run by a gregarious young rabbi and his wife. A Jewish classmate took Ramaswamy to a Shabbat dinner with the society's members one Friday night; he has recalled being enthralled by the group's debates on morals, values and current events. The experience exposed him to Judaism, but also served as a sort of refuge from Yale's secularism and helped cement him and his future wife, Apoorva, in their Hindu faith. (Apoorva was a medical student at Yale and often accompanied Ramaswamy at Shabtai events.)
The experience also helped solidify Ramaswamy's belief in individual will and the danger of embracing victimhood. "He believes in self-motivation. He believes in individuals," said Rabbi Shmully Hecht, a co-founder of Shabtai. "He believes in liberty. And he's not a person, in my opinion, that really thinks or cares a lot about what your racial profile is, what your ethnicity is and what your religion is. He thinks about your contribution to society and to the world."
That self-motivation, Ramaswamy believes, is adequate in the face of any challenge — including attacks based on religious identity. "Even if somebody is throwing dirt at you, it is up to us to use that dirt to lift ourselves up," he told a group of Jewish students at the grand opening for the Ohio State University's new Chabad House in February. "Who lifts you up? Whose responsibility is that? Is that somebody else's responsibility, or is it your responsibility? I think our faith teaches us alike that it is our responsibility to lift ourselves up." He referenced a Super Bowl ad about fighting antisemitism, that portrayed a non-Jew standing up for a Jewish teenager being bullied: "A well-intentioned ad that would say, 'OK, the job of fighting antisemitism is somebody else's job.' I say, 'No, no. You are strong enough to protect yourself.'"
After Yale, he bounced around in tech and investment banking before striking gold with a biotech startup that eventually netted him millions. He threw himself in the ring for the Republican presidential nomination in 2023, despite the long odds. His campaign hit a high point that August, when one poll showed him in second place — behind Trump — in Iowa. But he ended up finishing fourth, and dropped out before the New Hampshire primary — though not before he established himself as a rising star in the GOP and a fierce Trump loyalist who could speak to the younger generation. He was the first presidential candidate to get on TikTok; he was a guest on podcasts like Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson.
But on the ground in Iowa, he faced stiff winds. The overwhelmingly white, largely evangelical state had questions. At almost every campaign event, he'd get asked about his Hinduism, to the point that Ramaswamy developed a memorized line about religious tests for office and the commonalities between Hinduism and Christianity. ("I believe in one true God," he'd say. "I believe that God put each of us here for a purpose.") He even brought on a pair of former Mormon missionaries to help steer his campaign, figuring if the duo — who'd worked for Mitt Romney in 2012 — could help a Latter-day Saint win over Iowa evangelicals, they could do the same for a Hindu. (Romney narrowly lost Iowa and struggled in many evangelical-heavy parts of the country in the primary).
Ramaswamy's 2024 bid offered a relatively novel challenge: Indian Americans had run for president before as Republicans, but Ramaswamy was the first who was Hindu. Bobby Jindal, the first Indian American to run for president in 2016, converted to Catholicism; Nikki Haley, an enemy of Ramaswamy's in 2024, grew up Sikh before converting to her husband's Christianity.
Ramaswamy's openness about his faith has earned him respect from even some ideological foes. "We've had strong philosophical disagreements, but I've always appreciated his being proud of his heritage, his faith, [and] making it clear that the Constitution has no religious test for public office," said Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), a proud progressive and a fellow Hindu son of Indian immigrants.
In the end, Ramaswamy struggled in the presidential polls and earned a reputation as being an overzealous know-it-all. He later showed some introspection about his performativeness, especially at debates, where his antics struck many as unnecessarily snide. "Being unsparing as I was, I think that I wouldn't change," he said on Tucker Carlson's show in late 2024. "But to be able to combine that a little bit more with — if there's a way for me to allow a lot of people to know me the way that my employees at my businesses know me or my closest friends know me, I would love to think about how to do that."
That reputation — as a smug podcast bro, someone more interested in getting on Rogan than getting to the White House — still haunts him in some corners. Even as he scoops up endorsements from statewide or regional labor unions, individual members or local chapters remain skeptical.
Travis Mariast, vice president for Millwrights Pile Drivers Local Union No. 1090 who is white, told me he isn't sold on Ramaswamy, though his union, Central Midwest Regional Council of Carpenters, backed him. And while the Ohio State Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters endorsed Ramaswamy, locals are still deciding whether they want to sign on.
Loney, the business manager at UA Local 396 for plumbers and pipefitters, said Ramaswamy's pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps attitude can seem out-of-touch: "When it's four o'clock in the morning, you're getting up and driving 120 miles to go to a job site to feed your family — little bit different than daddy and mommy giving you money and sending you to Harvard or wherever."
At the Trumbull County GOP's Lincoln Day dinner in April, almost all of the questions Ramaswamy took from voters dealt with their personal economic situation.
"We've seen [the American dream] be diminished, if not lost," said Alicia Angelo, a local real estate agent, who is white. "I was able to buy a home at 24, but I don't think a single one of my peers is able to do that."
One issue that did not come up, perhaps mercifully for Ramaswamy, was any debate over H-1B visas for temporary workers. Ramaswamy has criticized the program before, but back in December 2024, he sparked backlash online by declaring that American culture had long "venerated mediocrity over excellence," which was a key reason why Silicon Valley often hired foreign-born engineers. It was an episode that divided Trump's coalition and enraged the kind of populists and immigration opponents who might be skeptical of a Ramaswamy bid.
Hours after Ramaswamy left the Trumbull County dinner, attendees lingered, snacking on the Italian cookie bar and sipping drinks. Behind them, projected onto the wall, was an image of Abraham Lincoln and an image that, well, sort of looked like Ramaswamy. The former county GOP chair, Shutt, told POLITICO she lost patience while attempting to Photoshop Lincoln and Ramaswamy side-by-side; "Forget this," she recalls telling herself. "I've got stuff to do. I'm just going to have AI give me the images."
"Close enough," she said.
At a round table, the remaining guests discussed whether their county — which flipped red in 2016, and has never looked back — could go for a Republican like Ramaswamy.
If Barack Obama could win the county in 2008, one person suggested, Ramaswamy could: "I think that opened the door now for another guy with a funny name, that's not our color, even though he's in our party," said Malloy, the county GOP chair. "In some weird way, if we can elect Barack Hussein Obama, we definitely can elect Vivek Ramaswamy."
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