Vivek Ramaswamy recently launched his 2026 gubernatorial campaign. The most important event surrounding his bid came on Truth Social late Monday night when President Trump endorsed Ramaswamy. That endorsement virtually ends Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost’s effort, as he had expressly noted the importance of Trump’s endorsement to winning the Republican Primary.
Assuming Yost hangs up his spurs in the coming weeks, that would leave Lt. Gov. Jim Tressel as Ramaswamy’s only possible primary opponent.
Given Trump’s 11-plus win in Ohio in 2024 and his strong endorsement of Ramaswamy, the establishment backers of Tressel who thought they had outflanked Ramaswamy by luring Tressel into the DeWine administration must be reconsidering a Tressel run.
A Ramaswamy versus Tressel primary in which Trump declined to endorse either candidate is one thing; a Trump-backed Ramaswamy with unlimited funds and broad name ID is another beast entirely.
As the lone voice in Ohio over the last decade and more on eliminating Ohio’s personal income tax, I am thrilled to see Ramaswamy adopt this issue.
It requires limiting state spending increases to population growth plus inflation and repealing John Kasich’s disastrously expensive Medicaid expansion, which added 700,000 able-bodied adults to the rolls. The only way to control Ohio’s state budget is to repeal Medicaid expansion to take back full control of state spending; otherwise, more than 50 percent of state spending will be driven by federal Medicaid policy.
Since 2011, if Gov. Mike DeWine’s budget is passed, state spending will have jumped 71 percent, which is nearly identical to the spending increases in left-wing Illinois.
With a supermajority Republican legislature and governor spending like progressives, who needs Democrats?
If Ramaswamy can figure out how to achieve this goal without raising other taxes and without repealing Kasich’s Medicaid expansion under Obamacare, then kudos to him.
Ramaswamy’s property tax proposal honestly confused me a bit. Philosophically, I understand the argument. I know it is a popular issue, but it requires local action and/or a constitutional amendment.
More practically, based on the 2023 Annual Report by the Ohio Department of Taxation, Ohio’s property tax revenue totaled roughly $19 billion, with a majority of those funds going to local schools and lesser amounts to metro parks, townships for fire services, children services, libraries, and other local government services.
How will Ramaswamy propose to fund local schools and other local government services? Higher sales taxes? A new report in Florida estimates elimination of property taxes there would require doubling the sales tax to 12 percent, which would make Florida’s sales tax America’s highest.
Higher local income taxes?
That would be counterproductive. Given the hollowing out of a majority of Ohio counties since 2000, it seems to me a smarter fight to tame local tax burdens would be to consolidate local governments where possible to reduce property taxes.
The bottom line is that Ramaswamy’s launch was promising, but, as with all politicians, the devil will be in the details, which he should provide us over the next year-and-a-half.
We deserve to know not just what he wants to do, but how he plans to do it.
As Ohioans have painfully learned over the last two governors, talk is very, very cheap.
Ohio has lost over 700,000 Ohioans ages 10 to 54 from 2000 to 2020. We can ill afford to lose even more of them lest we hit terminal brain drain velocity.
Matt Mayer is the president of Opportunity Ohio and author of the Patriot Mind Substack who explored a run for Ohio governor in 2023.
First Published March 7, 2025, 5:00 a.m.
