INDIAN AMERICAN Vivek Ramaswamy, a multimillionaire former biotech executive and erstwhile presidential hopeful, won the Republican primary for governor of Ohio on Tuesday (5) and now faces a November general election contest against Democrat Amy Acton, a physician and former director of the Ohio Department of Health.
The Midwestern state last elected a Democratic governor in 2006, but is the site of a highly competitive US Senate race in this year's midterm elections, which could also put the governorship into play.
Ramaswamy, 40, was born in Cincinnati to immigrant parents from southern India. He was raised in the Hindu faith of his parents but went to a Roman Catholic high school. He earned a biology degree at Harvard University before attending Yale Law School.
Ramaswamy worked as a hedge fund investor and says he had already made several million dollars before graduating from Yale.
In 2014, he founded his own biotech company, Roivant Sciences, which bought patents from larger companies for drugs not yet fully developed and marketed. He resigned as CEO in 2021. In 2023, the business magazine Forbes estimated Ramaswamy's wealth at $630 million.
Ramaswamy says he was a libertarian during college. While at Harvard, he would perform libertarian-themed rap songs under the stage name Da Vek. He reprised some of his rap skills as a 2024 presidential candidate, with an Iowa State Fair performance of Eminem's "Lose Yourself" that went viral on social media.
Ramaswamy says he voted for a libertarian in the 2004 presidential election, but did not vote in 2008, 2012, or 2016.
He has contributed to Republican and Democratic candidates. He says he voted in 2020 for president Donald Trump.
Donald Trump (L) with Vivek Ramaswamy (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
An 'ant-woke' crusader
In recent years, Ramaswamy has become a fierce conservative. In his 2021 bestseller Woke, Inc., Ramaswamy decries decisions by some big companies to base business strategy around social justice and climate change concerns and assails "wokeism" as an insidious influence on hard work, capitalism, religious faith and patriotism.
The book raised his profile among conservatives, and he began his rapid ascent as a right-wing star. Ramaswamy was a long shot for president in the 2024 campaign but drew attention with his aggressive debate performances and deeply conservative policy positions, including an agenda that was further to the right of Trump's on some issues.
He ended his campaign after finishing fourth in the Iowa caucuses and endorsed Trump.
A week after the election, Trump named Ramaswamy to lead the group dubbed the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, with billionaire businessman Elon Musk. But he dropped out on Inauguration Day to focus on his gubernatorial ambitions in Ohio.
Ramaswamy in December denounced a rising tide of racism and antisemitism on the political right before a group of conservative activists, singling out racial slurs about second lady Usha Vance, who was born in San Diego to Indian immigrants.
"If you believe in normalizing hatred towards any ethnic group: toward whites, towards blacks, towards Hispanics, towards Jews, towards Indians, you have no place in the future of the conservative movement. Period," Ramaswamy said at AmericaFest, a conservative conference organized by Turning Point USA, the organization founded by slain activist Charlie Kirk.
"And if you can't say those things without stuttering, then you have no place as a leader at any level in the conservative movement either - certainly not in my state of Ohio," he said.
(Reuters)
