Quick Reax to Vivek Ramaswamy’s 2026 Governor’s Run
Promising and Exciting Launch, But the Devil Will Be In the Policy Details.
After lots of speculation and anticipation, Vivek Ramaswamy on Monday launched his 2026 gubernatorial campaign at events in the Greater Cincinnati and Columbus areas. The most important event surrounding Ramaswamy’s bid came on Truth Social late Monday night when President Donald Trump endorsed Ramaswamy. That endorsement virtually ends Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost’s gubernatorial bid, as he had expressly noted the importance of Trump’s endorsement to winning the Republican Primary, even going so far as to note that he was the only person running who Trump had endorsed (for AG in 2022).
Assuming Yost’s hangs up his spurs in the coming weeks, that would leave only Ohio Lieutenant Governor Jim Tressel as Ramaswamy’s only possible primary opponent going forward. Given Trump’s +13 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.
In terms of Ramaswamy’s launch, I was a bit disappointed to see little substantive material on his campaign website. Other than a brief section on his “Vision for Ohio,” there is no policy positions noted that Ramaswamy will promote. While I get most candidates won’t publish a detailed policy position paper like I did when I explored a run for Ohio governor in 2023, I had hoped given the resources behind his effort, Ramaswamy would at least have a more substantive website.
Regardless, his speech provided some details that are encouraging. Here are the highlights with my thoughts:
Return of Federalism: As someone who has aggressively pushed federalism since serving as the president of the Ohio State Federalist Society chapter in law school in 1996 and as someone who won a national award for my ideas on the topic and as someone who has written two books on the issue, I am thrilled to see Ramaswamy understand the importance of the issue in restoring America to the vision of the Founding Fathers. Hopefully, Ramaswamy will advocate for the decentralization of Medicaid, transportation, education, and disaster response as I laid out in my 2013 report, “Competitive Federalism: Leveraging the Constitution to Rebuild America.” State groups from across America endorsed my federalism proposal, so Ramaswamy would have strong support should he act on this issue.
Eliminate the State Income Tax: Obviously, as the lone voice in Ohio over the last decade+ on eliminating Ohio’s personal income tax, I am thrilled to see Ramaswamy adopt this issue. I’ve laid out how to accomplish this objective WITHOUT RAISING OTHER TAXES. If Ramaswamy can figure out how to achieve this goal without raising other taxes and without repealing Jonh Kasich’s Medicaid expansion under Obamacare, then kudos to him. I hope his support for adding a work requirement to Medicaid doesn’t mean he will keep Kasich’s disastrous fiscal policy of expanding Medicaid. 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% of state spending will be driven by federal Medicaid policy.
Drive Property Taxes to Zero: This proposal honestly confused me a bit. Philosophically, I understand the argument. On a practical level, given that property taxes are purely local issues that fund purely local governments, I’m not sure why Ramaswamy used his opening speech to push this proposal versus other more vital state issues. I know it is a popular issue, which is why Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed on to the issue a couple of weeks ago, 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. For example, 66.2% of my annual property taxes fund Dublin City Schools where my kids attend/attended. 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%, which would make Florida’s sales tax America’s highest. For perspective, the sales and use taxes that fund state government totaled $13.7 billion in the last budget year, so local sales taxes would have to be raised significantly to replace the $19 billion in property taxes. Higher local income taxes? That would be counterproductive. It seems to me a smarter fight to tame local tax burdens would be to do as I proposed re consolidating local governments where possible to reduce property taxes.
Shred Regulations With New Regulations Requiring Eliminating Ten Existing Regulations: As with the state income tax proposal, I have advocated for such an aggressive approach to reducing Ohio’s regulatory burden. Ramaswamy should adopt my idea to appoint a Chief Deregulator for Ohio to oversee this activity.
Higher Education Versus Vocational/Trade/Tech Programs: As readers of this column know, I’ve been the lone voice (again) on rebalancing how Ohio funds higher education (15% of Ohio K-12 graduates, but 85% of state funding) versus vocational/trade/tech programs (85% of Ohio K-12 graduates, but only 15% of state funding). I love that Ramaswamy wants to ditch the “trade” term for the “profession” term to help destigmatize these paths. A rebalancing would greatly enhance Ohio’s ability to provide workers ready for a 21st Century economy.
Education Proficiency and More: As I wrote a few weeks ago, Ohio’s educational outcomes on the 4th and 8th national exams have gotten worse, not better. I’m excited that Ramaswamy wants to tackle this issue via promoting school choice, including homeschooling, making schools safer, prohibit school closures (while I loved his attack on Health Czar Amy Acton who pushed for school closures during the pandemic, it would have been a show of strength and independence had Ramaswamy took a swing at Mike DeWine and Jon Husted who ultimately made the decision to heed Acton’s advice), ban smartphones, restore civic education and the pledge of allegiance, and require 12th graders to pass the immigration civics test to graduate. On education policy, I wish Ramaswamy well on his fight to require merit pay for teachers. It is an important principle, but one that will require enormous political capital to accomplish. I’d politely suggest he’d be better off fighting for true universal school choice in which every state and federal dollar follows a kid to whichever school he or she chooses whether public, private, parochial, charter, or homeschool. That policy alone would result in massive reforms and competition in Ohio’s K-12 system. I would be beyond excited to see Ramaswamy adopt my policy idea to put state legislators, the lieutenant governor, and governor on a pay for performance system in which they, too, must earn their pay. As I said during my campaign swings, we conservatives have long said pay for performance is good for teachers in the classroom, so why would we not adopt a similar system for our state politicians so that they only get paid if we the people get paid by hitting certain key metrics each year (i.e., top ten net percentage private sector growth).
Other issues mentioned by Ramaswamy are good—though I think some of them are already done like putting budgets on line and empowering law enforcement. His push to reopen state psychiatric hospitals, which Ronald Reagan moved to depopulate in the 1980s, could be an interesting way to tackle Ohio’s mental health and addiction issues. A word of caution however: such an approach will be enormously costly, as it would require large capital outlays to build and outfit facilities and staffing such facilities will drive government employment and pay costs north. For example, when I put all state worker pay online back in 2010 when I ran The Buckeye Institute, the highest cost state workers every year were the psychiatrists who staffed existing facilities, with many earning more than $400,000 per year due to substantial overtime costs. Every one of those $400,000 doctors also required 14% state contributions to their government pensions. Finding funding for this idea while also killing the state income tax and property taxes might be a Sisyphean task.
Given the lack of specifics on the ideas Ramaswamy mentioned at his launch and the lack of details on his website, Ohioans should ask him whenever they are given a chance for those details. I’d respectfully also suggest they ask him specifically whether or not he will adopt any of the Reaganesque bold color policies I laid out in 2023 as noted below.
The bottom line is that Ramaswamy’s launch was promising and exciting, 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. We need and deserve action. My greatest hope is that Ramaswamy is successful at doing what he wants to do: get people to come to Ohio instead of going to Florida and Texas and to repatriate those Ohioans who have left. As I noted previously, on net, Ohio lost over 700,000 Ohioans ages 10 to 54 from 2000 to 2020. Those workers and budding workers will be key players in Ohio’s rebirth. We can ill afford to lose even more of them.
P.S. I know my data junkie skills usually focus on government-related public policy issues, but last year I published my fourth book, "The Myth of the Bigger, Better Deal: One Guy’s View on Why Dating Apps Make Dating Harder," using my personal experience and data analysis capabilities to focus on the failure of dating apps to help single adults find long-term love. The book made the case for the failure of the dating app industry as more people realized the dating apps weren’t designed to help them succeed and, in fact, ensured their failure due to the lure of the bigger, better deal who was mythically just one swipe away. One year later, I am happy to report that my predictions in the book have been borne out by the collapse of the stock prices of the two big fish: Bumble (down 30%) and Match (down 33%). If you use the dating apps, stop. They don’t work.
P.P.S. Can anyone please explain why the Ohio Ballot Board and the Ohio General Assembly are forcing Ohioans to vote on a $2.5 billion bond issue in May instead of November? The Ohio General Assembly allocated $15 million for the election knowing only 10% of Ohioans likely will turnout to vote in a non-presidential, non-statewide primary election. There certainly is no pressing financial need to justify placing the item on the May versus November ballot. This move just seems like another Establishment action aimed at ensuring passage when no one is paying attention. All bond and tax issues should always have to be placed on November ballots to ensure as many Ohiaons as possible get a say on those items that will raise their taxes or indebtedness.