Vivek Ramaswamy is a DEI candidate — and an unqualified one. Republicans do not vote for unqualified DEI candidates. Historically, they never have.

For the good of Ohio, the Republican Party, and MAGA voters nationwide, Vivek Ramaswamy should withdraw from the Ohio gubernatorial race. His candidacy is not merely ill-advised; it is corrosive. At a moment when unity and discipline matter, he threatens to fracture the coalition President Trump assembled and to waste political capital ahead of the 2026 midterms and the 2028 presidential cycle, when Ohio native JD Vance is widely expected to lead the ticket.

All Ramaswamy had to do was remain silent and act like a normal Republican for 18 months. He couldn’t.

Ramaswamy’s problem is not policy disagreement. It is temperament, judgment, and an inability to restrain himself. His habit of attacking critics as racists, trolls, or bad actors poisons the well. Democrats, corporate media, and professional activists already do that job. Republicans do not need a gubernatorial candidate doing it from inside the party.

In 2024, 3,189,116 Ohioans voted for Donald Trump. It strains credulity to claim that Ramaswamy is more qualified to govern Ohio than virtually any one of them.

Yet this charade continues. For decades, GOP leadership has tried to impose an identity-driven strategy on a party whose voters reject it. The results are consistent. From Alan Keyes to Winsome Earle-Sears, the establishment clings to a failed premise: that Republican voters will embrace DEI candidates if scolded long enough. They won’t. Nor do minority voters reliably cross over for such candidates. The strategy fails on both ends.

That makes the present moment especially baffling. At a time when Trump and Vance are openly criticizing decades of discriminatory policies against white Americans, backing a candidate whose appeal rests on the same identity logic is not just tone-deaf — it is hostile to the base.

Ohio is a solid red state. Any competent Republican with discipline wins statewide office comfortably.

Vivek Ramaswamy is neither.

His background underscores why. In 2011, at age 24, Ramaswamy accepted a $90,000 “scholarship” from the brother of George Soros. That alone raises eyebrows. It becomes more troubling when you consider that Ramaswamy had already earned more than $1.2 million in the prior three years and reported $2.25 million in income the year he accepted the award.

This occurred during the Great Recession, when many white Millennial men faced systematic exclusion across elite institutions. Ramaswamy did not.

Later, much of his wealth flowed from Axovant Sciences, which aggressively promoted an Alzheimer’s breakthrough to retail investors after early trials had failed. The result was a textbook pump-and-dump that left ordinary Americans holding the bag. These facts go directly to trust and judgment.

Despite this record, Ramaswamy launched a quixotic presidential campaign, which he parlayed into a brief role in the Trump administration and a partnership with Elon Musk under the DOGE initiative. That arrangement ended almost as quickly as it began.

Then came the Christmas crashout of 2024.

During the holidays — entirely unprovoked — Ramaswamy took to X to berate American workers as lazy and culturally deficient while praising foreign H-1B visa holders. He mocked American childhood culture, disparaged “jocks and prom queens,” and lamented that Americans watched “Boy Meets World” instead of competing in math olympiads. The episode revealed far more about Ramaswamy’s resentments than about American culture.

MAGA voters were celebrating a landslide victory when the lecture arrived. The response was swift and overwhelming. Rather than admit error, Ramaswamy doubled down, dismissing critics as bots, trolls, and racists while casting himself as a victim.

Shortly thereafter, the Trump administration quietly removed him from his DOGE role before he was even formally installed.

Voters noticed. The internet does not forget.

When Ramaswamy announced his run for governor, the reaction was not enthusiasm but disbelief. The Ohio GOP’s apparent decision to anoint him is indefensible. It would take an estimated $100 million to drag this candidacy across the finish line, and even then he would be lucky to crack 48%.

We’ve seen this movie before. At least one-third of Ohio Republicans would rather spoil their ballot, vote third-party, or stay home than support him. Accusing them of racism will not change that reality.

Most recently, Ramaswamy took to the New York Times to reprise his grievances, portraying MAGA voters and heritage Americans as racists, extremists, and “groypers.” He made similar remarks at Turning Point USA’s AmFest over the weekend.

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Photo by Michael Swensen/Getty Images

In his Times op-ed, he argued that America is an abstract idea detached from ancestry, history, or continuity — and that descendants of those who built the nation have no greater claim to it than recent arrivals or anchor babies.

That view is not widely held, nor is it reflected in the American tradition. From America’s founders to Alexis de Tocqueville and Theodore Roosevelt, continuity, inheritance, and culture have always mattered.

No one expects Ramaswamy to be a heritage American. But Americans reasonably expect someone seeking to govern them to respect the people whose nation it is. Ramaswamy has shown repeated contempt instead.

He did not have to attack white Americans over Christmas. He did not have to insult the Republican base in the New York Times. He did not have to liken MAGA voters to extremists.

He chose to.

All Ramaswamy had to do was remain silent and act like a normal Republican for 18 months. He couldn’t.

MAGA does not need this distraction. Ohio does not need this fight. The Republican Party cannot afford to spend finite resources defending a candidate who consistently antagonizes his own voters.

That alone makes him unsuitable for office.