It was the businessman’s first public appearance in Springfield since September, when he held a town hall meeting amid national focus on the city’s large Haitian immigrant population. That attention came largely as a result of false rumors that the immigrants were eating people’s pets, as members of Ramaswamy’s party, including now-President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance, amplified the claims.
Ramaswamy told the crowd Thursday that attendees of that town hall opened his eyes “to the best way that I believe we can help the United States of America by leading the great state of Ohio back to greatness.” Several attendees of that 2024 town hall asked Ramaswamy to run for governor, and he said at the time he would consider a campaign.
“It was actually the moment in Springfield last fall that really turned around my thinking about how we were going to spend the next chapter of our journey,” Ramaswamy said Thursday. “A number of you were there.”
Ramaswamy repeated ideas he shared when announcing his candidacy, including his goal of making the state a leader in educational and economic achievement. He again said he will welcome anyone, no matter their political ideology, to his team to meet this goal.
“This is the state where the American dream is your birthright, where success is your birthright, where a world class education is your birthright, where freedom is your heritage and excellence is your destiny,” Ramaswamy said. “That isn’t a humble vision for our state; it is an ambitious vision because I believe that’s who we really are as Ohioans and as Americans. We’re not victims. We’re victors.”
Credit: Jessica Orozco
Credit: Jessica Orozco
Ramaswamy said he intends to address an “epidemic” of depression, anxiety, suicide and fentanyl and opioid addiction. He said the state should teach its children U.S. history that “teaches our kids to be proud of our country and proud of our state rather than be ashamed of them.”
He said public school teachers should be paid more, “tied in some measure to performance.” He also lamented students’ underperformance in core areas like math, saying that Chinese students are on average academically four years ahead of American students.
He praised achievement at the private Greater Dayton School and the Vanguard-Sentinel Career & Technology Centers.
Many of his points echoed a December post on social media platform X criticizing the country’s culture, saying it “has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long.” Ramaswamy saw some backlash for that statement.
Previously, Ramaswamy sought the GOP nomination for president in 2024, but dropped out to back Trump.
Amy Acton, who served as Gov. Mike DeWine’s Ohio Department of Health director from 2019 to 2020, is the only Democrat who has declared a run for governor, though former congressman Tim Ryan and former Ohio Democratic Party chairman Chris Redfern have expressed interest.
Acton was instrumental in the state’s initial policies at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and Ramaswamy railed against her Thursday, blaming chronic absenteeism on the school closures.
“If I’m elected your governor, never again will we bend the knee to a fake Anthony Fauci, who allowed our public schools to be closed while our private schools remained open,” Ramaswamy said. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
In a statement to the News-Sun, Acton criticized Ramaswamy and said his “plan to eliminate the department of education and starve our public schools of funding would hurt our schools and children across Ohio.”
“As governor, I’ll fight every day to ensure our schools are fully funded, with the resources they need to educate and take care of our kids,” Acton said.
Ramaswamy told the crowd that the country is in a “new era” with Trump’s election and he sought to build on that momentum, adapting the president’s slogan as a call to “Make Ohio Great Again.”
To Ramaswamy, that means instituting change based on merit rather than “the woke DEI regime” and ensuring elected officials rather than “unelected bureaucrats and three-letter agencies in Washington D.C. or for that matter in Columbus, Ohio” run the government.
“The golden age for America is about to be a golden age for federalism in America, just like our founding fathers envisioned,” Ramaswamy said.
But this time, Ohio will be at the forefront, he said.
“I want to lead Ohio to be the top state in the country to raise a young family, to generate wealth, to give our kids a world-class education and to be the state that sets the standard for our peers across our nation,” Ramaswamy said.
If elected governor, Ramaswamy said he will not “govern from a bubble” and will include the entire state.
State Sen. Kyle Koehler told the News-Sun that the Republican Party had never had such high attendance at an annual dinner. The event Thursday was held at the historic Simon Kenton Inn on Urbana Road.
Credit: Jessica Orozco
Credit: Jessica Orozco
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