Almost a year before the May 5 Republican primary, Vivek Ramaswamy, the loquacious billionaire entrepreneur and former presidential candidate, had almost completely cleared the field contending to become Ohio’s next governor. That alone made him the favorite, since a Democrat has not held the office for 15 years.Ohio is a state that has voted for Donald Trump three times. In 2024, Trump won the state by double digits. The current governor, Mike DeWine, won reelection in 2022 by 25 points. So why is Ramaswamy struggling against his likely Democratic oppponent, Amy Acton?
He has been endorsed by trade unions, farm associations, dozens of county sheriffs and President Trump. He has visited every county in the state, often feted as a celebrity by local Republican leaders. Perhaps most formidably, his campaign and the super PAC backing him have amassed nearly $40 million — a record-breaking sum that does not include the many millions he’s ready to spend from his own pockets.
The only matter remaining is whether a majority of Ohioans will vote for him.
The Times has a few theories:
Perhaps Mr. Ramaswamy’s showing in the polls is simply a function of the current national mood, as rising costs, economic uncertainty and an unpopular war drag down the popularity of the president and his party.And ...? Could some other factor be involved?
Or perhaps Mr. Ramaswamy, 40, is facing a challenge he faced in his campaign for the presidency in 2024: that his fast-talking self-assurance just rubs some people the wrong way.
This is a 27-paragraph story. Only starting in paragraph 23 are we told this about a primary opponent with the rather on-the-nose name Casey Putsch:
Mr. Putsch rails against data centers, “billionaire tech bros” and foreigners, Indians in particular, who are granted H-1B visas for high-skilled jobs in Ohio. Mr. Ramaswamy, Mr. Putsch said to his supporters, “is a globalist Trojan horse.”In other words, there's barely a mention in this story of the possibility that Ramaswamy is struggling to close the sale because his ancestry isn't European and his religion isn't Christian. Okay, there's also this:
Mr. Ramaswamy has said he does not think that anti-Indian bias will be much of a factor in his race....
John Adams, a retired pastor in Erie County who is active in local Republican politics, said that people were still learning about Mr. Ramaswamy. Most everyone knew him as a figure in Mr. Trump’s orbit, but many didn’t know he had grown up in Cincinnati.Ramaswamy didn't just grow up in Cincinnati -- he was born there. But his parents are Indian immigrants and he's Hindu. Surely that has at least some influence on some voters.
“For some folks, I hear them say, ‘Well, he’s an outsider, we really don’t know him very well,’” he said.
I read this story a day after reading Josh Kovensky's report at Talking Points Memo on Frisco, Texas, a thriving and rapidly expanding city of a quarter million people that's now the focus of right-wingers who fear a "Great Replacement" because of the number of Indians who live there.
But for a coterie of area activists and influencers, the influx of Indians — some on H-1B work visas, others citizens of Indian descent — is a real-life example of the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory. Under that idea, elites are replacing white Americans — sometimes referred to by right-wing activists as “Heritage Americans” — with nonwhite foreigners in a bid to gain political power. That narrative about Frisco has been magnified in recent days by national political figures. Rep. Brandon Gill (R-TX), who represents a district near Frisco, cited the city’s demographic changes during a recent podcast appearance to demand an end to the H-1B worker visa program.That would be this Brandon Gill:
“We’ve got communities like Frisco that have been totally transformed, whether it’s Islamic immigration or immigration from anywhere else in Asia,” Gill said. “I don’t want to hear Muslim calls to prayer in my community. I do not want the caste system socially in the schools that my kids are going to because we’ve had so many people come to the United States who are not assimilating into American culture.”
(Gill says these things despite the fact that he's married to the daughter of Dinesh D'Souza, a right-winger of Indian descent.)
Kovensky tells us that Steve Bannon is in on the hatemongering, unsurprisingly:
Others, like former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, have trained a spotlight on Indians in the city in recent weeks, using a video by political activist Tyler Oliveira depicting Indians in the city to call for “a moratorium of at least 10 years on all immigration” and a “special deal” for American citizens.Thanks to the flattening effects of the media, I don't imagine there's a huge difference between Texas Republicans and Ohio Republicans on this subject. Ramaswamy is neither an immigrant nor a Muslim, but it seems highly unlikely that most Ohio voters know that. They look at him and see a brown person. I'm sure that's an immediate dealbreaker for quite a few of them.
The campaign against Indians in Frisco takes advantage of the fact that right-wingers will believe anything about people they hate or fear:
One [video], titled “The Muslim and Indian Takeover of Texas” by TPUSA contributor Savanah Hernandez, featured Sara Gonzales recounting an email she received from someone near Frisco describing an Indian couple supposedly inviting a cow into their home before exulting over its urine and feces.Oh yeah, I'm totally sure that happened.
In 2022, Pew reported that 45% of Americans say that the United States should be a Christian nation. That includes 67% of Republicans and Republican leaners. In this group, 76% believe that the Founders intended the U.S. to be a Christian nation.
So I think is more of a factor in Ramaswamy's struggles than the Times is letting on.
