Ron DeSantis Slams Vivek’s Disastrous Ohio Gov Campaign: ‘You’ve Got To Meet Voters Where They Are’

Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis criticized failed Republican Ohio gubernatorial nominee Vivek Ramaswamy Thursday for not representing Ohioans.

DeSantis said on “The Sage Steele Show” that the Ohio Republican Party should have never nominated Ramaswamy because he does not represent Ohio’s working class, blue-collar electorate. He criticized Ramaswamy for supporting H-1B visas and pretending to appeal to the working class when he is a billionaire biotechnology entrepreneur.

“Ohio Governor! How bad did they beat Vivek? Like a drum! Now, part of that was Vivek, quite frankly,” DeSantis said. “I don’t know why they would have pushed him to be the candidate there … Ohio is a working-class state, very blue-collar. Vivek, he’s a tech guy, did this Alzheimer’s drug, and he wants to bring in people, foreign workers on visas. That is not the type of person that is going to sell.”

Ramaswamy lost the governor’s race to Democratic Ohio Gov.-elect Amy Acton by a 52% to 44% margin.

In 2014, Ramaswamy founded Roivant Sciences, a now-multinational biopharmaceutical and technology company which has a market cap of almost $29 billion.

Ramaswamy argued in a Dec. 26, 2024, X post that many companies are forced to turn to foreign talent because “American culture has venerated mediocrity” for the past few decades. He refused to answer any questions about H-1Bs during a September interview with the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Ohio lost roughly 300,000 manufacturing jobs between 1999 and 2025, according to Policy Matters Ohio. More than six-in-ten Ohioans believe the U.S. is on the wrong track, and the state’s voters rated the economy and inflation as their top concerns, an early September poll from Bowling Green State University (BGSU) found.

Ramaswamy faced backlash after his campaign released an ad featuring Acton’s estranged mother, who lost custody of Acton and her brother after she allegedly allowed her then-husband to abuse the governor-elect when she was a child.

DeSantis argued that Republicans lost the midterms because they failed to address affordability and government accountability. Before the results, he warned that Republicans would likely lose because of high gas prices and the Iran war.