Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis isn’t mincing words about the GOP’s stinging loss in Ohio. He took direct aim at failed gubernatorial nominee Vivek Ramaswamy and argued the billionaire biotech entrepreneur was the wrong candidate for a blue-collar state.
“Ohio governor. I mean, how bad did they beat Vivek like a drum?” DeSantis said this week on former ESPN host Sage Steele’s podcast. “Ohio is a working-class state, very blue collar.”
Democrat Amy Acton defeated Ramaswamy on Tuesday and flipped the governor’s office. Acton led the Ohio Department of Health during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. As of Thursday afternoon, she led by roughly 8 points, 52% to 44%. She is the first Democrat to win the governorship in about 15 years and the first woman ever elected to lead the Buckeye State.
DeSantis ran against Ramaswamy in the 2024 Republican presidential primary, and he questioned why the party rallied behind him in the first place. He pointed to Ramaswamy’s support for H-1B visas, which bring skilled foreign workers into the U.S. He also argued that a billionaire tech entrepreneur presenting himself as a champion of the working class was a tough sell.
“You gotta meet the voters where they are on some of this stuff,” DeSantis said.
“I think we would have done better in Ohio had we had a candidate that was more representative or more in tune with the interest of kind of these blue-collar people that make the backbone of Ohio,” he added. “But they got blown out there.”
The damage reached down the ballot. Ohio voters elected Democrats as treasurer, secretary of state, attorney general and governor. It is the first time the party has held those offices since 2011. Ramaswamy drew the fewest preliminary votes of any major-party statewide candidate, about 2.04 million.
Some Ohio Republicans have blamed national headwinds and economic anxiety for the results. Others are pointing the finger squarely at the top of the ticket.
“Vivek Ramaswamy was not a likable candidate; he had a likability issue, and the rest of the ticket suffered because of it,” Republican strategist Mike Gonidakis said.
Late in the race, Ramaswamy’s campaign drew national backlash over an attack ad featuring Acton’s estranged mother. Many down-ballot Republicans tried to distance themselves from the ad. Even so, they shared rally stages with Ramaswamy alongside Vice President JD Vance and President Donald Trump, who both defended him.
After the election, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie went further. He warned that Vance’s decision to stand behind the ad could haunt him politically and called it “a disgrace.”
DeSantis framed Ohio as a lesson for a party that took heavy losses across the country on Tuesday. He argued Republicans fell short because they failed to focus on affordability and on holding government accountable. He had previously warned that the midterms could be close to an “extinction-level event” for the GOP.
Ramaswamy grew up in the Cincinnati area. He entered politics with a long-shot 2024 presidential bid, then dropped out after finishing fourth in the Iowa caucuses and endorsed Trump. His first run for statewide office has now ended in a decisive defeat, and fellow Republicans are openly questioning whether he should have been the nominee at all.
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