By Joe Reardon, Staff Writer

Vivek Ramaswamy really wants Ohioans to think he is just like us. He drives a minivan. He listens to Fall Out Boy. He got ice cream at UDF as a child. In recent months, Ramaswamy’s campaign has increasingly filled social media with short-form content showing little glimpses of his supposedly ordinary life, presenting him less as a billionaire businessman and more as a guy you might run into at the grocery store.

Ramaswamy’s campaign aims to demonstrate that he understands the lives of ordinary Ohioans. They do not. Ramaswamy is a billionaire, and his life and policy agenda reflects an economic reality that is fundamentally different from that of the average Ohio family. Just look at his tax plan.

Ramaswamy has promised to roll Ohio’s property taxes back to pre-pandemic levels. His campaign calls it the largest property tax rollback in Ohio history. He also wants to phase out the state income tax, beginning with the elimination of the capital gains tax.

Ask who benefits from this agenda. Ohioans absolutely can be burdened by property taxes, particularly homeowners on fixed or modest incomes. However, property-tax cuts will disproportionately benefit people who own more valuable property or multiple properties. Capital gains tax cuts will disproportionately benefit people who already own substantial investments. Eliminating the income tax will provide the greatest dollar benefit to people with the highest incomes.

Meanwhile, property taxes pay for schools, police, fire departments and other local services. If Ohio dramatically reduces property tax revenue, that money has to be replaced somehow. Otherwise, local governments will have to cut services or find other sources of revenue.

Ramaswamy’s tax plan would give wealthy Ohioans substantial tax breaks on property and investment income while doing far less for Ohioans whose primary source of wealth is their labor. It is not going to make life more affordable for families struggling to pay rent or workers whose biggest source of wealth is their next paycheck.

That is the fundamental problem with Ramaswamy’s economic vision. He treats taxes primarily as an obstacle to wealth accumulation.

For most Ohioans, however, the biggest economic problems are not that they are paying too much tax on their investments. The problems are the cost of housing, health care, childcare, education and simply driving to work.

That is why the mini-van videos matter. They are an attempt to establish economic credibility that Ramaswamy’s actual record does not support.

Consider the sheer economic distance between Ramaswamy and the people he is asking to represent. The median household income in Ohio is $71,389 a year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Ramaswamy’s financial disclosures show millions of dollars in investment assets and hundreds of thousands of dollars in investment income. His campaign has also spent nearly $700,000 leasing private aircraft to travel across the state, including flights between Columbus and Cleveland that could easily be made by car.

Ramaswamy’s business ventures reinforce the disconnect between himself and working-class Ohioans. His investment firm, Strive, announced in 2024 that it was moving its headquarters from Columbus to Dallas. This is an awkward fact for a candidate whose political identity is now built around restoring Ohio’s economic greatness. Ramaswamy wants voters to believe that Ohio is the place where businesses should build the future even as the company he co-founded moved its headquarters out of the state. 

Being a rich businessman does not make Ramaswamy a bad candidate; however, it does make his attempts to portray himself as an ordinary Ohio dad feel particularly hollow. He has made millions from investments. His campaign has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on private air travel. His company moved its headquarters to Texas. His economic agenda would eliminate taxes in a way that disproportionately benefits people with substantial income and wealth.

Ohio does not need a billionaire to convince us that he is just like us—it needs a governor who understands why so many people are struggling to get by in the first place. Ramaswamy has given Ohioans very little reason to believe he is that person.