Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Vivek Ramaswamy’s failed bid for Ohio governor reflected a mismatch between the candidate and the state’s working-class electorate, speaking on the Sage Steele Show after Ramaswamy’s 7.9-percentage-point loss to Democrat Amy Acton.
“I don’t know why they would have pushed him to be the candidate there. Oh, my mom’s from Youngstown. Ohio is a working class state, very blue collar. You know Vivek, he’s like a tech guy,” DeSantis said.
Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur who founded Roivant Sciences and the anti-ESG investment firm Strive Asset Management, lost despite President Donald Trump’s endorsement and support from advisers close to Vice President JD Vance. The loss came amid what was widely described as a Democratic wave in the midterm elections, seen as a broad referendum on Trump’s presidency.
DeSantis, who is term-limited after 2026 and ran for president in 2024, pointed to Ramaswamy’s support for overhauling the H-1B visa system as another factor that alienated blue-collar voters. Ramaswamy had called for the current lottery-based system to be “gutted” in favor of a merit-based approach.
“He wants to bring in foreign workers on visas. That is not the type of person that’s going to sell,” DeSantis said.
The criticism carries some irony given Ramaswamy’s own business history. Roivant Sciences, the company he founded, had 29 H-1B applications approved between 2018 and 2023. Strive Asset Management, which Ramaswamy co-founded, moved its headquarters from Columbus to Dallas in 2025, shortly before he launched his gubernatorial campaign. Ramaswamy has said he is no longer involved in the firm’s operations but remains a major shareholder.
“And I know he shot himself in the foot,” DeSantis said. “I know he did a lot of other stuff to make it a real landslide against him. But even with that, it’s like you know you got to meet the voters where they are on some of this stuff. I think we would have done better in Ohio had we had a candidate that was more representative or more in tune with the interests of kind of these blue collar people that make the backbone of Ohio.”
Weeks before the election, Ramaswamy’s campaign faced bipartisan backlash for an attack ad featuring Acton’s estranged mother, which called Acton a “liar” and challenged her account of a childhood marked by poverty and homelessness. The ad did not mention that Acton had been estranged from her mother since age 12, after her stepfather was arrested on charges of raping her. He pleaded not guilty and fled before trial, and authorities continued seeking his arrest for years afterward. Acton’s brother has said their mother remained married to the stepfather until his death in 2004.
Ramaswamy’s defeat came alongside Republican Senate candidate Jon Husted’s 4.9-point loss to Democrat Sherrod Brown — a stark reversal in a state Trump had carried by 11.2 points just two years earlier.
DeSantis also criticized congressional Republicans for failing to lock Trump’s executive orders into law, warning that the midterm losses could hamper the rest of Trump’s term and shape the political landscape well beyond it.
“Last night’s elections did not only kneecap the last two years of the Trump administration, it basically ensures the four years after that are going to either be Democrat years where they have a trifecta or where you have a Republican president that is hemmed in and limited,” DeSantis said.
Asked about speculation over a future run for national office, DeSantis downplayed the idea. “The only way that I would run for any office is if you can actually deliver big results,” he said. “I don’t want to just be a timepiece where I just sit there like a potted plant.”
Fox News Digital reported that it reached out to Ramaswamy for comment.
