New York, Nov 11 (IANS) Vivek Ramaswamy, the flamboyant Republican billionaire and fiery acolyte of President Donald Trump, lost the race for governor of Ohio.
He was defeated in Tuesday’s election by Democrat Amy Acton, whom Ramaswamy targeted with an ad that even some leaders of his party criticised.
Forbes puts his wealth at about $2.2 billion and his campaign spent about $79 million, most of it from his own funds in the campaign, where he flew around in a private jet.
An ardent supporter of Trump’s fiery MAGA (Make America Great Again) ideology, he modelled his campaign after his brash style.
Ramaswamy, who minted his billions in the pharmaceutical sector, had challenged Trump for the Republican Party nomination in the 2024 election, but withdrew and endorsed him.
Trump praised his intelligence and rewarded him with an appointment as the co-leader with tech billionaire Elon Musk of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
But in a clash of strong personalities, Ramaswamy quit by the time Trump assumed the presidency, opting to run for governor of Ohio.
While he was initially on the upswing, his standing against Acton, a doctor who had been state health director, began to erode alongside Trump’s popularity.
Acton had suffered sexual abuse by her stepfather as a child, before a court ordered her removed from her mother and handed her over to her father.
The stepfather, who was charged with sexual abuse, fled the state and remained a fugitive from the law till his death.
Ramaswamy found her mother, who did have contact with Acton for decades and made an ad in which she defended her husband — Acton’s stepfather — and called her a liar.
While President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance backed the ad, it was seen by others as supportive of a paedophile.
Even the state’s Republican Governor Mike DeWine — along with many other leaders — denounced it.
The ad backfired, solidifying Acton’s support in a state which Trump had won with 55 per cent of the votes — a high margin of 12 per cent over Kamala Harris.
Acton overcame her childhood abuse and neglect when she was placed with her father and went on to become a doctor.
Ramaswamy, whose family hails from Palakkad in Kerala, had a spectacular rise in business after graduating from Harvard.
After working for a hedge fund, he launched two pharmaceutical enterprises and an investment company.
His father, VG Ramaswamy, who immigrated to the US, worked as an engineer and patent lawyer for General Electric.
He did not become a US citizen, while his mother, a psychiatrist, did.
If he had won the election, he would have become the third Indian American to become governor, after fellow Republicans Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Nikki Haley of South Carolina.
–IANS
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