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We're more than a year out from the primary for governor and other statewide offices, but the campaign among Republicans is in full swing.

A conversation with GOP candidate for governor, Vivek Ramaswamy, this week in the state of Ohio.

Welcome to the state of Ohio.

I'm Karen Kasler.

The 2026 primary is May 5th, almost a year away, and a new governor will be chosen six months later.

We'll be covering this campaign for governor and other statewide offices by the Republicans and the Democrats.

I spoke with Democratic candidate Amy Acton in February and Republican candidate Dave Yost in March.

This week, a chat with tech billionaire and former GOP candidate for president Vivek Ramaswamy, who had been appointed to lead President Trump's Department of Government Efficiency alongside Elon Musk, but left as Trump was inaugurated to run for office in Ohio.

Let's start with a quick pitch to voters.

So why should they elect you governor?

Look, I want to lead Ohio to the next level of greatness in America.

I don't want Ohio just to be one of the better states in the Midwest, because, Karen, we are one of the better states in the Midwest, actually.

And I give great credit to the people who came before me for having led our state to a great place.

But great isn't good enough.

I want to lead Ohio to be the top state in the country, to raise a young family, to generate and keep your wealth, and to give our kids a world class education.

And that's very personal to me because I was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio.

I'm a product of public education in Princeton schools through eighth grade.

I went to Saint X for high school.

I've achieved an American dream in this state that my parents never imagined possible when they came here from India, 45 years ago.

That's the American dream I want to pass on to our kids and their generation so they can live that right here in our state of Ohio.

Rather than pursuing opportunity elsewhere.

It's very personal to me.

I'm guided by gratitude to the state and to this country for allowing me to have lived this life that we've been given, and I want to pass that forward.

One of your main policy ideals is to make Ohio a zero income tax state and put a cap on property taxes.

So let's talk about the income tax part for sure.

How can you replace the $10 billion that comes in from the income tax to the state every year?

Or how can you cut $10 billion in spending?

So it's going to be step by step.

And I said it's going to be a gradual process to get there.

But the first thing Karen is that if we plant that marker in the ground as a goal and have a credible plan to get there, which we do, that will allow us to attract people back into the state.

Right now.

So many people moved to the state of Florida or Tennessee or Texas to avoid that income tax.

In Ohio.

We're missing out on the sales tax revenue of the people who move out, even the people who spend six months in a day in Florida.

We all know people in that category in the state probably have neighbors in that category.

The truth of the matter is we're missing out on their economic activity and their sales tax in the meantime.

So one of the first things I'd like to do, and I'll get specific here, one of the first things I'd like to do is at least to eliminate immediately the tax on capital gains income in Ohio.

What that's going to do is attract capital owners to our state to stay in our state.

Right now, if people want to sell their company, they're going to move to Florida.

They're going to move to Tennessee, a different state.

Instead, if they stay here, when they get that liquidity, they spend that money.

We want them spending it in Ohio rather than in a different state.

So that's an example of being smart step by step, getting us eventually to zero income tax.

Start with the first step of a zero capital gains tax.

Start with the step of also consolidating some of the excess spending that really isn't helping anybody in our state.

And then look at added sources of revenue, which we're not fully exploiting right now.

Think about out-of-staters who travel in hotel taxes or tourism taxes.

That's something that Florida does a great job of.

We're not yet fully exploiting in this state.

I want to get more people visiting our state.

That's the other thing that I'd like to do with a beautiful northern coast that we have.

So that combination of driving tourism into our state, that combination of driving economic activity in our state, bringing the capital gains tax rate down to zero, that spurs new economic activity, puts us on a path to zero income taxation.

And the fact of the matter is, there are eight other states in the country that have done it.

If they've done it, so can we were the state that put a man on the moon?

This won't be the most difficult feat we've accomplished, but it will help address Karen.

What I see is one of the most vital problems that we're facing as a state right now.

That's our population decline.

We have more people moving out of Ohio than moving in, and the people moving out tend to be younger, college educated people.

The people moving in tend to be on government aid.

Demographically, that's a big challenge for our state.

We've got to turn that around and the brain drain and the capital drain, and the way we do that is by making our state as competitive as we can be on tax policy and regulatory policy to actually drive economic growth in Ohio.

That's the number one thing I'm going to deliver as the next governor.

Governor Mike DeWine has said as governor that he's never had a business say that income tax is the reason that they came here, or that they might be considering leaving here.

And indeed, there's an example of Kansas as a state that tried to cut income taxes and had to back off of that.

How do we how does Ohio avoid that?

Well, the number one thing you do hear from businesses not coming to our state or moving out of our state is a workforce shortage in our state.

And part of the reason we have that workforce shortage and that brain drain of young people who pursue the American dream in a different state is because our state isn't quite as competitive on tax policy as certain other states like Tennessee, Texas, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina is now headed in that same direction.

Even Mississippi earlier this year took steps in that direction.

So I want to make sure our state of Ohio is not playing from behind.

I want Ohio to be leading from the front.

And one of the top things I'm going to do as governor is reverse that population decline.

We're 11 million people and shrinking today.

We're going to be 15 million people and growing by the time I'm done as governor.

That addresses our workforce shortage issues.

It addresses our revenue issues.

Think about what that does to our sales tax revenue.

That's where I'm focused, is not chasing our past, but chasing our future through economic growth and the educational achievement hurdle we're going to have to overcome in our state to actually achieve that in the long run.

That's where I'm focused.

I want to talk to you about education, too, about the property tax.

How do you fund schools and law enforcement and libraries and fire departments and, and all the things that local property taxes do fund if you cap property taxes, and how do you award merit pay for teachers, which is another thing you've talked about.

How do you do that with less property tax revenue?

Well, a couple of different questions there.

Number one is I want to applaud at least the state legislature right now for the first time in the modern history of our state, at least listening to Ohioans who when you travel the state, I don't care if you're Republican or Democrat.

People believe, and I think correctly believe that their property taxes have recently gotten way too high.

This is something that's always been the case in Ohio, but it's a relatively recent issue.

In the last half decade or so, property tax rates have gone up.

So we've funded our state plenty fine in the past.

But part of what's happened is many people don't even know what they're voting for when they vote for those increases in those levies.

So I'm for common sense reforms.

And one of the common sense reforms I favor, Karen.

And I would hope that everybody agrees with me on this is that people should at least know what they're voting for.

When they're voting for a property tax increase.

The fact of the matter is, it's pretty confusing the way the Battle Belt language is written today.

20 mill flawed millage.

Nobody knows what the heck millage even is.

So I just believe in transparency.

Tell the voter if your house is $200,000, here's how much more your property taxes are going to go up if this increase passes.

If your house is $300,000, how much more is that going to be?

I think it's a really fair common sense reform that I think would stem the increase in the property tax rates.

So I do think that's something that most Ohioans are in favor of now when it comes to education.

I am a crusader for improving educational standards in the state and in the country.

For every student to be able to live their version of the American dream.

I mean, that is foundational to America.

I believe a world class education is your birthright as an Ohioan.

But the real question we ought to be asking is, how well are we spending in our educational system in this state?

How well are we spending the dollars that are already allocated to public education?

And the answer, sadly, right now is poorly.

There's no way around that fact.

A majority of dollars in our public schools don't even go to classroom instruction.

I think it's a failure.

I want to see a greater portion of the dollars, not just go into infrastructure, overhead, or bureaucracy, but actually going to be able to reward our public school teachers.

I don't think it's possible to live the American dream on a starting salary of $40,000 a year, which is what it is for public school teachers across our state.

I'm glad you brought that up, because I want to ask you about that.

Absolutely.

I think the best public school teachers deserve to be paid a lot more than they are right now, or else we're not going to be able to track the very best in teaching.

And I say, this is somebody, as I said earlier, I'm a product of public education in Ohio.

that's what I'm bringing to the table here is not just the traditional conservative solution of school choice, which I do favor, by the way.

I think that there's great evidence suggesting that school choice helps actually public schools perform better through competition.

But I also want to go further and do the harder work of making sure that our public schools are equipped to compete with the best of the alternatives.

And the data would suggest I'm driven by the facts here.

The data would suggest that just throwing more money at those public schools without actual accountability isn't working.

The public schools where we're spending the most money per student, Tara Care is not actually the ones where we're actually making the most progress.

Those are the ones where our students are performing the worst.

And so we have to think about the model of how we're using the money that's already being spent.

And I want to improve that rate of return, in part by directing more of those funds to classroom instruction.

That's where the money belongs.

That's going to be good for teachers.

But most importantly, it's going to be good for the students in this state where we need to excel in math and reading and writing and civic education and financial literacy.

So in my core areas of focus as the next governor isn't part of the problem here in terms of attracting teachers, is that starting pay, like you just mentioned, starting pay is so low that a lot of people forgo potentially going into education.

How do you fix that?

Before you get to the merit pay idea if you have less property tax?

Well, I think those I think these go together.

I think in the long run we got to be open minded to new ways of funding our public school system.

In the long run.

I actually think that's essential over time.

But in the meantime, we've got to look at how well the existing schools are spending their existing budgets.

And right now they're not spending that money.

Well.

And so I want more of that money going not to overhead or to bureaucracy, but to classroom instruction.

And then when you look at rewarding teachers, should every body be paid the exact same amount, regardless of how well they're doing?

That doesn't make any sense.

That's not how it works in other sectors of the economy.

You want the very best to be rewarded, even more.

There's a good debate to be had, and I welcome that discussion about how you measure that.

That's a discussion we ought to have and ought to make sure that we're not creating distorted incentives.

But the status quo isn't working.

The status quo of just total mediocrity, of even teachers who are performing every bit as poorly as the lowest standard, and having the best teachers be held back by that, and being paid the same amount.

That's wrong.

So we want to track the very best.

I'll give you another example of a common sense reform that we could use in our cities.

There are actually barriers to well-meaning elder individuals who want to volunteer, who have the skill sets to teach kindergartners or first graders or second graders.

And I've heard troubling stories of how difficult it is to even engage as a full time volunteer in our public schools.

These are common sense reforms that aren't left versus right or inner city versus rural.

I want to lift up every Ohioan, both by allowing our public schools to compete with the best of the alternatives, while also giving every parent the financial means to be able to choose the best possible place to send their kids to school.

You mentioned and you talked about a lot of education, not only a lot here, but in your travels around the state in the Lincoln Day dinners that you've done and everything you have just talked about education being a birthright and a high quality education.

Yes, a birthright, I believe that.

Do you believe that education is a fundamental right?

I do, I do, I do believe education is the foundation of the American dream.

I believe every kid, regardless of the zip code they're born in, ought to have access to the best possible education, and they shouldn't be held back by where they happen to be born.

That's why I support taking our school choice programs to the next level.

But I also think there are parts of the state where there are no additional choices.

There's like 11 counties that don't have that option.

Exactly.

Which is why I'm going to be unique amongst Republican governors, even across the country, in taking aim not just at school choice, which I favor, but also rolling up our sleeves to improve the quality of public education itself.

Basic reforms get the cell phones out of the schools.

Bring back physical education at a younger age into kindergarten.

I want to bring back the presidential fitness test.

We've in civic education at a young age, say the pledge every morning with a moment of silence to go along with it.

Take aim at this mental health epidemic in our children that's spreading at an unacceptable rate, leading to the cycle of depression, anxiety, fentanyl, suicide, opioid addiction.

We've got to find our way out of that.

And on my watch, we will.

And it's going to be by reviving a culture of achievement in our public schools.

Different kids are different.

We can't treat our assembly schools like our schools, like assembly lines at a manufacturing plant.

Kids are not widgets.

Every kid, even those in special needs, deserve special, tailored models of education so that each one of them is able to make the most of their own unique, God given gifts.

You get to high school.

I think we need new models when we think about earn.

While you learn programs integrated into high school, for a lot of kids, a four year college education may be the best path, and that's great.

But for a lot of young men and women, that may not be the best path.

And we know that by the time that kid is a 10th grader or an 11th grader, give them the tools to be an electrician or a welder or a machine operator with employer sponsored programs in our high schools, which I favor, that allow them to put money in their pocket to gain that self-confidence, and to gain the skill set, to be able to thrive with a different path to the American Dream than four year college debt.

And I want us to be the state where every path is open to every child.

That's what success in our education system looks like, frankly, Ohio.

I wouldn't say it's behind other states, but our entire nation is going through an educational achievement crisis where China is four years ahead of us here.

I want to fix that, and I want Ohio to be the state that leads the way in the country and in the world for giving our kids that world class education that I believe is, yes, the birthright of every child born in this state.

And that's what I'm going to stand for.

I want to ask you a couple quick questions about some things that maybe will be resolved by the time you get here.

For example, the $600 million package in bonds for the Cleveland Browns Stadium in Brook Park.

Your thoughts?

We'll look at any one of these individual questions as you noted, will be resolved by the time I'm governor.

But there will be new stadium questions that come up to be sure as well.

We've already seen that.

Yeah.

So I'll give you my perspective on how I'd like to run things as governor is stylistically, I'm a businessman.

Here's how I want to do it is through communication.

But I believe my job as the chief executive of this state will be to get the right parties in the room, not just from the state government, from local governments.

I do think that in general, when you're looking at economic development, the localities that are benefiting from that economic development ought to have some skin in the game, in the investment that they're making, make sure that the private parties are putting up their skin in the game as well.

Should the state and look to the benefit that the state does.

So I want the best possible deal.

I'll give you an example.

Right.

Think about the Cincinnati tennis tournament in Mason.

Right.

And there you have local skin in the game.

You got some state involvement.

You got heavy private investment going along with it.

By the way I was a ball boy.

That was my first job at that tournament for about a year, for about ten years, right across the street from Kings Island over there.

So there are models of where this can be successful, but I am skeptical of any solution where there's no local skin in the game, where there's economic development.

They would say, well, it should be that locality that's benefiting from it.

If the locality is unwilling to participate, then I think we ought to be skeptical of any deal in which local municipalities are.

Counties aren't really participating in a local economic development project, but that gives you a sense of how I would lead us governors.

I don't want to have separate packages in one silo in the legislature, another from the governor's office, local saying a different thing.

That's not the way I want to run things.

Everybody's going to get in a room.

We're going to hash out the best possible deal for the state of Ohio, and we'll just go to our legislature to ratify it.

And I think that gives you a broader sense of stylistically, it's not a Republican versus Democrat point.

The way I'd like to run things here in Columbus is I want to partner with the leaders of the Senate, the leaders of the Ohio House, where we're sitting in a room hashing out what the legislative agenda looks like.

And I'm driving that agenda as a governor, and the legislature's there to ratify it.

The other statewide elected officials, the secretary of state, the attorney general, the treasurer, the auditor.

We should be talking to each other rather than through our staff.

And so that's the kind of team effort, one Ohio mentality I want to bring in the way we govern the state.

And I do think at this moment in our history, it's going to take a leader from the next generation, I believe, coming from the outside, to bring that culture to the leadership of our state.

Will there be transparency for voters, for people who want to weigh in on all these things?

Absolutely.

I think transparency is key.

It builds public trust.

It's one of the ways we're running this campaign.

I mean, you look at I'm traveling in different parts of the state, putting an extra emphasis on parts of the state where traditional candidates may not go at this phase of the process.

But I was at Silo County, what, just a few days ago.

That was my second time there in Portsmouth.

We've gone to the Mahoning Valley several times.

We're going to Toledo, we're going to the foothills of Appalachia.

We're going all over this state, and we're live streaming as much as we can.

I mean, occasionally where there are those who may have diverse opinions, you could call them protesters outside the event.

I make it a rule of thumb.

If the weather's nice, we'll talk to them for as much as half an hour and be as open as we can, because I'm not in this just to lead the people who agree with me today.

I'm in this to lead everybody in the state of Ohio, regardless of their Partizan affiliation.

If you want more money in your pocket, you want more money in your kids investment accounts.

You want your kids to get that world class education right here in Ohio.

If you want your kids to have the same shot at the American dream that the state gave to me.

And my view is we're on the same team here, and I don't care what your what your race is, what your political partizan affiliation is, we're going to work together to lead this state to the next level.

That's the kind of leadership I think our state needs right now more than ever.

You fired back at Amy Acton, who's the only Democrat in this race.

And, she has fired back at you a couple of times.

One of the things that she said in terms of transparency is she wants to know if Ohioans deserve to know why candidate for governor moved his business from Ohio to Texas.

Can you explain that?

Well, the reason the CEO of a company that I founded, I founded it here in Ohio.

But by the time I had left as a no longer CEO, the CEO of the business said that he needed to do a deal with a merger of a company in Texas.

The thing that made me upset is that we don't have a competitive business environment where people are voluntarily leaving their businesses to zero tax, lower regulation states.

And so for me, that was an eye opening moment, getting into understanding why a CEO would independently make that decision.

I wasn't part of the business, but I knew enough to be able to say, this is wrong.

We don't want to have this happen in our state repeatedly.

You open the newspaper, you see it almost once a month, and I don't think that those Democrat policies are going to retain more of those businesses.

I think it's going to drive more of them out.

So I want to turn this state into a magnet for all kinds of businesses.

I want to lead in the sectors of the future, from semiconductor production to nuclear energy to biotech to Bitcoin, to even the state where we use AI not to take jobs, but to make jobs through workforce training and education.

And I think it's going to take somebody who understands how those businesses actually make decisions to be able to do that, to alleviate the tax burden in the state.

The culture of red tape.

I mean, frankly, if you look at Indiana, I was talking to an operator and an owner of a water treatment plant in northwest Ohio, he said.

In Indiana, where he also operates those water treatment plants, it's three months for a permitting timeline.

It's three years in Ohio building a new natural gas pipeline.

The permitting process is 36 months.

In Texas, it's 12 months in the state of Ohio, it should be six months or less.

So I'm going to bring an end to the culture of red tape.

I want an economic boom of a kind we haven't seen since the first Industrial revolution, but it isn't going to happen automatically.

I think it's going to take a governor who really takes a strong leadership role in making our tax environment and our regulatory environment as competitive as possible, not just with other states in our region, but with the best of the states in the country.

That's what I believe Ohio deserves, and that's what they're going to get when I'm the governor.

And finally, I know this is hard to do real quick, but you've said that you want other challengers.

You want all ideas in this race.

It looks like Lieutenant Governor Jim Tressel may not run, but of course, Attorney General Dave Yost is running.

Do you see him as a challenge?

Do you see him as a as a threat?

You've got polling out there that says you're going to win in a landslide.

I see him as a friend, and I wish Dave the best possible wishes in the next step of his career.

I want him to have a positive impact on the country, in the state, and there's a reason I haven't been at all hitting him.

I think that he is somebody who has served the state, and I want to support him in his next step of his journey, whatever that may be.

But the fact of the matter is, Karen, we have never seen unity like this in the Republican primary, probably in modern memory, in the history of politics in our state, 60 plus points and recent polling.

100% of Ohio's congressional delegation who has endorsed is behind me.

A majority of both chambers of the Republican caucus, in both the House and the Senate behind me, including Senate President Ron McCauley.

It's unprecedented.

Of course, President Trump and every other major national leader who's a Republican who is endorsed in this race, 100% of them are with me.

We're on track to shattering, I hope, fundraising records in the state that'll come out in a matter of months.

The level of unity we have in this state is unprecedented, and I view that as an opportunity to unite not just the Republican Party of this state, but to unite the entirety of this state.

It's a fork in the road.

And there is a choice.

I mean, you mentioned the race with Amy Acton.

Have you heard?

Is my opponent absolutely.

And there is a fork in the road.

If you want somebody who's going to shut down the economy, they've done it once.

If you want her to do it again, that's one way you could go in Ohio.

I don't think that's the right choice for our future.

The future for Ohio is economic activity, economic growth, educational achievement, giving every one of our kids the ability to achieve the maximum of their own potential, to speak their mind freely, to live the American Dream right here in Ohio, not in the Rust Belt.

I'm done talking about the Rust Belt.

We want the platinum belt.

If silicon Valley led the way in the American economy for the last ten years, I want it to be, and we will make sure it is going to be the Ohio River Valley for the next ten years.

That's what I want for our state.

We're ambitious.

We're positive.

We're building on a great foundation left to us by the prior administration.

I want to credit governor DeWine and his lieutenant governor.

Both Husted and Hope love the Lieutenant Governor.

Tressel now, as well, leading a lot of the economic development efforts in our state.

SB1, I think, was a great accomplishment as well.

I want to build, though, on that foundation, Toledo, Ohio, to our future, where we're not just one of the best in the Midwest.

We are the best in the United States of America when it comes to economic growth and educational excellence.

And if you care about those things, I don't care what party you're in.

We're on the same team, and we're going to work together to lead Ohio to our best days ahead of us.

Yost says he's most certainly still in the race and has been making the rounds of Republican Party County Lincoln Day dinners, as has Ramaswamy.

The other candidate in the GOP primary is a long shot.

She's Heather Hill, a business owner in McConnell's ville and the former president of the Morgan Local School District.

You can see my interviews with Yost and Democratic candidate for governor, Amy Acton, in our archives at State news.org.

And that is it for this week for my colleagues at the Statehouse News Bureau of Ohio Public Media.

Thanks for watching.

Please check out our website at State news.org or find us online by searching.

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Thanks for watching, and please join us again next time for the state of Ohio.

Support for the Statehouse News Bureau comes from Medical Mutual, dedicated to the health and well-being of Ohioans, offering health insurance plans, as well as dental, vision and wellness programs to help people achieve their goals and remain healthy.

More at Med mutual.com.

The law offices of Porter, right, Morris and Arthur LLP.

Porter Wright is dedicated to bringing inspired legal outcomes to the Ohio business community.

More at porterwright.com.

Porter Wright inspired Every day in Ohio Education Association, representing 120,000 educators who are united in their mission to create the excellent public schools.

Every child deserves more at OHEA.org.