Brent Larkin: Vivek Ramaswamy’s bait-and-switch campaign exposes GOP weaknesses
May 26, 2026
READ: Vivek Ramaswamy’s bait-and-switch campaign exposes GOP weaknesses: Brent Larkin
- Vivek Ramaswamy is the most unlikeable candidate for governor in the lifetime of anyone reading this column.
- Now there is new evidence the Ramaswamy campaign is in trouble; that the state where Republicans have won eight of the last nine elections for governor is very much in play. And if Democrat Amy Acton beats him in November, Ramaswamy might accomplish something a Republican hasn’t done in 40 years – take down the entire ticket.
- Consider these numbers from the May 5 primary election in Ohio: Unlike some states, Ohio’s primary elections are open. A voter does not need to be a registered Republican or Democrat to request a specific party ballot at the polling place. At the start of the primary voting process, there were 678,833 registered Democrats in Ohio. But 807,716 Ohioans chose to cast Democratic ballots in the primary.
- It was because a huge number of independent voters were so disenchanted with the GOP leadership that controls their governments that they asked for a Democratic ballot.
- As encouraging as those crossover voting numbers were for Democrats, the opposite was true in the Republican primary. As voting began, there were 1,292,651 registered Republicans in Ohio, but only 901,338 Ohioans voted in the GOP primary.
- Put another way, the Democratic turnout rate was 119% of previously registered Democratic voters. The Republican rate was only 69.7% among the registered Republicans.
- But Ramaswamy needs to create a phony issue that just might motivate MAGA voters and increase turnout in November. This has nothing to do with eliminating vote fraud. It has everything to do with propping up a horrible candidate for governor.
- The answer is obvious. He’s losing.
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