Ramaswamy Facing Tougher Fight Than Republicans Had Expected in Ohio

Ramaswamy has not developed a thicker skin than when he ran for the White House just two years ago. In July, when confronted by hecklers at Xavier University in Cincinnati, he simply walked off stage: “Peace out, see you guys.”

The polls still show a close-range contest, but in the increasingly nasty ad war, the spending suggests a far more lopsided fight. Ramaswamy and his supporters have now run $101 million in ads against Acton, with $36 million of that coming from Ramaswamy himself. 

Acton and groups supporting her have spent about one-third of the Ramaswamy media wave, much of it describing Ramaswamy as a “swindler” who conned his way to a fortune and harnessing anti-billionaire sentiment.

“This is a guy who has been flying around the state on his corporate jet. Ohio is not a huge state geographically. It’s a state that’s incredibly driveable,” says David Cohen, the director of the Applied Politics Program at the University of Akron. “He was the worst possible choice for Republicans, not that they really had a choice.”