‘America First’ candidate enters Ohio governor race, challenges Trump-endorsed Vivek Ramaswamy

Casey Putsch, an Ohioan automotive entrepreneur who founded the Genius Garage charity, announced on Tuesday that he will run for Ohio governor, challenging Trump-endorsed Vivek Ramaswamy in the Republican primary.

The winner will presumably face Democratic candidate Amy Acton.

“I am proud to announce my run for governor,” he said in a press release. “My campaign fills a clear and urgent need for an alternative in this race.”

He said that Republicans in Ohio want a candidate who “respects the working class and upholds American cultural values, not one who shows contempt for them.” He attacked Ramaswamy by claiming that his political opponent plans to allegedly “sell” Ohio to “foreign interests through H1B visa abuse, mass immigration, both legal and illegal, and failed neoliberal policies.”

“Vivek Ramaswamy has repeatedly shown that he will not stand with working Ohioans on these issues, and that his candidacy is a regression to the same failed policies of the pre-Trump GOP,” he said. “If he won’t represent Ohio, I will.”

In his Tuesday YouTube video, Putsch also criticized Ramaswamy further for allegedly taking money from the Soros family to pay for his higher education and planning to allow his “billionaire tech-bro buddies” to build more data centers in Ohio.

He also claimed that Ramaswamy doesn’t have any political policies on his campaign website, adding that, unlike Ramaswamy, he already has “50 pages of detailed policy” that will soon be transformed into a “perfect” roadmap and manual of “how to make Ohio awesome for everybody.”

“I think that Vivek is disgusting. It’s disgusting he’s here. It’s disgusting that he’s running to be the governor,” Putsch said, claiming that the Republican Party couldn’t find anyone better to be the candidate.

He also claimed that the only thing that makes him American is that he was born and raised in the United States, which, according to him, is not enough. Throughout the video, Putsch frequently mentioned his Ohio roots by remembering his ancestors.

“At all costs, we must stop Vivek,” Putsch said.

In his video, he also criticized Acton for allegedly being responsible for the 2020 COVID-19 lockdowns and for not being suited for the job of governor because she couldn’t handle her role as health director in Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine’s administration, leaving in the middle of 2020.

Putsch didn’t respond to Ohio.News’s request for comment.

“We respect the right of others to run, but it won’t distract us from our own campaign focused on earning the trust of voters across Ohio,” Ramaswamy’s team told WTOL 11.

The New York Times published an op-ed by Ramaswamy, in which he denounced the idea that only those who can trace their ancestry back to the founding of the United States are considered Americans.

The news came after President Donald Trump and many other Republicans endorsed Ramaswamy. On the other hand, many labor unions endorsed Acton.

DeWine, however, hasn’t endorsed Ramaswamy and defended Acton’s actions during 2020.

Ohio Treasurer Robert Sprague and Attorney General Dave Yost also dropped out of the race, and former U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan announced he won’t be running for governor.

Unlike Sprague, Yost didn’t endorse Ramaswamy, going as far as saying that Republicans made a mistake by supporting him, according to the Ohio Capital Journal.

One may agree with Yost’s comment, considering that Acton began leading Ramaswamy in a recent poll, which could be explained by Ramaswamy’s recent remarks and association with an organization that hosts anti-Trump speakers.