The billionaires behind Ramaswamy’s smear campaign

In Ohio, Republican gubernatorial nominee Vivek Ramaswamy — himself a multibillionaire — is getting a financial boost from a roster of fellow billionaires.

A campaign finance filing made public last week revealed that Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk was one such benefactor. Musk, the richest man in the world, has donated at least $5 million to V-PAC, or Victors Not Victims, a super PAC supporting Ramaswamy’s campaign.

V-PAC’s other backers include right-wing billionaires Jeff Yass, who has given $20 million; Ross Stevens, who has given $6 million; and Bill Ackman, whose hedge fund gave $1 million. The PAC also has received $5 million from Ratmir Timashev, a Russian-born tech billionaire.

But the tens of millions that billionaires have spent backing Ramaswamy have not significantly lifted his poll numbers. Despite running in a heavily Republican state — Donald Trump won Ohio in 2024 by more than 11 points — Ramaswamy remains locked in a tight race with Amy Acton, his Democratic opponent and the former director of the Ohio Department of Health.

Looking for an advantage, V-PAC has committed $25 million for a summer advertising campaign featuring attack ads that the Acton campaign has described as deceptive.

For instance, while one V-PAC ad suggests that Acton admitted to having a drug or alcohol abuse disorder, the opposite is true. “[Acton] admitted to emotional or mental illness, drug addiction or an alcohol problem,” the ad’s narrator claims, referring to Acton’s responses in her 1994 Ohio Medical Board application.

But in that same application, Acton said she did not suffer from a drug or alcohol problem. Her affirmative response regarding treatment for “emotional or mental illness” referred to therapy she received to treat childhood sexual abuse, according to the Acton campaign.

“In a last ditch effort to save his floundering campaign, Vivek Ramaswamy and his out-of-state billionaire funded Super PAC have taken to the airwaves to spread lies about Dr. Acton and shame her for being a survivor of childhood sexual assault,” Addie Bullock, the Acton campaign spokesperson, said. (Ramaswamy has previously accused Acton of having no platform “at all other than to complain about what someone else did to her.”)

“This is consistent with Vivek Ramaswamy’s past behavior of ignoring sexual abuse,” Bullock added. “He refused to call for the release of the Epstein files for months, took $100,000 from an Epstein associate accused of having sex with underage girls, and touts the endorsement of a state rep accused of sexually abusing a minor. No matter how hard he tries, Vivek Ramaswamy cannot escape the fact that Ohioans just don’t like him.”

The Ramaswamy campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

As the ad from V-PAC continues, the rapid-fire misdirections become more brazen. “Acton told the Medical Board she was clean,” the V-PAC narrator says (Acton’s campaign said she has never appeared before the Ohio Medical Board). “But days later, police came to her house, finding that she combined alcohol with prescription drugs.” Acton’s medical board application was submitted in 1994. The police did not come to her house “days later.” They came to her home in Bexley, Ohio, 25 years later, after an argument she had with her husband.

The Acton campaign has said she had “only one drink” during the night in question and had taken a diuretic along with a migraine medication that she had been prescribed for 20 years. Bexley police, who were called by one of Acton’s family members, were at the home for just under 40 minutes, according to records obtained by NBC4. The officers determined the incident to be a “verbal dispute” and found “no evidence of any physical violence between the two.”

Together, V-PAC and Ramaswamy, who has loaned $25 million of his own money to his campaign, have outspent Acton by nearly $9 million on ads in the last three months.

In other attack ads, V-PAC has alleged that Acton’s “medical knowledge was described as insufficient to the state medical board.”

However, the “insufficient” label was part of a four-month review of Acton’s partial first-year medical internship. Acton, who has a medical degree from Northeast Ohio Medical University, is now a licensed physician with three decades of medical experience, according to her campaign.

Ramaswamy, meanwhile, has a shady history in the medical field. Before his failed Republican presidential bid in 2024, he pitched investors about the capabilities of a pharmaceutical company he founded that never released a drug. The company, Axovant Sciences, ultimately failed, as did the dubious Alzheimer’s drug on which its value was built. But not before Ramaswamy sold tens of millions of dollars’ worth of his shares following Axovant’s 2015 initial public offering, according to a New York Times report released during his presidential campaign.

“You have my full endorsement!”

Musk’s $5 million donation to Ramaswamy’s PAC came more than a year after he offered the candidate his “full endorsement” in the Ohio gubernatorial election.

Elon Musk@elonmusk

Good luck, you have my full endorsement!

Vivek Ramaswamy @VivekGRamaswamy

I am honored to officially announce my candidacy to serve as the next Governor of Ohio.

3:04 AM · Feb 25, 2025 · 46.4M Views

5.73K Replies · 31.2K Reposts · 369K Likes

The endorsement came the day Ramaswamy launched his campaign — roughly a month after the plan for the two men to co-lead the White House’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative fell apart, with Trump and Musk viewing Ramaswamy as too irritating to work with closely, according to reporting last year,

But Musk and Ramaswamy do agree on some key issues, including eliminating huge swaths of the federal workforce, enacting large tax cuts, and supporting the rapid construction of AI data centers.

Additionally, during Trump’s transition in 2024, the two men received backlash from the right for defending H-1B, the non-immigrant visa classification that tech companies rely on to hire foreign workers who are often underpaid and overworked. Musk wrote at the time that H-1B was the “reason I’m in America” and told those opposed to H-1Bs to take “a big step back and FUCK YOURSELF in the face.” Ramaswamy said the program was necessary because Americans had “venerated mediocrity over excellence,” creating a culture that does “not produce the best engineers.”

As for Ramaswamy’s gubernatorial campaign — which he launched shortly after being cut loose from DOGE — he is running on a platform that would offer clear benefits to Ohio’s wealthiest residents. Among his top priorities are doing away with the state’s income and capital gains taxes. “We will start with the first step of that march to zero income taxation with elimination of taxation on capital gains that goes into effect next year,” Ramaswamy, who relied on capital gains to kickstart his fortune, said during a recent press conference. “That will be the first step of a longer-run path at least over the next ten years or sooner to get to zero income tax in a manner that is both practical but also brings attractive economic growth and investment into our state immediately starting in 2027.”