Politics

EXCLUSIVE: H-1B Visas Are The One Topic Vivek Ramaswamy Refuses To Talk About

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MARIETTA, Ohio — You may remember him from the 2024 presidential debate stage or from cable news promoting his book on “woke,” but who really is Vivek Ramaswamy, and why does he want to run Ohio so badly?

To help answer this question, the Daily Caller News Foundation traveled to Marietta — a city of about 13,000 in the state’s Appalachian southeast — where the billionaire-turned-Republican Ohio gubernatorial nominee was holding a town hall with veterans and Gold Star families on the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. After the event, the Cincinnati-born Ramaswamy sat for a 15-minute interview with his surgeon wife, Apoorva, at his side, during which he discussed a variety of topics, including the campaign, artificial intelligence, data centers and the impact of the war with Iran.

The entrepreneur’s chances of adding “governor-elect” to his already-long resume in November, however, are effectively a coin flip. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report, for one, rates the race between Ramaswamy and his Democratic opponent — public health official Amy Acton — as a “toss up.”

An increasingly favorable midterm environment for Democrats is not the only hurdle Ramaswamy needs to overcome to realize his gubernatorial dream. Despite his landslide primary win and backing by President Donald Trump, the candidate still has his share of critics on the political right — particularly immigration hardliners — for his support for maintaining, albeit reforming, the country’s H-1B program. The program allows U.S. employers to temporarily hire foreign nationals over American citizens for highly skilled “specialty occupations.”

On the day after Christmas 2024, Ramaswamy provoked criticism from conservatives when he joined the debate over the visas by arguing in a lengthy X post that many companies are forced to turn to foreign talent because “American culture has venerated mediocrity” for the past few decades. He pointed to Saturday morning cartoons and the popular 90s sitcom “Friends” as examples.

The DCNF sought to give Ramaswamy the opportunity to set the record straight on the issue but his campaign said prior to the interview that he does not answer questions on H-1B visas. The candidate himself confirmed this to the DCNF, and instead offered to discuss immigration policy “holistically” without mentioning the heavily-scrutinized guest worker program.

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“I think there’s two different views in the attitude towards success in our country,” the candidate told the DCNF. “On one view — the socialist view — success is a sin, something that we should penalize. On the actual American view — that’s my view — success is something that we should celebrate.”

“I want the success that I’ve enjoyed to be something that every kid and every family in the state can really enjoy as well,” Ramaswamy said.

“Success” is indeed a word that has been a part of 41-year-old Ramaswamy’s lifetime trajectory. He founded his first company, StudentBusinesses.com, in 2007 while studying at Harvard University. In 2014, he started Roivant Sciences, a now-multinational biopharmaceutical and technology company which has a market cap of almost $29 billion. In 2021, Ramaswamy also authored a New York Times best-selling book, “Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam,” which helped make him a frequent Fox News guest and increased his name recognition among the political right.

In February 2023, he announced his bid for president. Despite having never previously sought electoral office, he polled well enough to make it to a Trump-less debate stage, only to drop out following a distant fourth-place finish in the Iowa caucuses. In his current run for office, however, the conservative poured in $25 million of his own money and won the GOP primary in May 2026 with more than 82% of the vote.

‘An Heir To Nothing’

During both his interview with the DCNF and the preceding town hall, Ramaswamy underscored his middle class upbringing, stating that he got where he currently is due to hard work and merit.

“I wasn’t born a billionaire. I wasn’t born a millionaire. I wasn’t born an anything-aire. I was born an heir to nothing,” the candidate, who now has an estimated net worth of at least $2 billion, said. “I’ve achieved what I have … because I know what that takes to build businesses, to employ thousands of people, to sign the front of a paycheck, not just the back of one.”

Less than an hour earlier, he had delivered the same “anything-aire” line verbatim in response to a potential voter’s question.

Many Americans during the 2026 midterm cycle, however, are not experiencing anywhere near the level of success Ramaswamy has enjoyed thus far. In addition, his “American dream” story to many appears more like a Hollywood movie than an attainable goal.

Ohio — a state Trump won three times, including with an 11-point margin in 2024 — lost roughly 300,000 manufacturing jobs between 1999 and 2025, according to Policy Matters Ohio. The Trump administration’s Iran war also continues to cause gas prices to skyrocket, with one Cleveland gas station reporting a $5.19/gallon price Friday, according to WEWS.

More than six-in-ten Ohioans believe the U.S. is on the wrong track, and the state’s voters rated the economy and inflation as their top-two political concerns for the midterm cycle, an early September poll from Bowling Green State University (BGSU) found.

This has all prompted Acton and other Ohioans to repeatedly brand Ramaswamy, his emphasis on his biography, and his pro-free-market policies as “out of touch.” Ramaswamy and Acton are running neck and neck in multiple recent polls despite the state’s GOP lean, suggesting that this counter-messaging may be working.

“If you celebrate success, you’re going to get more of it. If you penalize it, you’re going to get less of it. That’s the truth. My opponent wants to penalize success,” the Republican told the DCNF.

The Same Old ‘Socialist’ Playbook?

Ramaswamy claimed that Acton, if elected, would take the state in a “socialist direction.” He hit the Democrat over her tenure as the director of the Ohio Department of Health at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, during which she embraced restrictive lockdown policies.

“She’s somebody who shut down the economy of this state but did so with an ideological objective,” he told the DCNF. “She shut down county fairs during COVID — outdoor events — while letting BLM riots proceed on the streets of Columbus and Cleveland in the name of science.”

The DCNF pointed out that Acton was appointed to this role by now-term-limited Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, who both she and Ramaswamy are running to succeed. She was serving as part of his administration when she made her COVID-19 recommendations. DeWine himself has taken full responsibility for the pro-lockdown policies, telling reporters in December 2025 that they were ultimately his decision and not Acton’s, according to WCMH.

When asked to clarify what part of Acton’s record qualifies as “socialist,” Ramaswamy named the COVID-19-era policies she helped spearhead under the DeWine administration.

The Republican Elephant In The Room

Meanwhile, Democrats are banking that Trump’s military operations against Iran — which polling has shown is among the least popular conflicts in American history — and its ensuing price hikes will together turn the November elections into a political blue wave. Ramaswamy himself admitted that the war, waged by the president endorsing his campaign, was “unpopular” in a Saturday campaign speech.

When asked about the war and its profound effect on the economy, however, Ramaswamy did not hesitate to turn the conversation back to domestic issues, referring to the Iran conflict as “whatever’s happening on the international stage and other macro factors.”

“There’s a lot that a governor can do to practically improve that for Ohioans in the form of property tax relief, electric bill relief, healthcare costs coming down,” he continued, “and also for young people … to be able to afford their first home. A lot of starter homes are unaffordable today because that red tape at the local level gets in the way of new starter home construction.”

“I’m going to relieve and cut a lot of that red tape, create a home construction boom,” Ramaswamy added, keeping his response centered on domestic issues. “If my opponent’s elected, it’s a disaster. Property taxes will double, income taxes will double. Health care and electric bills continue to go up. That’s something that the hardworking people of this state cannot tolerate.”

Ohioans also appear to have little tolerance for the war: 59% of the state’s voters stated they disapprove of Trump’s actions involving Iran in the September BGSU poll.

The DCNF pressed Ramaswamy on whether he still considers himself to be “America First” on foreign policy, as he had called himself during his 2024 presidential campaign, and joining his other comments during the cycle forcefully opposing the war.

“I’ve always been America First, period. I think that’s the job of leadership of the country. My job in running for Ohio is the way I’m running this campaign … is to put Ohioans first, period,” Ramaswamy responded when asked how he squares these past comments with being a Trump-endorsed gubernatorial candidate. “Is it my job to save the world? Is it my job to solve poverty on another continent? No, that’s not my job. My job is to fight for the 12 million people in this state.”

‘Where The Rubber Hits The Road’

Marietta, nestled on the Ohio River and sitting in a county which gave more than 70% of its vote to Trump in 2024, appears to be a quintessential representation of the working-class community which helped Trump win the Buckeye State three times in a row, after it went for President Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012.

Despite the area being deep red on paper, local potential voters brought a bevy of difficult questions to Ramaswamy about how he will handle certain issues affecting them.

The topic which came up by far the most during the town hall was data centers, which he identified as an issue “where the rubber hits the road.”

Ramaswamy has proposed a policy pledge on data centers called “Ohioans First” in which he vows to, if elected, issue an executive order on his first day in office to “immediately halt the approval of any new data center project announcements in Ohio” until certain legislation is passed. This required state legislation would have to allow for people living by the proposed data center to not have to pay for electricity but pay lower property taxes while ensuring the data center will meet air and water quality standards.

Ohio currently has more than 200 data centers, according to a state government agency’s website. Acton has likewise announced support for a similar “conditional moratorium” on the data centers. In addition, the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) sent an August memo to AI companies warning that the issue was helping the Democratic candidate in Ohio’s concurrent competitive Senate race.

The DCNF pointed out that Ramaswamy had, on multiple occasions in early 2025, called the state’s proliferation of data centers “good.”

“What I said in early ’25 was it could be a good thing,” the Republican said regarding his apparent pivot on the issue. “What I will say is a lot of facts have changed. I mean, a lot of facts have changed in the last year and a half, and we have to adjust our views to where the facts are today.”

“The question is, ‘How do we do it, if at all, in a way that is good for Ohioans?’ And what I’ve laid out is a framework that says that, if it is not a blessing for the community, it is not going to get built, full stop,” he added. “I have taken my time on the issue and sometimes on these things, you got to take your time.”

During Trump’s first midterm cycle in 2018, Ohio bucked the blue-wave trend and Democratic campaigning as its open governor’s mansion stayed in Republican hands. With just over a month to go before Election Day 2026, the question remains whether Ramaswamy would continue this trend or go down as just another one of the cycle’s anticipated defeated GOP candidates.

“I think at this moment in our state’s history, we could really use somebody with a business background — a fresh perspective — willing to make some changes when required and to fight for the people of this state,” Ramaswamy told the DCNF. “And that’s what I’m going to do.”