It was never a question for me if Vivek Ramaswamy was running for office; now that Trump has regained the White House, I’m all in. He is a unique talent and part of what I consider a new generation of political class. He’s been close to Trump for several years now and as an original D.O.G.E. founding member, he is driven by the same kind of concern for American preservation as Elon Musk. So when I got a call to help connect the dots for Vivek’s announcement for governor, I was immediately supportive and excited to lend that support. When I was showing Vivek’s coordinators possible sites to host an announcement rally, I took them to a spot that would hold around 2000 people, which they thought was ambitious. They were looking for something more intimate, for around 500 people. After all, this was just a governor’s announcement race for a state. How many people could show up? Before Vivek got into the gubernatorial race, I had supported David Yost, the current Attorney General. Yost is a good guy and, under normal conditions, would be a good pick as an office holder. However, these are not normal conditions, and we are looking for an exceptional officeholder because George Lang’s Business First Caucus has planted the seeds for Ohio to become the number one economy. And knowing what I do about Trump, he has put eyes on Ohio to go from a rust belt state to a tech giant quickly. So, many things are lining up to unleash greatness that isn’t being discussed on the nightly news. And I knew before he did it that Vivek Ramaswamy was planning to run for governor of Ohio and would be stepping away from D.O.G.E., from people at Mar-a-Lago who told me in early December of 2024.
So, I wasn’t surprised to get the call from Vivek Ramaswamy to make his big announcement at CTL Aerospace. There’s a backstory to it that could fill a book, but when my phone rang, I was somewhat expecting it. So we settled on a spot with his coordinators to hold around 500 people because that would be considered a good crowd for something like this. But within a few days, my thoughts about 2000 people suddenly got much more attention. The RSVP for the event quickly shot to over 1000 people; by the time everything started at 4:30 PM, there were people everywhere. It was more like a Trump rally than anything else. Seeing all this, I instantly felt a little sorry for David Yost, the only GOP challenger to Vivek for that governor seat. When I was at his launch announcement, it was hard even to set up a photo line because there weren’t many people. I attributed it to being too far out; Yost wanted to stake his claim early to ward off possible challengers. But with Vivek in the race, Yost doesn’t have any chance. Without question, Trump wants Vivek Ramaswamy to run for governor of Ohio, so any endorsements going to anybody will go in that direction. Yost is holding on to hope that because Trump was supportive of him in the past, he would support him for a run for governor. No, Vivek is Trump’s guy, and he has the support of the MAGA crowd, who showed up to a spillover event to put their excitement toward an exciting opportunity. And it turned out to be quite a media spectacle that traveled quickly around the world.
I don’t talk about it much; my approach to all these things has been to put my head down, push through the opposition, and defeat my political enemies. I’ve been doing these things for a long time, and as I was telling old war stories to the organizers of Vivek’s event because it was all about the backstory of when Vivek came to CTL Aerospace five years before when almost nobody knew who he was, and I was very involved in the Tea Party, Trump didn’t always get these massive crowds. I would see Trump here and there as a member of the Reform Party, and he’d have a decent crowd at those events because he was on television and had written a few books. But it was nothing like what we saw with his GOP presidential run in 2016, 2020, and 2024. And I was seeing the same kind of trajectory for Vivek Ramaswamy. We’re not discussing just four years of Trump in the White House representing the MAGA movement. We’re looking at those four years, plus another 16 years between Vivek Ramaswamy and J.D. Vance, who could easily make all the Executive Orders that Trump has been signing into law. This was all about momentum and planning for the future. Not a short-term pop, Vivek would apply what he would do as a future president to the State of Ohio to show the world what it could look like. At this point, he had written four great books about economic health in society in general, and he was eager to put all that into practice. And that was being announced at CTL Aerospace in West Chester, Ohio, for the world to see.
As I talked to people a few nights earlier at the Nancy Nix fundraiser, I was given a hard time because I wasn’t wearing my cowboy hat—especially from Sheriff Jones. Usually, at those kinds of events, two people wear cowboy hats: Jones and myself. But this time, people noticed I just showed up in my suit, not some ostentatious gunslinger outfit. And they wanted to know why. Well, that’s because we are winning, and when you are in such a condition, you don’t have to sell ambition to people; they are already there. It is fun for a change to see all these great things happening, with Trump every day, with Elon Musk, and now with Vivek Ramaswamy essentially being governor of Ohio, where all of George Lang’s challenging work will finally pay off for the people of the formally known rust belt state. As I explained my lack of a hat, I offered everyone a feeling of contentment with where our nation was going. The woke monsters of our world have not gone away, but they have been defeated, and people are showing that they have no desire to return to their ominous tyranny. And I think that people like Vivek Ramaswamy in the Ohio Statehouse, then in the future White House, will take what Trump has done and expand on it for a goodness nobody can yet see. But I see it. I had significant time with Vivek at this West Chester event, and I can see it in his eyes. Yes, we have many good things coming, and people see them. It showed up in the massive crowd at the West Chester announcement, and I feel content for the first time in years as if all the work everyone puts into these kinds of things was suddenly worth it. And as to my lack of a hat, it’s not that I will change my appearance publicly. But sometimes, I want to enjoy myself, which I did at Nancy’s event and Vivek Ramaswamy’s announcement rally. Great things are coming, and it feels good to witness them up close and personally, and to just take it all in and enjoy the journey.
Rich Hoffman
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