I have been writing almost every day since about 2009.[1] That is nearly twenty years of putting the same argument on the table while people told me I was not supposed to say it out loud. The argument is simple. America works when people who make jobs are allowed to make them. America fails when the political class uses the power of government to confiscate what those people built and hand it out as a permanent constituency. In Ohio, a few weeks out from the November 3, 2026 election, that argument has a name on each side of the ballot.[2]

Vivek Ramaswamy is the unapologetic capitalist. Amy Acton is the candidate of the administrative state that shut down the economy in 2020 and never fully admitted what that was. I do not care how many sidebars the campaigns invent between now and Election Day. Skin color, private jets, drinking rumors, data-center talking points, Lake Ontario, the Gulf of America — they all collapse into one question: do you want a job creator in the governor’s office, or do you want a manager of other people’s money?

The Horse Race as of Late August 2026

I will give the numbers first, because the people who live on polls will not read anything else. The race is a dead heat inside the margin of error. Aggregators in mid-August had the two candidates essentially tied near 47 percent each. A Fox News poll taken August 6–10 among registered voters had Ramaswamy 50 to Acton’s 48. A Wedgewood survey of likely voters a few days later had Acton 47 to 46. Prediction markets on Polymarket and Kalshi flipped toward Acton late in the week of August 24 after sitting near a coin flip. Markets are not votes. They are bets. I treat them as weather, not gospel.[3]. In this governor’s race, you’d rather be Vivek Ramaswamy than Amy Acton. 

Ohio is still a state Donald Trump won by more than ten points in 2024. That does not make the governor’s race automatic. Midterms punish the party in the White House. Democrats are trying to turn Acton’s bedside manner into a permission structure for the same governing philosophy that produced the lockdowns. Republicans are trying to turn Ramaswamy’s wealth into a character supplement. Both tactics tell you what each side fears.

Money, Jets, and the “Why Is He Even Running?” Attack

David Pepper, Acton’s running mate and the former Ohio Democratic Party chair, has been out on the circuit asking why a billionaire would want the governor’s mansion. He has made a meal of campaign reports showing roughly $700,000 in private-jet leasing. Ramaswamy has self-funded at a scale no normal Ohio candidate can touch and has outspent Acton several times over in 2026 filings.[4]

I find the question revealing in the exact way Pepper does not intend. Why would a man who already cashed out of companies he built take a pay cut, live in a government house, and spend two years being screamed at by people who think profit is a sin? I asked a version of that question years ago, when he was still a CEO who had not yet written the book that Fox News later discovered. The answer he gave me then is the answer his campaign is still giving now: he made money. He wants to spend the next chapter creating the conditions for other people to make money. That is not a job hunt. That is a mission.

A communist-minded person looks at a private jet and sees stolen bread. A capitalist looks at the same jet and asks whether the man inside it is flying toward a plant, a donor meeting, or a vacation after creating tremendous market value.  Intent matters. Output matters more.

I will never apologize for preferring self-funded candidates. The moment a politician’s paycheck depends on a machine, the machine owns the mind. I have watched it up close. I know a patriotic couple who together make a few hundred thousand a year, keep the flags in the garage, and stay quiet at the corporate job because they do not want the HR department to discover they vote like Americans. Control the check, and you control the speech. That is not a conspiracy theory. That is how large organizations work in 2026.

Amy Acton and the Lockdown State

Acton was Ohio’s health director when the state closed schools and businesses in 2020. Critics call her Ohio’s Dr. Fauci. Democrats treat that as a slur. I treat it as a job description. She was the face of orders that treated the economy as a switch a bureaucrat could flip. I lived through it here. So did every shop owner who found out a signature in Columbus could erase a year’s work overnight.[5]

The Amy Acton Covid response was authoritarian in method and Marxist in assumption: the productive life of a free people could be suspended by experts, who would decide when life was allowed to resume. That is not public health as a limited tool. That is government as the owner of time.

Why I Call the Lockdowns Marxist

Marxism is not only red flags and five-year plans. It is the belief that the state is the rightful allocator of work, risk, and reward. When you shut the places where people create value and keep the administrative offices open, you have already chosen a side. You have decided that the badge-wearing clerk outranks the owner who makes payroll. Ohio Democrats gambled that voters would remember Acton’s tone of voice and forget the empty Main Streets. I did not forget.

DeWine appointed her. DeWine has now endorsed Ramaswamy. That fact alone should end the fairy tale that Acton was a nonpolitical healer floating above faction. She was a cabinet officer who used emergency power. Emergency power is the most addictive drug in American government. People who taste it rarely volunteer to put the bottle down.

Unions, Paychecks, and the Long March Through the Shop Floor

I have said for years that the modern political union is a child of the Marxist analysis of class, even when the guy in the union hall flies a flag, hunts on weekends, and would punch you for calling him a communist. The original theory was never a mystery. Labor was organized as a counter-power to private ownership. In practice, union leadership in this country has spent decades steering members toward the party that grows government, because government is the only force large enough to take ownership away from the people who built the plant.[6]

That is why so many red-white-and-blue households still vote for the party that talks about them as a class to be managed. The leadership is not confused. The membership is loyal to the paycheck and the hall. I do not hate the welder. I hate the theory that says the welder’s children should live under a political class that treats the owner as a villain and the agency as a parent.

The FirstEnergy Lesson I Have Deep Sympathy For

I have been around Ohio politics long enough to watch a struggling energy company buy itself a statute. House Bill 6 and the FirstEnergy dark-money case are the exhibit. Ratepayers paid. Executives and a speaker went to court. The regulatory environment became a marketplace for influence. I will not bless a “deal” in which a company that cannot survive honest rules writes a check to a campaign so the rules change.[7]

That is the fine line I have learned to walk. Politicians have to keep the confiscators out of the regulatory shop so builders can build. That is not an unholy alliance. That is the only way a mixed economy does not slide into a managed one. A President Trump saying to industry, “I want a regulatory environment in which you can hire,” is the opposite of a health director saying, “I want an environment in which you may not open.” One expands the field. The other sits on it.

Why a Billionaire Wants a Crummy Mansion

I hosted a gathering in 2019. Vivek was there. So was J.D. Vance. It was neither a bundling operation nor a corporate ask. It was capitalists in a room talking about whether the country still believed in itself. Later, I sat in the front row at a Middletown-area event and talked to Vivek before and after the event. He told me the earlier room had mattered. He had built companies, sold, and was deciding whether the next chapter was a quieter rich life or a public fight.[8]

He chose the fight. I understand the psychology because my own life is simpler than it used to be, and I still cannot leave the argument alone. You spend years making something. You cash out. Then you look at the country that made the cash-out possible and watch a political movement try to call the making itself immoral. At that point, money is not the point. Example is the point. He has young children. So do a lot of the people I know who are still trying to start shops in Butler County, Warren County, and along the I-75 corridor. They need a governor who thinks a payroll is a moral achievement.

What “Public Servant” Actually Means

Acton’s campaign asks why he needs a job. That sentence is the whole Democratic theory of government in eight words. They think office is a job you take because you need income and status. I think office is a temporary grant of power you take because you already know how to create value and you want the rules to stop punishing the next person who tries. She needs the apparatus. He does not. That difference is not a smear. It is the reason self-reliant candidates are harder to own.

Naming Lakes, Inventing Guilt, and the Attack on the Founding

I have been talking about early Bronze Age copper, Florida’s long human timeline, and the political use of the word “indigenous.” I am not an “indigenous peoples” activist because a university committee decided the founding of the United States was a crime scene. Lake Ontario had Iroquoian names before English maps. That is history. It is not a veto of Ohio’s existence. The campaign to treat every European place-name as an apology is a campaign to treat American creation as illegitimate. If the country was born in sin, then the wealth it produced is stolen, and the state may seize it with a clean conscience.[9]

That is why I do not roll my eyes when President Trump puts a new name on a body of water. Marketing people understand pressure points. Force the argument into the open. Mexico is not a capitalist peer. Canada is a softer social democracy with better manners. China runs a party-state that Western finance keeps trying to copy while calling itself “stakeholder capitalism.” If you import the constraint structure of a manifesto into a corporation, do not act shocked when the sales numbers coming out the door shrink.

China has more than a billion people and still does not outrun American output on the terms that matter most. People are not GDP. Property, energy, and permission to try are the components of GDP.[10]

Free Speech, Treason Talk, and Where I Draw the Line

I use a hard word on purpose. I view a political project that intends to undo the capitalist republic from inside its own universities, HR offices, and public schools as hostile to the country that protects the speech. That is my moral line, not a statute I am asking a prosecutor to file tomorrow. The left has been brilliant at wrapping the project in the First Amendment. They want the protection of the system they are trying to hollow out. I will not pretend those things are neutral.

Republicans have often been cowards about this. They recite “free speech” as if the phrase were a substitute for a spine. Speech is the method. The aim is still the aim. If the aim is to teach children that job creation is exploitation and that America should not have been founded, you are not hosting a seminar. You are running a treasonous succession operation.

What I Want from a Governor of Ohio

I want a political class that keeps the confiscators out of the permit office. I want data centers and plants and the power to run them, not a lecture about why the grid should be smaller. I want elections that are elections, then an executive who tells builders: the rules will be stable enough that you can risk a decade of your life. I want fewer people who take jobs from the tax base and more people who create jobs that build the tax base.

You can steal only so much before you run out of victims. Every society that tries to live on confiscation discovers that the makers leave, hide, or stop. Then the speeches about “the people” get louder and the shelves get emptier. That is not a metaphor from a paperback. That is the twentieth century.

The Quiet Majority in the Garage

I do not think Ohio has reached the saturation point at which the paycheck controllers can order a blue state into existence. The man with the flags in the garage is still voting. He will not wear the pin at work. Democrats had to come all the way out into open socialism because they could not out-Trump Trump on prosperity. Bernie always beat Hillary in the heart of the Democrat Party. The party followed the energy. Now they have Acton as the respectable face of that energy in Ohio.

How I Measure Morality

Money is a human construct. I do not worship it. I measure it the way I measure any tool: by what it lets a free person do for other free people. A 12- or 16-hour day that produces a payroll is a moral act. A political career that lives off the payroll someone else produced is, at best, a borrowed life. I am sympathetic to imperfect Republicans who still know which side of that line they live on. I am not sympathetic to a politics that calls the maker greedy and the taker compassionate.

My people, the ones who have stayed with this blog for years, tend to be biblical in the old sense. They think a man should work, keep promises, raise children, and not covet his neighbor’s possessions. I am with them. The copper trade of the early Bronze Age, the mound builders, the later Iroquois, the English, the Americans — all of that is a long argument about who gets to take risk and keep the result. I come down on the side that built the country I actually live in.

The Vote

Vote for the job creator. That is the whole essay. Vivek Ramaswamy wants to be governor, so more people like him can exist. Amy Acton wants to be governor so the power that closed Ohio can be normalized as kindness. I was in the room when he was still deciding whether to step down from the CEO role. I have watched the last two years of his campaign confirm the pitch. I have watched her coalition confirm mine.

Ignore the sidebars if you can. The race is not about a jet. It is not about a lake. It is not about whether a rich man “needs a job.” It is about whether Ohio still believes that making something is better than administering something. I do. I have believed it since before this blog had a name. I will believe it after the returns come in.

Go vote. Keep the line. Make a job if you can. If you cannot, stand with the person who will.

Selected Sources for Readers Who Want the Record

Polling and market snapshots: RealClearPolitics; Decision Desk HQ; Fox News / Beacon Research / Shaw & Company (August 6–10, 2026); Wedgewood Polls (August 11–13, 2026); Newsweek reporting on Polymarket and Kalshi, August 28, 2026.

Campaign finance and travel: Ohio Capital Journal, August 21, 2026; NBC4 Columbus, August 26, 2026; Ohio Secretary of State campaign-finance database.

Candidate backgrounds: Ballotpedia and Wikipedia entries for the 2026 Ohio gubernatorial election and for Amy Acton; Politico Magazine profile, June 28, 2025; Cincinnati Enquirer coverage of COVID-era advertising, August 28, 2026.

HB 6 / FirstEnergy: U.S. Department of Justice deferred-prosecution materials; contemporaneous Ohio reporting summarized in footnote 6.

Personal context: author’s contemporaneous posts at overmanwarrior.wordpress.com; NBC News, October 4, 2023, on Ramaswamy’s 2019 Ohio political beginnings; C-SPAN, August 21, 2026, Middletown campaign event.

[1] Rich Hoffman, The Overmanwarrior (blog), published since approximately 2009–2010 at overmanwarrior.wordpress.com. Author of The Symposium of Justice (2004), Tail of the Dragon (2012), and The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business. Forthcoming: The Politics of Heaven (targeted 2027).

[2] Ohio gubernatorial election set for November 3, 2026. Incumbent Republican Gov. Mike DeWine is term-limited. Republican nominee: Vivek Ramaswamy (running mate: Ohio Senate President Rob McColley). Democratic nominee: Dr. Amy Acton (running mate: former Ohio Democratic Party chair David Pepper). Libertarian: Don Kissick. See Ballotpedia, “Ohio gubernatorial and lieutenant gubernatorial election, 2026.”

[3] RealClearPolitics aggregate through August 10, 2026: Acton 47.0%, Ramaswamy 46.8% (Acton +0.2). Decision Desk HQ through August 13: Acton 47.2%, Ramaswamy 46.8%. Fox News / Beacon / Shaw poll, August 6–10, 2026 (1,008 registered voters, ±3%): Ramaswamy 50%, Acton 48%. Wedgewood Polls, August 11–13, 2026 (800 likely voters, ±4%): Acton 47%, Ramaswamy 46%. Newsweek, August 28, 2026, reported Polymarket 54% Acton / 47% Ramaswamy and Kalshi 55% / 45% after a late-August shift.

[4] Ohio Capital Journal, August 21, 2026: Ramaswamy campaign spent nearly $690,000 leasing aircraft, including payments to V Leasing LLC (address tied to a Ramaswamy-owned property) and TVPX Aircraft Solutions. NBC4, August 26, 2026: Ramaswamy spent about $21.2 million in 2026 campaign funds through early August filings; Acton spent over $5.5 million. Wikipedia / Ohio Secretary of State filings, summarized in mid-August 2026, show Ramaswamy with substantially higher receipts and cash on hand, including substantial self-funding.

[5] Amy Acton served as director of the Ohio Department of Health from 2019 into 2020 under Gov. Mike DeWine and was the public face of Ohio’s early COVID-19 orders, including school closures and stay-at-home rules. She resigned as director in June 2020 amid protests and lawsuits, remaining briefly as an adviser. See Wikipedia, “Amy Acton”; Politico Magazine, June 28, 2025, “Can ‘Ohio’s Anthony Fauci’ Beat Vivek Ramaswamy?”

[6] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (1848), treat trade unions as instruments of class struggle within industrial capitalism. American labor history is more mixed: many U.S. unions were anti-communist during the Cold War. The author’s claim is interpretive—that union political machines often align with larger government and redistribution—not a claim that every rank-and-file member is a Marxist.

[7] House Bill 6 (2019) provided subsidies tied to FirstEnergy’s nuclear plants and other generation sources. Federal prosecutors described a roughly $60 million dark-money scheme around the bill. FirstEnergy entered a deferred prosecution agreement and paid a $230 million criminal penalty, admitting relevant facts. Former House Speaker Larry Householder was convicted. Related civil and regulatory costs to ratepayers have been widely reported. The author cites this episode as an example of captured regulation, not as a charge against any 2026 nominee.

[8] Author’s personal account of a 2019 gathering in the Cincinnati/Middletown area that included Vivek Ramaswamy and J.D. Vance, and of later attendance at a Ramaswamy event at a Middletown-area headquarters. NBC News, October 4, 2023, documented Ramaswamy’s 2019 return to Ohio and early political relationships, including with Vance and then-Lt. Gov. Jon Husted. C-SPAN recorded an August 21, 2026 Middletown campaign event featuring Ramaswamy.

[9] President Trump’s 2025 executive action renaming the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America” and related debates over naming (including Great Lakes/Iroquois toponyms such as Ontario) became a cultural flashpoint. The author argues that renaming fights are proxies for whether the United States is a legitimate capitalist republic or a moral error to be undone. Geographic names have layered indigenous, colonial, and American histories; Ontario is an Iroquoian-derived name adopted into English cartography.

[10] World Bank and IMF national accounts: the United States remains the world’s largest economy by nominal GDP; China is second with a much larger population. Productivity, capital formation, property rights, and energy abundance—not headcount—drive output. Figures fluctuate yearly; the comparative point is structural, not a single-year snapshot.

Rich Hoffman

More about me

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About the Author: Rich Hoffman

Rich Hoffman is an author, political consultant, and strategic advisor based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the creator of The Politics of Heaven—a unique framework that connects biblical theology, ancient history, and modern power structures to explain how moral alignment and spiritual forces shape global events. Blending real-world political experience with deep research into archaeology, UFO phenomena, and suppressed historical narratives, Hoffman offers compelling commentary on topics ranging from ancient civilizations and the Dead Sea Scrolls to modern populist movements, paranormal continuity, and leadership strategy in chaotic environments. As the author of The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and the forthcoming Politics of Heaven, he brings a grounded yet provocative voice to media discussions, supported by firsthand experiences and a cross-disciplinary approach that bridges science, history, and theology. For interviews, speaking engagements, or expert analysis, visit richhoffmanbooks.com or contact directly via phone at 513-307-5815 or email at rhoffman@richhoffmanbooks.com.  If you’ve seen the movie, Disclosure Day and want to talk about it and the implications of Presidnet Trump’s UAP disclosures, let me know and we can bring some color to your coverage. https://richhoffmanbooks.com/media-inquiries-broadcast-topics-and-contact-info/?frame-nonce=ad51e7ecba I do have a firsthand UFO encounter to discuss.