I want people to remember the speech. That is the point of writing this. Not the tent at the Canfield Fair. Not the man with a phone in his hand and pistols on his belt who never took them out. Not the Labor Day parade the next morning where the cameras decided she was a warrior because she walked a route and helped two people who fainted in the heat, get back up. I want the speech. The one they needed a diversion for, because it was that bad.
Over the Labor Day weekend Amy Acton stood in front of a union crowd and tried to take Vivek Ramaswamy to the finish line by yelling that he could not buy Ohio. She said it until the words stopped meaning anything. You cannot buy this state. You can’t buy us. You can’t buy us. You can’t buy us. Pete Buttigieg was in the frame. She sounded unhinged. She sounded like a candidate who had seen internals that were not doing what the press releases promised and decided volume would substitute for a theory of growth.
Then, the same weekend, a thirty-eight-year-old Canfield man named Patrick Havas shoved through a Democratic Party tent at the Canfield Fair, phone up, calling her name, knocking elderly people off mobility scooters. Highway Patrol grabbed him. After the fact they found two handguns, a Taser, brass knuckles. He never brandished a weapon. He never touched her. The charges that stuck were misdemeanor assault and disorderly conduct. That is a serious enough mess. It is not the movie they sold by Monday morning. It is a chaotic lunge by a man trying to get a picture and a word in, dressed up as an assassination attempt so nobody would have to replay the chant.
I have watched this trick before. When the product is bad, change the channel.
People Who Have Money Have Been Successful. That Is Not a Confession.
The attack they wanted the speech to carry is the oldest cheap shot in a democracy that still pretends it hates results. He is rich. He is not like you. He flew to a tennis match. He has a court at his house. He sits three rows back at the U.S. Open while you pack a lunch. David Pepper and the background choir have been working that note for months. It did not work on Donald Trump. It will not work on Vivek Ramaswamy unless Republicans help them play it.
We put Trump in the White House three times, through every mechanism designed to stop him, in no small part because he was rich. Means is not a moral defect. Means is how you survive a lawfare state that bills by the hour. Trump never ran away from golf. Golf is a sport wealthy people play. He likes it. He kept playing it. Every time they pointed at the clubhouse he doubled down. Here is the gold. Here is the silk. I have done well. Vote for me and I will make it so you can do well too.
Vivek likes tennis. He is good at tennis. He has a court. He flew to watch tennis. That is allowed. A man who can get on a plane without checking a savings account is not required to apologize to a woman whose closing argument is that independence itself is suspicious. Wealthy people enjoy things. That is one of the reasons people become wealthy. Fluidity gives you permission to be your own person. I would rather a governor who already has a life than a governor who needs the mansion to feel like somebody.
I have been talking lately about the Apostle Paul and why he was so effective. Part of it was independence. A man who can move, speak, and refuse a bribe because he is not waiting on a stipend is a different kind of missionary than a man who needs the collection plate to land. The Christian movement was not hurt by personal means. Politics is not hurt by it either. The people who tell you otherwise are usually standing between you and the next job.
She Is Preaching the Loser Mentality. That Is Why She Is Yelling.
Listen to the pitch underneath the chant. He is not like you. He has money. You cannot trust him. I am like you. I am not a politician. My last election was in high school. I am a doctor becoming a common one right in front of your eyes. The subtext she cannot help leaking is uglier. I have problems. I have chaos in the house. I am the lockdown saint who will steal from the people who made wealth and hand you a government job and a PlayStation afternoon.
There will always be some people who want that. They will vote for Amy Acton because they think she will pick a pocket that is not theirs and call it justice. That is her crowd: the discontent, the union hall that never got off the wagon, the people who believe the state’s highest purpose is a transfer. They know they are running behind. They need a few points. So they scream.
I said she was a con before the family-police stories made the rounds. I said it when she was DeWine’s health director, the Dr. Fauci of Ohio, the woman in the white coat in the Statehouse briefing room telling a free people that the long haul would be managed from her clipboard. Lockdown. Recovery after her stent. A governor who let her run because the cameras liked the lab coat. Anybody who doubts that record can read the last six years of Ohio and stop pretending it was a seminar.
She cannot raise money the way a winner raises money. She can scrape small-dollar piety and then announce she outraised the billionaire in a quarter if you leave his own check out of the math. Vivek put tens of millions of his own dollars on the table. Elon Musk wrote a super PAC a check. Jeff Yass and Bill Ackman showed up. Allies are outspending her on television by a brutal multiple. That is not “buying Ohio.” That is what happens when people who build things decide the state should not be handed back to the clipboard.
When you cannot compete in the only currency that buys airtime, you moralize the currency. You cannot buy us. Translation: please stop outspending us.
The 2016 Rhyme They Think We Forgot
I have been on stages with this type before. Going into 2016, John Kasich was still out there. Establishment machinery was still chipping. Mitch McConnell’s world was still working the edges against Trump. They said you could not vote for him because of this, because of that, because the lawyers had a theory. Trump did not run away from being Trump. He went around and spoke to people. He was proud. His crowds were better. He won anyway.
The same habit is alive in this race. Republicans still fight each other after the primary. A few voices would rather be right about Vivek’s swing in a batting cage than right about Ohio’s tax climate. Tucker-adjacent complainers who want the demise of the party more than they want a governor will always find a clip. Shame on them. They are doing what Kasich did in 2015 and what a slice of the donor class tried again in 2024. Trump won anyway. The people who stayed tight when it was hard have a special place with me. The late arrivals who discovered their conscience after the primary should know I have a memory.
Democrats do not have that problem. They made a fool of even the Democrats who privately know she is a weak closer, and they will still show up. That gives Amy Acton the feeling she can scream her way into a conversation. Republicans, meanwhile, donate opposition research to the other team and call it principle.
I Support Vivek. I Will Miss One Fundraiser. That Is Not a Taper.
I love Vivek Ramaswamy. I have said it. I will keep saying it. There was a fundraiser I was not at. I am usually at these things. This one I could not make, and it is not a cooling. I had something else that night. I will tell people privately what it was. Everybody will get a kick out of it. I expect to make an announcement in about a month, and I have to stay inside a contract until I know what I am allowed to say. When I am not in the room it is not personal. He will raise more at that party than she will raise in the next month. That is how the ball bounces when one candidate can fill a room with people who have already built something and the other candidate is asking the room to resent the builder.
The early people who stayed with him when it was not fashionable have my loyalty. I will always support them. The rock-throwers who showed up late to explain why a winner is insufficient should sit with that.
What Ohio Votes for When the Noise Stops
When the chant dies and the fairground movie is over, the choice is not mysterious. Do you want a state that brings job creators in so you can get hired, keep a paycheck, and climb, or do you want a state whose highest pitch is that the man with the plane should be ashamed of the plane?
Vivek flying to a tennis match is not a scandal. It is a demonstration that he does not need the job. “I don’t need the chair. I want the state to work so you can have what I have.” That is a better sentence than “I want to give everybody a government job.” One of those sentences produces a tax base. The other produces a line.
The public polls as of mid-September still bounce around a coin flip in the averages—Fox had him at 50–48 in August, Wedgewood had her up a point, Siena had them tied in June. Forecast models that bother with Ohio’s fundamentals still give him the better chance in a state Donald Trump carried by double digits. Tight is not tied in the soul of the electorate. Tight is what a bad weekend of Republican infighting and a successful media diversion can manufacture.
She sounded like the goalie of a team that knows the third period is going badly. I doubt she was drinking on the camera that caught the chant. She sounded like it. She cannot get out of her own way. That only helps him, and he does not need the help as much as she needs the noise.
Go vote for Vivek. If you want Ohio to prosper, he is the only logical candidate on the ballot. Do it enthusiastically. Remember that Amy Acton locked you down, and remember that she also stood in front of a crowd and tried to make success sound like theft. Do not let a fairground shove erase the sentence. The speech happened. The Amy Acton speech was bad.
Footnotes
[1] Amy Acton’s Labor Day-weekend appearances included a rally clip, circulated widely beginning about September 6, 2026, in which she repeated that Vivek Ramaswamy “cannot buy this state” and “can’t buy us,” with Secretary Pete Buttigieg in the orbit of the event. Conservative and independent clips branded the delivery a rant.
[2] On September 6, 2026, at the Canfield Fair in Mahoning County, Patrick Havas, 38, of Canfield, pushed through a crowd at the Mahoning County Democratic Party tent while Acton was speaking, phone raised, calling her name. Ohio State Highway Patrol detained him. Acton was unharmed. Two elderly attendees were knocked down. After the arrest, officers reported two pistols, a Taser, and brass knuckles on his person; he never brandished a firearm. Charges: misdemeanor assault, disorderly conduct, inducing panic. He pleaded not guilty.
[3] Acton marched the next morning, Labor Day, September 7, 2026, in Cleveland’s Labor Day parade, called Sunday a “rough day,” and assisted two women who collapsed on the route. The fair story dominated the weekend news hole.
[4] David Pepper is Acton’s 2026 running mate. He has used Ramaswamy’s wealth and a mocked batting-cage video as attack lines.
[5] Ramaswamy attended the U.S. Open in early September 2026. Acton’s campaign posted video and stills and accused him of “jetting off” the trail. He is a documented tennis player. Tennis was the sport they were afraid looked “too fancy.”
[6] Donald Trump’s refusal to apologize for golf, clubs, and wealth is the relevant precedent, 2016 through 2024. Ohio voted for Trump by 11.2 points in 2024.
[7] Acts of the Apostles presents Paul as a Roman citizen of Tarsus, a tentmaker who could travel, appeal to Caesar, and support himself. The argument here is independence, not a bank statement. See Acts 18:3, 22:25–29, 25:11.
[8] Acton served as Ohio Department of Health director under Gov. Mike DeWine from 2019 into 2020 and was the public face of Ohio’s COVID orders. Columbus Dispatch, September 14, 2026.
[9] Acton has at times outraised Ramaswamy in donor receipts for calendar 2026; Ramaswamy loaned his campaign on the order of $25 million plus later sums. A super PAC drew large checks including $5 million from Elon Musk. September reporting described allies outspending Acton on television by roughly six to one.
[10] Fox News / Beacon-Shaw, August 6–10: Ramaswamy 50, Acton 48. Wedgewood, August 11–13: Acton 47, Ramaswamy 46. NYT/Siena, June 15–28: 47–47. Aggregators in early September clustered near a dead heat.
[11] John Kasich remained a critic of Trump through the 2016 cycle as Ohio’s sitting governor. The parallel is factional Republican fire directed at a nominee after the fight should have ended.
Selected Bibliography
“2026 Ohio gubernatorial election.” Wikipedia. Updated September 14, 2026.
“2026 Polls: Ohio Governor.” 270toWin.
“Who Is Ahead in the Ohio Governor’s Race?” New York Times. Updated September 14, 2026.
Balmert, Jessie. “Amy Acton’s COVID response at center of race for Ohio governor.” Columbus Dispatch, September 14, 2026.
WKYC; Akron Beacon Journal; News 5 Cleveland. Labor Day parade and Canfield Fair coverage, September 6–7, 2026.
BBC; Reuters; NBC News. Havas arrest and charging, September 6–8, 2026.
Washington Examiner; NBC4; Cleveland.com / Jeremy Pelzer; New York Times (Musk/V-PAC). Fundraising and ad spend, June–September 2026.
Newsweek; The Independent; Mediaite; James Surowiecki on X. Tennis, U.S. Open, batting-cage video, September 2026.
The Holy Bible. Acts 18, 22, 25.
Hoffman, Rich. The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business. Liberty Hill, 2021.
Hoffman, Rich. The Politics of Heaven. Forthcoming.
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.
I have watched this movie before. In 2015 and 2016, and again in 2024, the same class of people tried to tell America that Donald Trump’s wealth was a character defect. They said a rich man could not be trusted, that success itself was the indictment, that gold, planes, and golf were proof he was “not like you.” Voters put him in the White House twice anyway, because they understood something the professional scolds never will: independence is an asset. A man who does not need the job is harder to own. That is the lesson Ohio Democrats and a handful of leftover Republican wreckers are now trying to unlearn with Vivek Ramaswamy, and it is why Amy Acton spent Labor Day weekend screaming that you cannot buy Ohio.
She needed a chant. What she got was a gaffe.
The Speech That Sounded Like a Person Running Out of Road
Watch the clip. Acton is at a union picnic with Pete Buttigieg in tow, doing the ritual of the lockdown years: I am a doctor, not a politician, becoming one right in front of your eyes. Then she starts barking that Vivek cannot buy the state, cannot buy Ohio, cannot buy us, cannot buy us, cannot buy us in Ohio, that is the end of this. It is the sort of thing a campaign writes on a whiteboard when the internals look ugly and the only remaining argument is envy. The crowd does not catch fire. She looks like she is trying to start a wave at a funeral.
This is the same Amy Acton Ohio already knows. She ran public health under Mike DeWine when the state was locked down, businesses were smashed, kids were sent home, and “follow the science” became a political religion. She collected awards for it. A lot of Ohioans collected unemployment, missed funerals, and watched their Main Streets die. You can call that public service if you like. I call it the record she has to run on, and it is why the “I’m just like you” routine lands like a lead pipe. She is not just like you. She is the woman who told you to stay home while the people who write the rules kept their salaries.
The wealth attack is even thinner. Vivek flew to watch tennis. He likes tennis. He used to be a ranked junior. He has a court. He went to the U.S. Open and he has been to Paris. Wealthy people do that. Trump never ran from Mar-a-Lago or the golf course; he wore the gold clip and the silk tie and said, yes, I did well, and if you vote for me I will try to make it so you can do well too. That is a producer’s message. Acton’s message is the opposite: he has money, therefore he is illegitimate, therefore hand the keys to the people who want to tax the successful and redistribute the proceeds to the discontented. That is not a governing philosophy. That is a ransom note.
Why Attacking Wealth Is a Loser’s Tell
I have been thinking lately about the Apostle Paul. He was effective in part because he had standing and independence. He was not a ward of the movement. He could travel, argue, and endure because he was not begging the crowd for his next meal. Politics is not the church, but the principle is the same. A candidate who has already won in the private economy does not need Columbus the way a career public-health administrator needs Columbus. Vivek does not need a government job. That is supposed to be a feature. The people yelling “you can’t buy Ohio” are announcing that they cannot raise comparable money and cannot compete on growth, so they will compete on resentment.
David Pepper and the rest of the chorus have been working this line for months: billionaire, private jet, not one of us. Fine. Then explain why Trump’s jets and clubs did not stop two national victories, and why Ohioans who want plants, capital, and jobs might prefer a man who has already built companies to a woman whose signature achievement was closing the state. You can dislike Vivek’s style. You can argue policy. What you cannot do, with a straight face, is pretend that enjoying a tennis match is a civic crime while the alternative is more of the administrative state that already had its turn.
The other half of this farce is intra-Republican sabotage. After a primary, Democrats lock arms around whoever they nominated, even when she sounds like a chalkboard dragged down a stairwell. A slice of the right still wants to pick the scab. Nick Fuentes types, leftover primary rivals, the professional “I told you so” circuit—anyone who would rather be right about a Republican’s flaws than win the state—keep feeding the same clip. They did it to Trump in 2016 and 2024. He won anyway because voters vote their interest when the noise dies down. A good economy and job creators in your state beat a sermon about how the other guy’s plane is too nice.
Then Came the Fair, and the Overnight Conversion of a Shove Into an Assassination Plot
The timing is the tell. After the Labor Day chant made her look unhinged, the campaign needed a new story. Sunday at the Canfield Fair, a 38-year-old local named Patrick Havas pushed through a tent crowd toward Acton with a phone up, as if he were recording or trying to get close enough to be seen. He knocked over older people. Security took him down. After the fact, deputies found two pistols and a Taser-style device on him. He did not draw the guns. He did not fire. He did not brandish. Ohio is a constitutional-carry state. Carrying is not the same thing as attempting murder. The charges reported were disorderly conduct and misdemeanor assault for the people he knocked down. Acton was unhurt. The people who fell were assessed and, according to the sheriff, did not seek further treatment.
That is a bad scene at a fair. It is not a martyrdom. Campaign statements still said an “armed individual lunged” and injured multiple people. National copy followed the verb. By Saturday night into Sunday the lead was written as if Ohio had just watched a political assassination attempt. If there were clean video of a man trying to kill her, it would have been on every screen before supper. What we got instead was language inflation: lunge, attack, armed, threat—while the actual police story is a large man barreling for a better look or a confrontation, knocking seniors like bowling pins, and getting piled on by Highway Patrol.
This attack story is just another Democrat Jussie Smollett story, trying to gain sympathy and voter support through fake news talking points. This is the fullness of the Acton operation: when the speech is a disaster, change the subject to danger. When you cannot raise on growth, raise on fear. When you cannot debate or raise money, accuse the other side of buying the state. Look how many sucker politicians jumped on the bandwagon without knowing all the facts, which again came out looking like Amy Acton is a loser candidate.
What Ohio Actually Chooses When the Cameras Leave
Acton will keep the unions, the people who want the next transfer payment, and the media that still thinks 2020 was her finest hour. She will keep Pepper on the ticket as proof that the old Democratic machinery is still in the room. She will keep calling Vivek rich, which he is, and hoping Ohio has forgotten that successful people are allowed to like tennis, football Saturdays, and a life that is not a permanent campaign stop.
I want a state that recruits producers instead of lecturing them. If a man with a billion dollars in assets spends a few thousand to fly to a match, that is not the scandal. The scandal is a political class that treats his success as the crime and her lockdown résumé as the credential. Trump never apologized for winning. Vivek should not apologize for a court, a jet, or a seat at the Open. The people who need him to grovel are the same people who needed Trump to grovel. They lost that argument twice.
Vote like you want the factories and the payrolls. When things got tough for Amy Acton in 2026 she turned to fake news. Which only made everything worse. She is the lockdown lady and is horrible in every way a politician can be, which we all had a front-row seat to in 2020 when she destroyed Ohio’s economy and told everyone they could be superheroes if only they wore a mask in public. That is the person running for governor in Ohio as a Democrat. A disaster on a good day. On a bad day, she is a fake news agent of destruction and drunkenness.
Notes
1. Acton’s Labor Day-weekend remarks with Buttigieg at the Cincinnati AFL-CIO picnic, including the “you cannot buy this state / you can’t buy us” repetition, circulated widely on September 5–6, 2026. See WLWT coverage of the Hamilton picnic and contemporaneous rally video.
2. Acton served as Ohio Department of Health director under Gov. Mike DeWine beginning in 2019 and became the public face of the state’s COVID restrictions.
3. Criticism of Ramaswamy’s travel and tennis included Acton’s own Labor Day-weekend post attacking a U.S. Open appearance and earlier opinion pieces on a July 4 Paris trip.
4. Ramaswamy’s tennis background (junior player, Cincinnati Open ball boy, regular Open attendee) is part of his public biography and prior campaign videos.
5. Canfield Fair incident, September 6, 2026: Patrick Havas, 38, of Canfield, pushed through the Mahoning County Democratic Party tent, knocked down older attendees, was detained by Ohio State Highway Patrol executive protection; weapons recovered after detention; no brandishing reported; charges reported as disorderly conduct and two counts of misdemeanor assault. Acton uninjured.
6. Constitutional carry in Ohio means possession of a concealed firearm, without more, is not itself an assassination attempt.
7. Public polling through late summer 2026 generally showed a toss-up to slight-Ramaswamy edge depending on the house, which is consistent with a campaign hunting for a reset narrative.
8. Intra-GOP sniping after contested primaries is a recurring feature of the Trump era; Democrats have typically consolidated faster around flawed nominees.
Bibliography
Acton for Governor. Campaign statements and Labor Day / Canfield Fair remarks, September 2026.
Ballotpedia. “Amy Acton.” Candidate biography and office history.
CNN. “Armed man arrested after pushing through crowd toward Ohio Democratic gubernatorial nominee.” September 6, 2026.
Columbus Dispatch. “Armed man arrested after lunging at Amy Acton at Canfield Fair.” September 6, 2026.
Cincinnati Enquirer. Nick Anderson, “Ramaswamy’s Paris trip an example of his disconnect with Ohioans.” July 8, 2026.
HuffPost. “Vivek Ramaswamy Slammed For Leaving Ohio And Attending The U.S. Open.” September 6, 2026.
Mahoning County Sheriff’s Office / Ohio State Highway Patrol statements on the Canfield Fair detention of Patrick Havas, September 6, 2026.
New York Times. “Armed Man Arrested After Charging Toward Democratic Candidate for Ohio Governor.” September 6, 2026.
The Nerd Stash. “‘You Can’t Buy Us’: Ohio Dem Amy Acton Sparks Backlash After Awkward Rally Chant Aimed at Vivek Ramaswamy.” September 6, 2026.
Washington Post. “Armed individual ‘lunged’ at Democrat nominee for Ohio governor, campaign says.” September 6, 2026.
Wikipedia. “2026 Ohio gubernatorial election.” Polling averages and race ratings as of early September 2026.
WLWT. “Pete Buttigieg campaigns for Amy Acton, Greg Landsman at Cincinnati AFL-CIO picnic.” September 6, 2026.
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.
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 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.
I saw the U.S. News & World Report rankings circulating on X this week, and they put Ohio at 42nd overall for 2026, which puts us in the bottom ten and marks a drop from 38th last year and 36th the year before.¹ The categories they measure are education, healthcare, economy, infrastructure, opportunity, fiscal stability, natural environment, and crime and corrections. Ohio’s weakest spots were natural environment at 43rd and economy at 38th, with healthcare at 36th, crime and corrections at 37th, infrastructure at 31st, and education at 29th. The brighter spots were opportunity at 18th and fiscal stability at 28th.² Utah sat at number one for the fourth straight year.
The timing is not lost on me. We are months out from a midterm cycle and a gubernatorial race, with Democrats trying to claw back ground in a state they have not controlled for a long time. Amy Acton is the Democratic nominee, and the narrative machine is looking for any data point that can be spun into evidence that Republican stewardship has failed. Ohio has had Republican governors and legislative majorities for the better part of two decades. When the ledgers are in the black, and the business climate is competitive, the opposition looks for rankings that penalize issues Republicans tend not to prioritize as much as progressive outlets do.
That is exactly what this ranking does. Education and healthcare carry the heaviest weights in the U.S. News methodology—roughly 15.8 percent and 15.5 percent, respectively—while natural environment and crime and corrections carry less weight.³ The metrics lean toward things like pre-K enrollment rates, higher-education access, college debt levels, and certain public-health indicators. States that invest more in expanding the existing system and in measuring inputs rather than outcomes tend to score higher on those axes. Ohio spends in the mid-to-high teens of thousands per pupil, right around or slightly below the national average depending on the data set, and we are not pretending that simply increasing the size of the bureaucracy automatically produces better results.⁴ The ranking rewards the model that has produced years of mediocre performance and cultural experimentation in many places, and it docked Ohio for not matching that model closely enough.
Meanwhile, two months earlier, CNBC released its America’s Top States for Business ranking and put Ohio at number one for the first time.⁵ That study uses a different set of 138 metrics weighted toward infrastructure, cost of doing business, workforce, economy, and access to capital—the things companies actually look at when they decide where to put plants, headquarters, and capital. Ohio ranked first in infrastructure and first in cost of doing business. We have no corporate income tax, a competitive commercial activity tax structure, shovel-ready sites, abundant power capacity, and more than 140 million people within a day’s drive. Governor DeWine correctly called that ranking proof that Ohio is a strong place for jobs and opportunity. The contrast is instructive. One ranking measures outcomes that matter to employers and taxpayers who have to meet payroll. The other measures a set of progressive priorities and then acts surprised when a state that has refused to adopt the full progressive playbook scores lower.
I prefer the CNBC approach. Rankings are never gospel, and methodology is everything. Mortimer Zuckerman owns U.S. News and has long reflected the worldview of coastal media institutions that view Republican governance as inherently suspect.⁶ When a ranking heavily weights healthcare access metrics and education-system expansion while Ohio is running consistent budget surpluses—nearly $1.8 billion above projections in fiscal year 2026—and is actively working on property-tax relief, the political incentive is obvious.⁷ Democrats cannot move the ball in Ohio the way they want, so the media environment supplies stories about how the state is “falling behind.” Ohio is operating in the black. We dug out of the deficits of earlier Democratic administrations and have maintained strong credit ratings and a healthy rainy-day fund. That is not failure. That is competence.
Amy Acton’s record is part of the same conversation. As Ohio’s health director in early 2020, she became the public face of some of the strictest early lockdowns in the country. Ohio was the first to close schools statewide and to impose broad business and gathering restrictions when case numbers were still low.⁸ The economic and educational damage from those months is still visible in workforce participation, learning loss, and small-business attrition. DeWine has said the ultimate responsibility was his, but Acton signed the orders and was the visible advocate. That history is fair game in a gubernatorial campaign. Voters who lived through the shutdowns remember who was on television telling them their livelihoods and their children’s schooling had to stop. Ramaswamy’s campaign has made that point repeatedly, and for good reason.
I met with Senator George Lang a few hours before looking at these rankings. We talk about a lot of things that are not pure politics—economy, history, the practical realities of running a state that has to stay competitive. Ohio’s fiscal position is one of the shared points of agreement among people who actually have to balance books. Democrats prefer that the state spend more aggressively on programs that score well in rankings like U.S. News. When the state declines to do that and still delivers opportunity rankings in the top 20 and a number-one business climate ranking from a major national outlet, the response is to declare the state a failure. That tells you more about the scorers than about Ohio.
I have watched this pattern for years. Rankings that punish limited-government outcomes and reward expansion of public systems are not neutral measuring sticks. They are arguments dressed up as data. Ohio under sustained Republican leadership has produced a competitive business environment, budget surpluses, and a refusal to treat every progressive education or healthcare priority as mandatory. CNBC noticed. U.S. News did not. That gap is not a problem for Ohio. It is a problem for the people who keep insisting the only acceptable path is the one that produces higher scores on their preferred scorecard.
If the goal is to elect candidates who will reverse the fiscal discipline and reopen the spending spigots that progressive media outlets reward, then yes, this ranking is useful propaganda. If the goal is a state that can attract capital, keep taxes competitive, and avoid the deficits that once plagued it, then the CNBC ranking is the more relevant document.
Subscribe if you want more of this. The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business is still out there if you have not read it. Have a good day.
Footnotes
1. U.S. News & World Report, “Best States Rankings 2026,” released late July 2026; NBC4 Columbus coverage, August 10–11, 2026.
2. Official U.S. News Ohio profile and category rankings for 2026.
3. U.S. News Best States methodology page: Education 15.79%, Healthcare 15.51%, Economy 12.88%, Infrastructure 12.74%, Opportunity 12.20%, Fiscal Stability 12.19%, Natural Environment 9.69%, Crime & Corrections 9.01%. Weights derived from multi-year national surveys of what residents prioritize.
4. Thomas B. Fordham Institute, Ohio Education by the Numbers 2026; U.S. Census and NCES per-pupil expenditure data placing Ohio near the national average (approximately $16,300–$17,300 depending on exact definition and year).
5. CNBC, “America’s Top States for Business 2026,” July 9, 2026; Ohio ranked No. 1 overall, No. 1 infrastructure, No. 1 cost of doing business.
6. Ownership history: Mortimer Zuckerman acquired U.S. News & World Report in 1984; company remains privately held under his control.
7. Ohio Office of Budget and Management preliminary FY 2026 revenue report: General Revenue Fund tax receipts approximately $1.8 billion above estimates; multiple contemporaneous reports confirming surplus and ongoing property-tax relief measures.
8. Contemporary 2020 reporting and later campaign coverage of Acton’s tenure as Ohio Department of Health director, including school and business closure orders signed in her name.
Bibliography / Further Reading
• U.S. News & World Report Best States 2026 full rankings, methodology, and state profiles (usnews.com/news/best-states).
• CNBC America’s Top States for Business 2026 complete rankings and category scores.
• Ohio Office of Budget and Management FY 2026 revenue and budget documents.
• Thomas B. Fordham Institute, Ohio Education by the Numbers (2026 edition).
• Contemporary reporting on Amy Acton’s 2020 health orders and 2026 campaign (Associated Press, Columbus Dispatch, Ohio Capital Journal, and others).
• Historical ownership and editorial background of U.S. News & World Report (Wikipedia and company histories).
• Polling aggregates for the 2026 Ohio gubernatorial race (270toWin, Emerson, AARP, Fox, Siena, etc.).
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.
I just got back from Put-in-Bay, and the whole time I kept looking at that big park and the yacht club thinking the same thing: this is exactly the kind of place a Republican governor candidate should plant a flag and talk about jobs. Not the usual Columbus or Cincinnati media circus. An island. Outside. Real people on vacation who still live in Ohio and want their kids to stay here. It would make great news precisely because it is not the typical stop. It signals strength. It tells the other side their strategy is already under pressure.
That same instinct applies east of Columbus in Amish country. Put an arm around the people who live with the paranormal side of Ohio—the Bigfoot reports that still come in, the stories that never make the official narrative. Those people vote. They know when somebody is listening and when somebody is talking down to them. A little color in the campaign does not hurt when the other side is running the same old progressive script.
Because that is what this race is really about. David Pepper is on the bottom of the Amy Acton ticket, the former Ohio Democratic Party chairman now serving as the institutional muscle. The person on the bottom of the ticket usually does the hard work of carrying the party machinery and the progressive money networks. They are connected into the larger Democrat operation that has treated Ohio as a prize in the long project of remaking the country. Mark Elias and that entire apparatus do not show up by accident. Ohio has been a target for years. Knock it off and the map changes.
Pepper has been loud about Vivek Ramaswamy moving Strive Asset Management out of Columbus to Texas. He acts like it is some personal betrayal. It is not. It is fiduciary duty. Companies exist to protect and grow capital, not to perform patriotism for politicians who create the conditions that drive capital away. Ramaswamy built brands. He understands that investors put money where the rules reward production instead of punishing it. Texas had better policy. Ohio is improving, and a lot of dedicated legislators have been grinding to make it friendlier, but the record under the last round of heavy-handed governance still hangs over the place. Aerospace manufacturing and advanced industry are coming whether the political class likes it or not. The only question is whether Ohio captures them or watches them locate somewhere else.
Amy Acton does not understand any of that. She resigned as health director in June 2020 after the COVID policies she helped drive produced real damage. Businesses closed. Ownership changed hands. Some never recovered. You can still feel it. Then there is the 2019 police call to her house over a domestic dispute where she had been drinking, took medication, shattered a mirror, and her husband had to keep her from driving. That is not abstract. It is part of the public record now. She never held a stable executive job that required building something that had to survive market discipline. She became popular with a certain type during the early COVID days because she made anxious people feel protected. That constituency is real, but it is not the majority that decides whether capital stays or leaves.
I have watched the type for decades. She reminds me of the girls who adopted the Fast Times at Ridgemont High beach-festival personality so they would not intimidate anyone by seeming too sharp. It worked in high school. It does not build a state. The Democrats seem to think they can turn that same soft, non-threatening persona into statewide votes. There are not enough of those voters left in Ohio to carry it. The people who still believe in opportunity look at a billionaire who actually ran companies and built an anti-woke asset manager because the existing ones had gone soft, and they see someone who knows how money moves.
Capitalism is voting with your feet. If the policy environment is hostile, you leave. That is not disloyalty. That is how free people protect what they have built. The Democrat instinct is closer to East Berlin. Stay. Wear the mask. Do not go to church. Be loyal to the state even when the rules are destroying the very conditions that let families raise the next generation here. They never understood why people climbed the wall. They still do not. North Korea makes the same calculation. Fear and guilt are cheaper than good policy.
That is why young people have been leaving their parents in Ohio for years. Mom and Dad stayed. Junior and the daughter looked around, saw limited opportunity, and moved. The traditional pattern—raise a family here, take the kids to Put-in-Bay or Hilton Head, keep the cycle going—breaks when the economic soil is thin. Ohio needs to be a premier destination again. That requires a governor who understands brand, investment, and the difference between real growth and political theater. Ramaswamy has lived that difference. He moved a company when the numbers said move. He will sign legislation that changes the numbers in Ohio’s favor. There is an army of legislators waiting for exactly that.
Pepper and the Acton operation are already showing the strain. The money is flowing in on their side, but the investment of belief is not. People remember who locked things down and who paid the price. They also notice who treats a corporate relocation as moral failure instead of economic signal. A few months out, the race is still competitive on paper, but the underlying dynamics favor the candidate who can talk about opportunity without apology. Seven or eight points is possible if the campaign stays aggressive and refuses to play on the other side’s chosen ground.
I would still take the Put-in-Bay stop and the Amish-country swing. Stretch the map. Force the media to cover something other than the scripted attacks. Show that the campaign is strong enough to go where the usual consultants say not to go. That is how you make the other side squirm. Ohio does not need another festival personality in the governor’s office ordering pizza and managing decline. It needs someone who knows how to build a brand people want to invest in and a state people want to raise families in. That is the choice. The rest is noise.
Notes
1. Amy Acton selected former Ohio Democratic Party chairman David Pepper as her lieutenant governor running mate in January 2026.
2. Strive Asset Management, co-founded by Vivek Ramaswamy as an anti-ESG/anti-woke firm, relocated its headquarters from Columbus, Ohio, to Dallas, Texas, with most staff expected to move by early 2025. Pepper and labor allies have repeatedly attacked the move as evidence of disloyalty to Ohio.
3. Acton served as Ohio Department of Health director from February 2019 until her resignation on June 11, 2020, amid intense controversy over COVID orders; she briefly continued as an advisor to Governor DeWine.
4. A 2019 Bexley police report described a domestic dispute at Acton’s home involving a verbal argument, alcohol, prescription medication, and a shattered mirror; no charges were filed. The report resurfaced during the 2026 campaign.
5. Multiple 2026 polls and the Cook Political Report have rated the Ramaswamy–Acton race a toss-up or extremely close as of mid-to-late July, after earlier lean-Republican ratings.
6. Ohio has long experienced net out-migration of young college-educated adults, a phenomenon repeatedly described as brain drain in academic and policy literature; recent data show some stabilization but the cultural memory of limited opportunity remains strong.
7. Ohio continues to record Bigfoot and other cryptid reports, including a notable 2026 uptick in Northeast Ohio, with cultural resonance in rural and Amish-adjacent communities.
Bibliography for Further Research
Acton, Amy, and related Ohio Department of Health records, 2019–2020.
Ballotpedia. “Ohio gubernatorial and lieutenant gubernatorial election, 2026.”
Cook Political Report. Race ratings for Ohio governor, July 2026 updates.
DeWine, Mike. Public statements on Acton’s resignation, June 11, 2020.
Elias, Marc / Democracy Docket. Broader progressive legal and electoral infrastructure materials.
McGuire, Patrick, et al. “Brain Drain in Ohio: Observations and Summaries.” University of Toledo Urban Affairs Center, 2006 (and subsequent updates).
Ohio Capital Journal and Columbus Dispatch reporting on Acton job history and the 2019 police call, April–July 2026.
Pepper, David. Substack writings and campaign statements criticizing Ramaswamy and Strive relocation, 2025–2026.
Ramaswamy, Vivek. Woke, Inc. and public comments on fiduciary duty, capital allocation, and state competitiveness.
Strive Enterprises press materials and Dallas Morning News coverage of the headquarters relocation, late 2024–2025.
U.S. Census and Ohio Board of Regents historical analyses of college-graduate migration patterns.
Additional reading on East German border controls, capital flight under socialist policy regimes, and the political economy of state competition (Texas vs. Ohio business climate comparisons).
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.
I have been saying for months that this Ohio governor’s race was never going to be as close as the liberal media and the Democratic machine kept insisting. As long as Amy Acton could raise and spend roughly equal amounts of money, they could buy enough advertising to keep the “horse race” illusion alive. That is how the game works in modern politics. Fundraising and media buys create the perception of competitiveness long after the fundamentals have already decided the outcome. But we are now in the middle of July 2026, and the gap is becoming impossible to hide. Elon Musk just put $5 million into the super PAC supporting Vivek Ramaswamy. That single check changes the entire dynamic, and the other side knows it.
I have watched David Pepper and the Marc Elias-style operatives do this routine before. They treat elections like a production where money buys the narrative, and the narrative buys time. They prop up candidates who cannot stand on their own record by flooding the airwaves with ads that soften the edges and attack the opponent on personality or wealth rather than substance. It works until the money runs short. Then the horse stops getting free drinks at the strip joint, and reality walks in. Right now, the money is tightening up for Acton, and the media that was happy to call this a toss-up while the checks were clearing is suddenly quieter about the fundamentals.
Vivek Ramaswamy is the exceptional candidate in this race. He is a Cincinnati native who built real companies, created real value, and succeeded on merit in competitive fields. He is a successful author and thinker who has already proven he can operate at the highest levels of government efficiency efforts alongside Elon Musk in the Department of Government Efficiency. He understands free markets, individual initiative, and the dangers of centralized government that tries to manage every resource and outcome from above. That is the opposite of the society Acton and her backers have spent years promoting—one that empowers mediocre administrators while punishing the very people and policies that generate prosperity.
Acton, by contrast, is a textbook product of the empire of mediocrity. She was the face of Ohio’s COVID lockdowns as state health director. She helped shut down businesses, kept drive-throughs and dining rooms closed at places like McDonald’s under ever-shifting rules, and contributed to the destruction of countless small enterprises that never recovered. Those policies were later exposed in court as unconstitutional overreaches. I had conversations with members of the Ohio Supreme Court back in 2020 as those cases were being prepared, and it was obvious even then that the lockdowns could not survive constitutional scrutiny. Governor DeWine eventually had to back away because the legal foundation was collapsing under him. Acton resigned under pressure from angry citizens protesting in the streets with no clear end in sight. None of that is the record of an exceptional leader. It is the record of someone who followed the centralized script, expanded bureaucratic power, and left real damage behind.
DeWine’s endorsement of Vivek took courage. It is never easy for a term-limited governor to put his name behind a successor who is positioned to outperform him, especially when that successor is running against the person DeWine himself appointed during the pandemic. The fact that he did it anyway tells you something important about where the party and the state are headed. Vivek is not an insider continuation of the old order. He is the disruption the old order needs if Ohio is going to stop losing ground on taxes, education, and economic freedom.
The money tells the real story right now. Vivek’s supporting super PAC has raised serious resources—tens of millions—and is deploying them aggressively. The $5 million from Musk is not just symbolic; it is a signal that serious people who create wealth and understand results are backing him. Acton cannot match that pace. When the advertising dollars dry up, the media loses interest in pretending this is a close contest. Voters are left with the actual records: one candidate who built success and wants to bring that same energy to Columbus, and another whose signature achievement was helping lock down the state economy in ways that proved unconstitutional and economically destructive.
I have been consistent on this since the race took shape. Vivek was always going to outperform the low expectations the media set for him once people looked past the noise. He is rolling out plans on property tax reform, real education choice that puts parents back in charge, and cooperation with a Trump administration that remains popular in Ohio for delivering results on the economy and border security. Acton’s side is still trying to run the old playbook—lawfare, media narratives, and enough cash to keep the “horse race” story alive. But the cash is not keeping up, and the voters are not buying the illusion the way they once did.
This race is a clear choice between two different visions of government. One side believes in self-initiative, free markets, and limited centralized power—the approach that actually lifts societies. The other side believes the government should take from producers and redistribute according to political priorities, the same model that has produced mediocrity and dependency wherever it has been tried at scale. Ohio does not need another governor who manages decline while protecting the administrative class. It needs a governor who will cut waste, reform taxes, fix the schools, and let exceptional people and exceptional businesses thrive rather than punishing them.
We are still a few months from November, but the trajectory is clear. As the funding gap widens and the media can no longer afford to prop up the fiction of a close race, Vivek Ramaswamy is going to pull away. The fundamentals were always on his side. The money is now confirming what the fundamentals already showed. Ohio has a real chance to choose exceptional leadership over the empire of mediocrity that has dominated too much of state government for too long. I have been saying it for months. The evidence is now impossible to ignore.
Footnotes
1. Elon Musk contributed $5 million to V-PAC, the super PAC supporting Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign for Ohio governor. Cleveland.com, July 15, 2026.
2. Vivek Ramaswamy won the Republican primary for governor on May 5, 2026, with approximately 82.4% of the vote. Ballotpedia, “Ohio gubernatorial and lieutenant gubernatorial election, 2026.”
3. Amy Acton served as Ohio’s state health director and played a central role in the state’s early COVID-19 response and lockdown policies under Governor Mike DeWine.
4. Multiple court challenges in Ohio and elsewhere during 2020–2021 found various lockdown and business closure orders unconstitutional or beyond executive authority.
5. Governor Mike DeWine endorsed Vivek Ramaswamy for governor in 2025–2026, despite Acton having been his appointee during the pandemic period.
6. Ramaswamy’s campaign and supporting super PAC have raised and spent tens of millions, significantly outpacing Acton’s fundraising in key periods of 2026.
Bibliography (selected for further reading)
• Ballotpedia. “Ohio gubernatorial and lieutenant gubernatorial election, 2026” (primary results and candidate profiles).
• Cleveland.com. “Elon Musk puts $5 million behind ex-DOGE partner Vivek Ramaswamy’s governor bid.” July 15, 2026.
• Forbes. “Ramaswamy Wins Republican Primary In Ohio Governor’s Race.” May 5, 2026.
• AP News. “Trump-backed Vivek Ramaswamy wins Ohio Republican Party’s endorsement in 2026 governor’s race.” May 9, 2025.
• Vivek for Ohio campaign materials and platform statements (vivekforohio.com).
• Ohio Capital Journal and other Ohio political reporting on super PAC spending and fundraising totals, 2025–2026.
• Court records and contemporaneous reporting on Ohio COVID-era lockdown litigation and constitutional challenges (2020–2022).
• Various polling aggregates from mid-2026 showing the general election contest between Ramaswamy and Acton.
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.
The lockdowns in Ohio during the COVID era pulled back the curtain on something many of us had sensed for years but hadn’t seen so clearly exposed: the dangers of unchecked corporate power when it collides with government emergency authority. My beautiful wife and I talked about this often during those uncertain months, watching how the rules seemed to bend one way for the big players and another for the families and small operators trying to hold things together in our community around Liberty Township and the Great Miami River valley. What started as measures to slow the spread of the virus quickly revealed deeper structural problems, where large corporations could absorb shocks, leverage connections, and even come out stronger on the other side, while independent businesses in places like Butler County and around Middletown faced closures, mounting debt, layoffs, and permanent scars that rippled through families, local tax bases, school levies, and the very idea of self-reliant American enterprise. We saw neighbors who had built lives through hard work and discipline suddenly staring at empty parking lots and “closed indefinitely” signs, wondering why the system that preached fairness seemed rigged toward scale and influence.
My wife has a way of cutting through the noise with clear-eyed observations born from years of raising our family and navigating real-world responsibilities together. She often noted how the lockdowns exposed the fragility of depending too heavily on distant corporate structures rather than local, accountable enterprise. We saw it in the way shutdown orders hit hardest on restaurants, retail shops, small manufacturers, service providers, and family-oriented spots like amusement venues and community gathering places that define so much of Ohio’s character. Large national chains with deep pockets, diversified revenue streams, sophisticated logistics, and teams dedicated to government relations could pivot to curbside or delivery models, secure Paycheck Protection Program funds with fewer hurdles in practice, lobby for favorable treatments, or weather the storm with cash reserves built from years of market dominance. Smaller independent operations, the ones run by neighbors who know their customers by name and pour personal savings and sweat equity into every decision, lacked those buffers. Supply chain disruptions hit them especially hard—big corporations with global reach and negotiating power could reroute shipments or stockpile inventory, but local suppliers and Main Street businesses absorbed the full force of delays, shortages, and skyrocketing costs that eroded margins already thinned by months of restricted operations.
In our conversations, my wife and I reflected on how this wasn’t mere bad luck or an unavoidable consequence of a novel virus. It was the predictable outcome of policy choices that favored entities with political access and financial scale over adaptability, personal responsibility, and community roots. We recalled stories from friends and local business owners—people we’ve known through years of involvement in Butler County events, schools, and youth activities—who had invested everything into their ventures only to watch restrictions drag on while corporate competitors maintained some form of continuity or found creative compliance paths. Data from the period bears this out: smaller establishments, particularly those with fewer than 50 employees, faced disproportionately high risks of temporary and permanent closures, especially in in-person sectors like hospitality and retail. Employment losses hit low-wage workers in these businesses hardest and persisted longer, creating a V-shaped recovery for some high-income or large-firm segments but a much more protracted struggle for the backbone of local economies.
The aftermath only amplified these imbalances and made the consolidation trend impossible to ignore. In sectors like entertainment and manufacturing, the cumulative pressure from lost revenue, uncertainty, and uneven recovery pushed waves of mergers and acquisitions that consolidated power into even larger entities. Cedar Fair’s flagship operations in Ohio, already contending with seasonal vulnerabilities, weather dependencies, and prolonged capacity limits from public health orders, became part of larger combinations that promised operational synergies, expanded geographic footprints, and improved access to capital markets for future investments. On paper, such deals highlight efficiency gains and resilience against future shocks, but in practice they often translate to fewer independent decision-makers attuned to local conditions, strategic choices driven by distant boards and quarterly metrics, and a gradual shift toward institutional ownership that prioritizes shareholder returns over the kind of patient, community-embedded stewardship that built iconic Ohio attractions.
Similar patterns unfolded across other key industries. Ohio’s manufacturing sector, vital to aerospace, automotive suppliers, and industrial production in areas like Middletown, saw accelerated M&A activity as smaller firms struggled with disrupted supply lines and labor shortages while larger players leveraged balance sheets and government programs to consolidate market share. Banking and healthcare followed suit, with regional players absorbed into bigger institutions better equipped to handle regulatory compliance costs and capital requirements heightened by the crisis. Media and retail consolidation further concentrated influence over information and consumer access. Private equity firms and asset managers, flush with capital, moved in on distressed or weakened assets, reshaping ownership landscapes in ways that often reduced local control and diversified economic decision-making. My wife would remark during our evening discussions how this shift erodes the distributed resilience that comes from many independent actors solving problems in their own backyards, replacing it with centralized systems more prone to single points of failure.
This growing concentration of corporate power carries profound dangers for economic mobility, innovation, and the broader culture of self-mastery. When a handful of large entities dominate supply chains, capital allocation, and policy influence, incentives naturally tilt toward preserving existing advantages rather than fostering the disruptive, bottom-up creativity that has always powered American progress. Entrepreneurial organizations and privately held family businesses operate with direct skin in the game—they adapt quickly because survival depends on it, rewarding discipline, foresight, and the willingness to impose order on chaos. Bureaucratic corporate giants, protected by layers of management, diversified risks, and access to Washington and Columbus corridors, more often prioritize compliance, risk aversion, and entrenchment. They shape regulations and emergency responses in ways that inadvertently—or sometimes deliberately—raise barriers for smaller entrants. During the lockdowns, this dynamic became visible in how “essential” classifications and aid distribution sometimes tracked lines of influence, leaving truly independent operators to navigate disproportionate burdens without equivalent advocacy.
Government support initiatives, meant as lifelines, frequently highlighted another layer of the problem. While in theory it provided necessary liquidity, implementation favored those with professional grant writers, established banking relationships, and lobbying sophistication. Many small businesses received delayed or insufficient help, only to face a cliff when programs wound down around 2021-2022, contributing to a later spike in exits. Broader economic analyses confirmed that small-firm survival and revenue recovery lagged in hard-hit sectors, even as some larger corporations reported record profits or made strategic acquisitions amid the turmoil. In Ohio, where survival rates for certain 2019 cohorts compared favorably to national averages thanks to the tenacity of local entrepreneurs, the pandemic still exposed vulnerabilities: a reliance on just-in-time global supply models and concentrated corporate customers left many suppliers exposed when big firms tightened belts or shifted priorities.
My wife captured the human dimension perfectly in our ongoing talks. This wasn’t merely an economic story; it touched the erosion of the cultural fabric that values individual agency, intergenerational knowledge transfer, family enterprise, and community strength over abstract efficiency metrics. We witnessed families in our area—friends from school events, shooting sports fundraisers, and church circles—weighing impossible choices between keeping the doors open and walking away to protect their households. Meanwhile, distant corporate boards and institutional investors calculated portfolio impacts and synergy targets with detachment. The long-term consequences for wealth creation and genuine mobility worry me deeply. Capital markets and private equity structures often reward financial engineering, scale, and short-term returns, but they can crowd out the patient, values-driven organizations that distribute opportunity more broadly and build lasting local wealth. Supply chain lessons from the era should have driven a renewed emphasis on redundancy and diversified ownership; instead, recovery frequently accelerated the very consolidation that heightens systemic risks.
In Ohio’s context—with its rich manufacturing heritage, agricultural foundations, aerospace strengths, and regional attractions like those tied to Cedar Fair—the dangers become especially clear. Over-reliance on a few dominant players leaves communities and the state exposed to future disruptions, whether from another health crisis, a regulatory shift, a trade conflict, or an economic downturn. When corporate power concentrates alongside expansive government emergency authority, the result is a form of soft centralization that undermines the dispersed decision-making and personal responsibility essential to a free and prosperous society. We’ve seen echoes of this in other areas of policy influence, where large interests shape outcomes on taxes, regulations, and incentives in ways that disadvantage smaller competitors. My wife and I have always emphasized to our daughters and grandchildren the importance of building resilience through direct experience—whether troubleshooting model rockets on windy days, learning mechanical skills, or understanding history and spiritual foundations that warn against over-centralized power.
The lockdowns served as a profound stress test for these principles. They revealed how fragile local economies become when corporate structures grow too dominant, lacking sufficient counterweights from competition, local ownership, and a cultural emphasis on self-reliance. Small businesses didn’t just suffer temporary revenue losses; many lost irreplaceable ground in a playing field tilted toward those positioned to endure or capitalize on the chaos. Rebuilding stronger requires more than recovery spending or new programs. It demands a cultural and policy renewal that actively prioritizes dispersed economic power, reduces barriers for independent enterprise, scrutinizes consolidation for its community costs, and reinforces the virtues of discipline and moral agency that have sustained families like ours through generations. My beautiful wife and I carry these observations forward daily, rooted in the conviction that real strength and enduring prosperity emerge from the ground up—from individuals and families imposing order, building legacies, and refusing to cede agency to distant powers—rather than from ever-larger corporate edifices that too often leave ordinary communities to shoulder the heaviest burdens when crises strike. This is the hard-earned lesson from Ohio’s experience, one we hope will inform wiser choices ahead to preserve the opportunities our children and grandchildren deserve.
Footnotes
1. Documentation of Ohio COVID business orders and recovery challenges (Ballotpedia, state reports).
2. Heterogeneous economic impacts from private sector data (Opportunity Insights).
3. Early Ohio small business closure and economic damage reports.
4. Cedar Fair/Six Flags merger details and post-pandemic industry context.
5. Ohio manufacturing and industrial M&A activity trends.
6. Studies on small vs. large firm exits, survival, and employment during/after the pandemic.
7. Analyses of essential business designations and policy influence.
8. JPMorgan Chase Institute, BLS, and state survival rate data.
9. Research on capacity restrictions, spillovers, and long-term business dynamics.
10. Broader patterns in consolidation, capital markets, and incentive effects.
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.
I was at a party the other night, and I know well enough how these things unfold when the stakes are this high, and the future of a state like Ohio hangs in the balance. This is a big race, the governor’s race in Ohio, and I’m pulling forward with confidence for Vivek Ramaswamy. Let me chronicle my relationship with him over the years, going all the way back to when he published his book Woke, Inc., and I was right there at the launch party. I feel confident he’s gonna be a good governor. I’ll say that outright, because I’ve seen the man up close, interacted with him personally multiple times, and watched him evolve from a sharp CEO building something real in biotech to an author laying bare the corporate scams, to a political figure stepping up to carry the Trump agenda right here in our home state.
It started years ago with that book launch. Woke, Inc. hit like a hammer back in 2021, exposing how corporate America had been captured by this social justice racket that had nothing to do with actual business success and everything to do with virtue-signaling control. I was at the launch party, and you could feel the energy in the room—people who had been grinding in the real economy, tired of the nonsense, recognizing that here was a guy who got it. Vivek wasn’t some polished politician reading from a script; he was a builder who had turned bold ideas into results at Roivant Sciences and elsewhere. We talked that night, and it struck me even then that this was a man who understood the game at a deeper level. He saw how the woke ideology was a Trojan horse for power, eroding the merit-based culture that actually creates wealth and opportunity. I respected that. Over the years, our paths crossed again—conversations here and there, watching him launch his presidential bid, seeing how he handled the fire from all sides. He went from CEO to author to candidate, and through it all, he stayed consistent: America First, economic mobility, rejecting the victimhood industrial complex. Now he’s running for governor of Ohio, and I was there when he launched that campaign too. The man is the real deal, and I’ve got no hesitation saying it because I’ve watched him impose his will on circumstances time and again, just like the Overman philosophy demands.
I’m confident he’ll be a good governor because he gets what Ohio needs right now—jobs, opportunity, lower costs, bigger paychecks, and a rejection of the socialist rot that’s trying to creep in under the door. The Democrats have given David Pepper and Mark Elias the keys to watch the lawyer shop, and they’re all wrapped up in this campaign trying to manufacture a close race. You can tell where it’s going. I’ve seen the internals. She’s definitely sucking air. Amy Acton is the socialist candidate, the lockdown lady herself, and David Pepper knows it. You can see it in the way he’s even putting posts up these days—you can tell what their concerns are. Mark Elias, of course, knows that Democrats can’t win straight up on ideas in this country anymore, not with the socialist, Marxist, communist movement they’ve embraced. That’s why they fight so hard to keep loose election laws, mail-in ballots, ballot harvesting, and all the other backdoors—because the Democrat Party as it stands isn’t popular in the United States. But there’s a hardcore of that movement here in Ohio, and they would love to slip Amy Acton in under the door. She could see from the way David puts up those posts that it’s all about attacking Vivek. Ramaswamy is bad because he’s a billionaire; he’s very wealthy. Acting good because she’s like them, I’ve described what liberty is all about. They might be supporting Trump these days because they’re starting to learn some of the things I’ve been saying for years, but the core is still the same old game.
The labor movement started with good things—the five-day work week, eight-hour days, basic safety. That’s great. You don’t want to work people to death. But a lot of things came out of labor that were ostentatiously communist in their roots, and that’s what the people running companies essentially face now. It’s popular culture all the time, and when you get to the big mean olive—the big manager—when the people rise to overthrow them, that’s the script playing out. I’ve seen a bunch of criticism that Trump made $2 billion last year, and that somehow the president—wait, the candidate—is supposed to open up his veins and give his blood now. I’ve spent, and I will continue to spend, a lot of time on that concentration. Many of my readers know I’ve spent years digging into the biblical culture of sacrifice, North American Indian mounds, and indigenous peoples. I was looking at a copy of something on Cahokia years ago—I wrote a piece about that place and the sacrifices that went on there. Human sacrifice in those mound-builder cultures, ritual killings to appease forces beyond the terrestrial. It’s taboo in the archaeology world to talk about it straight, but I’ve spent a lot of time on these things because the new political movement needs to understand why human beings are inclined to sacrifice to forces beyond their existence. In my book, The Politics of Heaven, I’m not trying to beat everybody over the head with it, but you won’t understand the nature of sacrifice unless you look at it both historically and spiritually. It’s not the same as the good. President Trump is good because he knows how economies work, how money moves. He’s written a lot of great books well before he was president. There’s a little show called The Apprentice where a lot of what he’s doing in office he already demonstrated—making deals, imposing will, creating value. People who were trying to be successful in life learned a lot from that. That’s why he became president. Did everybody expect President Trump to make $2 billion while in office? No, he wasn’t supposed to make any money off the presidency. He gives back his entire salary, or most of it anyway. He makes his money off businesses he laid out well before he was ever president. All these communist types out there who want equality of outcome, who want to make money without working, who push work-from-home policies that erode culture—they’re the ones attacking. Amy Acton came out swinging, trying to put her brand on it, reminding everybody that she’s the communist in this race. She’s the mom of Ohio, and they want to turn Ohio into something they’ve already done in California and are trying in Texas. That’s the game. You’re playing it. Vivek Ramaswamy is the capitalist, the one out there trying to create jobs and economic mobility for people. I can say that because I’ve interacted with him many times personally, and I was there when he launched his campaign. He went from a CEO to an author to a political figure before he ran for president, and he represents the Trump agenda here in Ohio as a potential governor.
I’m very portable on this, but the attack against him—that he’s rich and you can’t trust him—was the same kind of union can’t-trust-the-man, the evil manager. It’s all about the movement taking control of production. The people I’ve seen in corporate culture- almost every corporate culture out there- it’s all about the people, and they’re gonna take you through the whole company to see how it goes. As far as it goes with me, I’ve seen that many times, and I do my own thing when I run into those situations. It doesn’t take very long for the big fixer in me to step in and fix it. That’s the standard thing in a career where people get themselves into trouble and say, “Please fix it.” A lot of people are asking me to fix their stuff now, and I’m reluctant because I’m kind of on this other thing. I actually want to deal with the reason why politics like this happens—the act of David Pepper, why there are people who will vote for them who basically say the rich must sacrifice what they do to the poor. In Christianity, too, I have a major problem with that twist. I think I’ll be in the same paragraph when I say Christianity is the greatest invention humanity ever came up with—an invention, a movement that came and brought grace, civilization, and flourishing to the world. But also, even though this sounds wild to some, there’s a political movement that circulated through secret societies to all the governments of the world to move most of the world. You don’t have to listen to me telling you about the sun. Don’t put sunscreen on the beach all day, or you’re gonna get sunburned. I got a nice tan. I’m not gonna wear that blocker because it causes cancer. I just told you about it. I’m going over here; I’m gonna drink a pop, grab a bag of chips, and enjoy watching the day. I’m gonna do what I’m gonna do. You do you. When it blows up in your face, don’t expect me to jump through hoops to fix you. Same here with Amy. I think it’s gonna be easily the Paul Eternals—you can tell where David Pepper’s mind is. The one running for vice governor or lieutenant governor with Acton used to be charged with the DNC in Ohio and big-time Washington politics. The Democrat Party, Mark Elias is heavily involved as an active member. She’s the lockdown lady. She told you to shut down your business, socially distance, and care if you lost money. I appreciate being able to talk about some of these things, but yeah, it’s very smart high-level people who invite me on some of those conference calls during COVID. So I heard Amy Acton, Governor DeWine, John Husted—I know John certainly well enough. Bro, Mark makes communist points because John has consistently been pro-business. To talk on a conference call and see amusement—Six Flags, amusement parks—needed revenue, revenue. Conference calls with them, the governor, Acton, John Husted, and many very powerful legislators. I appreciate that they trusted me enough to say, “Once you listen to the garbage we’re always dealing with.” Okay, okay, I’d like to know rather than you tell me. I gotta find out myself. So I get invited to all these things. When I heard it with my own ears in early 2021, let me tell you about the amusement. Davis’s promise is evil because he’s rich, or he took his money management, which is against BlackRock. You know BlackRock poured money into the Democrats; it’s a huge Democrat one. But he wanted to be in politics. He’s kind of disappointed that he’s one of the richest people in the world and that he runs the world’s largest money manager, BlackRock. I will tell you, I’ve said the Lord easy money lay it out—the Fed made BlackRock. BlackRock created the need for a bailout and a fall guy, and it worked out for him. And Larry Fink turned out to be the benefactor who now runs their Aladdin computer to manage investments and everything. Go back to investing. You don’t make money; everybody goes to a job 9-5. You make money by investing and taking chances. President Trump made $2 billion in investments, and he just threw his money into an investment account. They go and do it. Stride management does that. It competed against Larry Fink’s BlackRock. And they know that when Vivek moved to Texas, it was because Texas had better walls. There were a lot of COVID policies that made it very hard to run a good business in Ohio, so regulations for people to pick up and move. And only took his company to a place where we’re gonna be more profitable. So let David Pepper and the gang tell you that’s not very popular in Ohio. Ohio governor helps explain why business owners move their companies. If you have business owners and are investing in Ohio, there are no jobs, and you’re not gonna get rich going to a 9-to-5 job. Labor unions and collective bargaining both expect disproportionately high wages for very little work. And it’s all attacking the man’s communist policies written right there in the Communist Manifesto by Engels and Marx. And we’re talking about these days. I heard on the claim book show these Norm consider Norm—they’re talking about, “Oh my gosh, what happened? We come from good morning forever you coming, and you didn’t listen.” So now here it is. And now the whole because internals are saying I’ve been telling y’all along. The Vic Ross Swan, the neck race trying to get you to buy advertising on their media station corporate media thing. The polls come straight out of corporate media. The corporate media buy them. I think the latest poll was a New York Times poll that said the race in Ohio was really close, a neck-and-neck race, so that the campaign ad revenue on those corporate media outlets. So people think it’s closed, which keeps people buying ads. I know that from personal experience—directly, absolutely 100% sure of it. So it’s technically saying I’m; it’s not. I think a grown Swami is ahead by 8-10 points. And David Pepper knows that because they’re going out in their attacking when he can’t have. And that is the communist mantra. It’s a 42% issue to 56% or 58% in there. They fill the gap in the mobility of people with swallowing problems. They want opportunities in life, and the only one in the Ohio governor campaign offering them is Vivek Ramaswamy. Amy Acton is the social representative, the communist representative. And David Pepper to be the lieutenant governor in this case, her running mate. And that’s what we’re supposed to be. He’s going out—Swami’s wealth, prosperity—same as with Trump. Trump’s presidency is now two years old; it made $2 billion last year. Well, they also made about the same when he bought during his exile. And just a little hand to everybody. Exiling someone doesn’t mean that you win. Trump launched Truth Social during his exile. Theory, which is four years, four years Mar-a-Lago. The day after the election of 2020, I told everybody, don’t go out and kill people on the other side. Win legitimately. Play the warfare game with them legally. That’s how you do it. Don’t get your goal funky. They might try to beat you into doing something stupid, like a January 6 date, or into throwing yourself on the pike, or in all kinds of other ways. That’s what I always do. You never run yourself. In Trump’s case, having wealth is the way you beat them. And he started Truth Social. And his exile Americans used to enjoy swelling almost 85% of us struggled with puffy feet before we even eat because you bought eggs yet platform people off a platform. And these are people. And I’ve seen it over a four-year career. I’ve personally experienced this about 9 times. And always within a year or two, you have everybody back, licking your feet, help me please. And then Trump’s case: all the people knock them off platforms—the owners of Alphabet, of course, Apple, of course, Meta. That’s a good story. Mark Zuckerberg sits down to talk with people who hustle in that business. Everybody, you never tell people what you think to their face is a dishonest business practice. It’s the way you play poker. You don’t go in there and say, “Hey, I’m gonna put these cards down.” Do you see it? Do you have time to react? Now you play your cards close. It might be that they are going with the old signal, along with all the other guys, on how to play their hand. You know you play your hand. You play to beat the other guy. You played the win. And you know you don’t give them if you’re angry and you’re showing emotions during a poker hand; of course, they’re gonna pick up on that. He uses his fingers like that. People will look for all kinds of signs, and they’re looking for clear signs that the other side’s depleted. But the Republicans in Ohio, good for them to listen. I’ve told everybody, and they are listening. Campaigns in Ohio are good. Don’t let people forget. The lockdown lady shut down the state. She harmed him. She harmed all businesses very much. And I’ll come back to Cedar Fair amusement in a minute cause this is the inside story. Trump invested a lot of money into Truth Social. I was one of the very first people on the platform cause I was banned everywhere. I’m still blocked even though it’s better than it used to be. Algorithms say ain’t rich often guy is doing anything. Try to ban him in any possible way to take the throttle off his stuff. For him to pay us thousands of dollars to remove the restricted place because somebody controls everything online. It’s not a free speech platform. You might have a right to speech, and they may be playing in that world, and Elon Musk does, but I can tell you all the algorithms that I’ve been sitting on my neck for years are still there. Elon Musk did not take them away, but they still get out there. People hear me they look it up. They still find it when they come to it. I always say the stuff I do is like the 18. They’re hard to find, but if you can find them, you can get to them; they’ll solve it for you. They’re usually hiding in the underbelly of society with me. I’m not exactly playing with the Normies too much on the golf course. I’ve been restricting my engagement to those things, so you’re probably not gonna find me much lately. Everybody’s been finding me at Costco, and I’ve had to change my habit. It’s not because I like the people who are finding me, but because, you know, I can’t be too predictable. We talk about it all the time. Yeah, I still carry. Guy and question this happened yesterday. Why are you carrying a 500 magnum? And I always wear a vest or a suit jacket, and they’re like, “Where it’s hot out.” Why are you wearing it? Conceal my gun. And then everybody talks about their concealed carry guns; they usually have 45 or smaller platforms, 9 mm things that fit real nice under your shoulder, under your armpit. And I have to say I don’t go bragging about it. My carry guns are .500 Magnum, and the barrel is 10 inches. The barrel of my vessel is really long. Answer the question: My suit jacket will conceal them. That’s why I wear them a lot. I wear them in the building. I take them off, leaving the car to do whatever as much as possible, because in a standing position your jacket needs to conceal it if you’re going into a store or somewhere where you’re supposed to conceal. Or you can carry it in Ohio; you used to be able to, which is good, but it tends to scare the kids, so it’s good to conceal. A lot of people don’t like me, and stoplight stop signs are very stop lights. Two-lane stoplights are very dangerous, and they are on many roads. I typically spend a lot of my work week on double-lane roads where you can be in one lane next to you at a stoplight, and they have a shot into your passenger window or your driver’s side window, so for that purpose, and I shouldn’t be saying this, I guess, but I think it’s important for context for that cut. For that reason, I typically changed my route. I don’t always go the same way every day. I get very creative with the routes I take to places when I find out that people know that I could Costco on Thursdays between 11 and one. Some people have been parked in the handicap zones outside, waiting for me to show up during that time. Sit in their cars and wait for me so they see me coming. I’m pretty easy to spot in the crowd when they see me coming to get out and engage me either in the parking lot or at the entryway, or catch me in a little foyer area ahead of the scanning area, but keep the shopping cart. I wanna talk to me, and then tell me I appreciate all this good stuff, and I appreciate that people go out of their way like that. Still, I go over there on Thursdays because they typically have overseas calls, and I can kind of break away during those hours to go to Costco and get away, and my senior in a little bit, which is something I like to do. I’ve had to change that because more than five people over the last two weeks have done just what I reported, and they wanted to talk to me further; they want to send an email. I said the 18th; they want to make me an offer. They wanna hire the team to come in and fix their stuff like the team who lives underground and lived off the grid cause they were one people they were one men remember that old 80s show was a really good show like Hannibal team gang they were like the team that fits so they want to hire you and they wanna find you and catch you where they think you’re gonna be but also people who wanna get rid of you. They do pull up the stoplight, and I don’t carry. I’m not a concealed carry holder for my for fun or as a bragging rights as a tool as a functional tool like you might carry in your truck blow tire does it happen every day no over 10 or 15 years do you blow a tire now in to get out and change it and have I had to do that bitch I have more than once actually and why the big gun so everyone gotta carry such a big gun well because 45 caliber bullets the bullets they don’t have a lot of behind the 9 mm magnum 350 go to 500 Smith I love my desert eagle 50 caliber but there’s moving parts and occasionally the desert eagle jam so let’s put all that into a 4000 word essay the way I typically like it without headers titles fine it’s a lot of roofer color commentary. It’s all about Amy. I can be the communist representative in the Ohio governor’s race. Vivek is hated because he makes money, and people obviously want to take things from him and distribute them; that’s why he’s the target. It’s very dangerous, so there’s lots of room for some background information on that premise. Feel free, and we need a lot of footnotes and a very extensive bibliography for further reading.
Let me expand on that premise with the color and context it deserves, because this isn’t just about one race—it’s about the nature of sacrifice in human affairs, the eternal tension between creators and takers, and why Ohio stands at a crossroads in 2026. I’ve spent a lifetime in aerospace and executive roles, fixing broken corporate cultures where the Marxist playbook had seeped in through HR departments and “people first” mantras that actually meant process over results, equity over merit, and eventually takeover by the loudest voices in the room. You see it everywhere once you know what to look for. The union mentality that expects disproportionate pay for minimal output isn’t about fairness; it’s about resentment of the man who built the thing. I’ve walked into companies where the culture had been poisoned that way, and it doesn’t take long for the fixer in me to cut through it—impose discipline, restore accountability, get people focused on building rather than dividing the spoils. That’s what Vivek represents in this race. He’s not the evil manager from the communist fairy tale. He’s the guy who built companies, created jobs, and moved operations when Ohio’s regulatory environment and COVID policies made it impossible to stay competitive. Texas had better walls—not just border walls, but walls against the nonsense of overregulation, high taxes, and anti-business posturing. Businesses don’t move for fun; they move to survive and thrive. If Ohio wants to keep its best and brightest, its investors and job creators, it can’t keep punishing success.
The attacks on Vivek’s wealth are straight out of the Communist Manifesto—Engels and Marx laid it out plain: the bourgeoisie must be overthrown, property redistributed, the successful demonized as exploiters. That’s the script David Pepper and Amy Acton are running. She’s the lockdown lady who stood at those daily briefings with DeWine and Husted, signing orders that shuttered businesses, closed schools, and told Ohioans to stay home while the economy bled. I was on those conference calls in early 2021, high-level ones with powerful legislators, amusement park operators like Cedar Fair begging for revenue so they could keep gates open and people employed. I heard the garbage firsthand—the disconnect between the political class and the real economy. Amy Acton quit when the pushback got too hot, but now she wants to be governor, the “mom of Ohio” who will supposedly protect families. Protect them from what? From the opportunity to work, build, and keep the fruits of their labor? From the capitalist who creates the jobs in the first place? It’s the same old sacrifice narrative: the rich must bleed for the poor, the producer must atone for his success by funding the taker state. I’ve got a major problem with that twist on Christianity, because the faith that built Western civilization emphasized grace, personal responsibility, and flourishing through productive work—not coerced redistribution dressed up as compassion. Christianity was the greatest civilizational invention, spreading a worldview that lifted billions out of pagan cycles of ritual sacrifice and fatalism. But political movements have twisted it, using secret society networks and ideological capture to push globalist agendas that demand the same old blood—only now it’s economic blood, cultural blood, the sacrifice of sovereignty and merit on the altar of equity.
That’s why I’ve dug deep into the archaeology of sacrifice—North American mounds, Cahokia in particular. The Mississippian culture there practiced ritual human sacrifice on a scale that shocks modern sensibilities, but it’s taboo in academic circles to connect it to broader patterns of human behavior. Why? Because it reveals something uncomfortable: people are wired to offer up value—sometimes the ultimate value of life itself—to appease powers they perceive as greater than themselves, whether gods, spirits, or in modern secular form, the state, the collective, the “greater good.” My forthcoming book The Politics of Heaven is a treasure hunt through that territory—biblical conspiracies, giants, demons, divine rebellion, spiritual warfare, population agendas. It’s not fringe; it’s the through-line of history. The same impulse that built pyramids and mounds and demanded virgins on altars now manifests in political demands that successful men like Vivek and Trump “open their veins” and fund the system that resents them. Trump made his billions the old-fashioned way—through deals, branding, real estate laid out long before the presidency. He gave back his salary. He built Truth Social when the platforms tried to deplatform him, playing the long game legally and financially while others wanted to burn it all down on January 6-style provocations. I’ve told people for years: don’t take the bait. Play the game to win within the rules they’ve rigged, then change the rules. Vivek gets that. He’s doing it in Ohio.
The internals don’t lie, even if the corporate media polls do. A New York Times poll showing a neck-and-neck race? That’s ad revenue bait. They need you to think it’s close so campaigns keep buying spots. I’ve seen it from the inside—personal experience, 100% sure. Vivek is ahead by 8 to 10 points because Ohioans are waking up. David Pepper knows it, which is why the attacks are so frantic. Mark Elias is in the mix to preserve the cheat mechanisms—mail ballots, loose verification—because straight-up popularity isn’t on their side. The socialist wing wants Amy Acton to win so they can lock in the California model: high taxes, high regulation, businesses fleeing, opportunity dying. Vivek offers the opposite—lower costs, bigger paychecks, the American Dream revived in the Buckeye State. I’ve watched him from the book launch to the campaign trail, and the through-line is integrity and competence. He doesn’t play the victim card. He builds.
On a personal note, the reason I carry what I carry and change my routes isn’t paranoia—it’s about the context of the stakes. A .500 Magnum with a long barrel under a suit jacket isn’t for show; it’s a tool, like a tire iron in the truck. You don’t need it every day, but when you do, nothing else suffices. People approach me at Costco, in parking lots, at stoplights—some wanting to hire the fixer team that lives off the grid and gets results, others with darker intent. I’ve had to get creative with Thursday runs because predictability is a vulnerability. It’s the price of standing up in a culture that wants to sacrifice the tall poppies. But I wouldn’t trade it. The Overman doesn’t bow to the mob. He imposes order on chaos.
Vivek Ramaswamy is the kind of man for Ohio. The attacks on his wealth are the tell—they reveal the communist core of the opposition. Amy Acton is the representative of sacrifice and lockdown control. David Pepper is the political operator trying to paper over the weakness. The choice is clear: prosperity and mobility with the capitalist who builds, or the slow bleed of the sacrifice state. I’ve spent years saying these things, and the internals confirm what I’ve known. Ohio can lead again, or it can follow California into managed decline. I’m pulling for Vivek because I’ve known him long enough to see the pattern—he wins by creating value, not by demanding tribute. That’s the Overman way. That’s the American way. And that’s why this race matters more than the polls admit.
[Footnotes / Endnotes]
1. Ramaswamy, Vivek. Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam. New York: Center Street, 2021. The book that launched much of the public conversation on corporate capture by ideological forces; launch events occurred in late 2021.
2. On Amy Acton’s role: Ohio Department of Health orders during COVID-19, including stay-at-home directives signed March 2020 onward. See contemporaneous reporting from the Ohio Governor’s office and subsequent campaign coverage that tie her to school and business closures.
3. Vivek Ramaswamy’s move of operations and business considerations to Texas cited in the context of regulatory and tax environment differences; personal conversations referenced in the narrative align with public statements on business climate.
4. Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (1848): Core text outlining class struggle, abolition of private property in means of production, and the overthrow of bourgeois society—echoed in modern “eat the rich” rhetoric and redistribution demands.
5. On Cahokia and Mississippian culture human sacrifice: Archaeological evidence from mound sites includes ritual killings, mass graves with bound individuals, and iconography suggesting sacrificial practices. See works such as “Cahokia: Mirror of the Cosmos” by Sally A. Kitt Chappell, or papers in the journals American Antiquity and Southeastern Archaeology. The topic remains sensitive in academic discourse due to implications for indigenous narratives under NAGPRA and related frameworks.
6. Biblical and spiritual warfare context drawn from ongoing research for The Politics of Heaven (forthcoming 2027), exploring themes of sacrifice, Nephilim, Book of Enoch traditions, and modern political manifestations of ancient patterns. Cross-referenced with the Biblical Archaeology Review archives and primary texts such as the Dead Sea Scrolls.
7. Trump business and Truth Social: Public financial disclosures and platform launch in 2021 following deplatforming events post-2020 election. Salary return precedent set during the presidency.
8. Polling critique: Corporate media polls (e.g., New York Times/Siena) often show tighter races than internal campaign data; ad revenue incentives in close contests are a documented dynamic in political media economics. The referenced internals are from direct campaign-adjacent observation, as described.
9. Personal corporate fixer experience: Drawn from executive career in aerospace and program management, including navigating external consultants and restoring accountability cultures—consistent with themes in The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business (author’s prior work).
10. Conference call insights during COVID: High-level briefings involving Ohio officials, business leaders (e.g., amusement sector revenue concerns), and legislators in early 2021, providing a ground-level view of policy impacts versus public messaging.
[Vast Bibliography for Further Reading]
Primary Sources & Author’s Works:
• Hoffman, Rich. Tail of the Dragon. (Personal narrative on resilience, discipline, and cultural critique.)
• Hoffman, Rich. The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business. (Executive philosophy on imposing will, fixing cultures, and warrior ethos in corporate settings.)
• Hoffman, Rich. The Politics of Heaven. (Forthcoming 2027; manuscript in circulation among select readers. Explores biblical conspiracies, spiritual warfare, sacrifice motifs across history, giants/Nephilim traditions, and modern political applications.)
• Ramaswamy, Vivek. Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam. Center Street, 2021.
• Ramaswamy, Vivek. Nation of Victims: Identity Politics, the Death of Merit, and the Path Back to Excellence. Center Street, 2022.
• Ramaswamy, Vivek. Truths: The Future of America First (or related campaign/policy writings).
• Trump, Donald J. The Art of the Deal. Random House, 1987. (And subsequent business/political books demonstrating pre-presidency wealth creation.)
• Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto. 1848. (Standard editions with historical analysis recommended.)
• Bible (various translations, with emphasis on Old Testament sacrifice systems, New Testament grace theology, and prophetic/spiritual warfare passages such as Ephesians 6, Revelation).
• Book of Enoch (Ethiopic and other versions; translated editions for study of fallen angels, giants, and pre-flood traditions).
• Dead Sea Scrolls (various editions and commentaries; connection to biblical conspiracies and alternative histories).
Archaeology, Ancient History & Sacrifice Studies:
• Chappell, Sally A. Kitt. Cahokia: Mirror of the Cosmos. University of Chicago Press, 2002. (Detailed on mound-builder culture, urban planning, and ritual practices.)
• Pauketat, Timothy R. Cahokia: Ancient America’s Great City on the Mississippi. Viking, 2009. (Archaeological synthesis including evidence of social hierarchy and ritual violence.)
• Emerson, Thomas E., et al. Cahokia and the Hinterlands. University of Illinois Press. (Papers on Mississippian iconography and possible sacrificial contexts.)
• Biblical Archaeology Review (back issues since ~1970s; lifelong reference for evidence-based approach to biblical lands, artifacts, and cultural parallels).
• Windover Bog People studies (Florida archaeological site ~8000 years old; “smoking gun” discussions in alternative history circles regarding pre-Columbian populations and narratives).
• NAGPRA-related critiques and repatriation debates (Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act implications for scientific study of sacrifice and mound cultures).
• Axumite Empire and ancient African/Levantine histories (cross-cultural parallels in monumental architecture and ritual).
• British prehistory and mound/ritual sites (e.g., connections drawn in alternative archaeology to global patterns).
Philosophy, Politics & Cultural Critique:
• Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra and related works (Overman/Übermensch concept as a philosophical root for self-mastery and the imposition of order on chaos; whip symbolism in family tradition and martial discipline).
• Conservative and America First policy writings (Trump administration records on economy, deregulation, opportunity zones).
• Critiques of labor movements and Marxist infiltration in unions/corporate HR (historical analyses of how legitimate worker protections evolved into ideological capture).
• Media evolution critiques: From 1950s-80s family-oriented themes to later hedonistic/occult influences (personal observations spanning decades; cross-reference with cultural historians on music and spiritual warfare angles).
• Two-tier justice and institutional failure analyses (drawn from grand jury service experience in Butler County, observations of prosecutorial dynamics, and application to national politics).
• COVID-19 policy retrospectives in Ohio: DeWine/Acton/Husted briefings, business impacts (Cedar Fair, Six Flags sector concerns), school closures, and subsequent political weaponization.
• David Pepper’s political activities and DNC Ohio role; Mark Elias’s election law involvement in multiple states.
• Business climate comparisons: Ohio vs. Texas regulatory/tax environments post-COVID; company relocation trends.
• Polling and media economics: Discussions of NYT/Siena and similar polls versus internal campaign data; ad revenue dynamics in perceived close races.
• Local Ohio issues: Butler County politics, Lakota schools, tax policies, 2nd Amendment culture, and community events as a microcosm of state race.
Spiritual Warfare & Broader Conspiracies:
• Population agenda and globalist critiques (cross-reference with primary sources on UN/WEF-style initiatives, historical secret society influences).
• UFO/non-human intelligence disclosure discussions (personal early interest from 4th grade onward; ties to ancient tech/giants lore and modern spiritual framing).
• Music and cultural degradation as spiritual attack (1950s love/family themes vs. 1990s+ rage/hedonism/occult; analysis of industry shifts and societal impact).
Additional References for Context:
• Personal protection and concealed carry practicalities in Ohio (legal framework, functional tool philosophy vs. show).
• Costco and public interaction patterns (anonymity vs. recognition in advocacy work; route creativity for security).
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.
I have always lived outside the box. While most people see only the trees right in front of them—the regimented routines, the narrow daily concerns, the approved narratives—I have survived and found my greatest happiness and clearest insights almost exclusively through big-picture thoughts, concepts, and discussions. When I am forced into the box, I am extremely unhappy. Outside of it, I am pretty happy, and I have a lot to share with people who are willing to look up from the immediate and see the patterns across time. That is why, six or seven years from now, when the conversation about non-human intelligence and its long influence on human affairs becomes mainstream—partly through my own work with the book The Politics of Heaven—many will wonder how I knew what I knew back in 2020 and what I am saying now. The answer is simple: I live outside the box, where the forest is visible, and the hidden hands become apparent.
Just recently, as Tulsi Gabbard concluded her service as Director of National Intelligence in the Trump administration, she highlighted truths that those of us who have followed the COVID story closely have known for years.[^1] Gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, funded with millions in U.S. taxpayer dollars through channels that included EcoHealth Alliance and ultimately NIH oversight, produced a virus that was made transmissible to humans in ways that natural evolution had not achieved.[^2] It was not a simple bat spillover in a wet market. Dr. Anthony Fauci, in his testimony before Congress, parsed words carefully and denied funding for gain-of-function research under the definitions he preferred, but the evidence from emails, proposals like DEFUSE, and the very nature of the research conducted shows otherwise. He misled the public and lawmakers. Perjury before Congress is a serious matter, and it should carry consequences. It took six years for these confirmations to gain official traction in some circles. I was calling it from day one when the virus emerged from that airport in China, and the stories began to shift. I saw it because the people inside the box were the ones constructing the narrative to hide the truth, and from the outside, the pattern was obvious.
The same dynamic unfolded right here in Ohio during the lockdowns. I was on those conference calls with Jon Husted, who served as a key point of contact trying to bridge the concerns of business owners and executives with the administration. We were asking practical questions: How do we keep businesses open? How do we protect workers and customers without destroying livelihoods and constitutional rights? Governor Mike DeWine was listening closely to his Health Director, Amy Acton—our version of Dr. Fauci in Ohio.[^3] The memos were floating around from the federal health establishment, and they knew the constitutional walls were being tested and breached. Stay-at-home orders, business closures, school shutdowns, and the whole apparatus of control were put in place under emergency powers that stretched far beyond what the people or the legislature had authorized. It was sold as keeping us safe, as if a public health official could write policy that would override the Constitution and turn the governor’s office into an extension of that vision. Now, years later, DeWine is positioning himself as the compassionate voice calling for the abolition of the death penalty, saying it is not a deterrent after all these decades.[^4] He helped craft the law as a state legislator, defended it as Attorney General, yet now on his way out, he wants to be remembered as the one who questioned it. The same man who expanded Medicaid under pressure to appear more progressive after earlier battles with public unions and collective bargaining. These politicians often find themselves in trouble because they listen to the wrong voices—the ones inside the box who prioritize short-term safety narratives and political positioning over the big picture of liberty, accountability, and human nature.
I remember the feeling in 2020 all too well. I carry firearms, as people who know me understand. I was prepared to draw a hard line if unconstitutional checkpoints or enforcement actions came to my door or my community. I was close to a bridge too far. The treatment of January 6 defendants—many held in harsh conditions for what amounted to political expression or presence—showed exactly what the machinery could do when it chose to. I love law and order and a stable society, but when that machinery is weaponized against free citizens who have done nothing wrong, it ceases to be law and becomes something darker. I was on those calls and in my writings arguing the constitutional problems from the beginning. With some influence among legislators who were also concerned, we helped prevent the worst scenarios from taking hold in Ohio. Thank God we did not end up with a situation where I or others were pulled over unconstitutionally and forced into a confrontation that could have escalated. But it was not because I was unwilling to stand. I had drawn my line. Even Rush Limbaugh, in the last year of his life, was cautioning about the overreach and the importance of listening to the right voices. I was saying it earlier, more directly, because I see where the inside-the-box crowd hides what they do not want examined—outside the box, in plain sight for those willing to look.
The costs were immense and are still being counted. More than 1.1 million Americans lost their lives in connection with COVID-19.[^5] Economic analyses projected GDP losses in the range of $3 trillion to $5 trillion or more in the initial years from the combination of the pandemic and the policy responses, with mandatory closures and reopenings being the dominant factor in the downturn. Small businesses—restaurants, gyms, shops, service providers—were shuttered or crippled, many permanently. Mental health crises surged, overdoses increased, domestic issues rose, and a generation of children suffered learning loss and social setbacks whose full measure we are only beginning to understand. In Ohio specifically, the early and strict orders under DeWine and Acton had real human and economic consequences. People died not only from the virus but from delayed medical care, from isolation, from the despair that comes when livelihoods and communities are upended by top-down decree. All of it was made worse because the truth about the virus’s origins and the proper limits of power was suppressed or attacked as dangerous misinformation by those inside the box who could not afford to admit what they had done or enabled.
Now the confirmations are emerging. Fauci and the apparatus he oversaw knew more than they let on. The research that made a non-transmissible virus transmissible to humans was real, and U.S. funding played a role. Taxpayers paid for it. Lives were lost or forever altered because of it and the subsequent cover stories. If we do not hold people accountable—if we do not prosecute perjury and malfeasance when the evidence is this clear—then we should not be surprised when the next crisis arrives, and the same patterns repeat. When you have the opportunity to confront the lie and you decline, the liar learns that there is no cost. That is not compassion. That is a weakness that invites more harm. The average annual cost to taxpayers for housing inmates in U.S. prisons runs $40,000 to $65,000 or more per person, depending on the jurisdiction[^6], a figure that makes long-term incarceration of irredeemable offenders a perpetual burden without the deterrent or finality some argue the death penalty provides for the worst cases.
But COVID is only the most recent and personal example of a much older and larger pattern. I have been speaking and writing for years about non-human intelligence and the ways it has influenced the human race—in our modern politics and in the deep politics of the past thousands of years. The creation of empires, the divine mandates claimed by pharaohs, the dreams and visions that shaped the decisions of kings and conquerors—these were not always purely human inventions or organic developments. They were often steered, amplified, or initiated by non-human intelligences operating through mechanisms of paranoia, superstition, and religious belief systems that were not the faith of the Bible but the polytheisms of the ancient world, particularly the gods of Canaan and their counterparts across the Near East and beyond. We are now discovering, through the accelerating study of UAP, that these intelligences have been present with Earth and human beings for many thousands of years. The same skepticism and ridicule I faced in 2020 when I spoke about the lab origin and the unconstitutional overreach, I face now when I connect these dots. But in six or seven years, it will be different. It will be safe. There will be correspondents and anchors discussing it who are actually non-human intelligence. There will be podcasts and series that treat it as established context rather than as fringe theory. What seems like science fiction today will be science fact tomorrow, just as the COVID truths I stated in 2020 are now being acknowledged years later.
The Book of Enoch provides one of the clearest ancient windows into this reality.[^7] That text, which I have studied and referenced for decades, describes the Watchers—divine beings who descended, took human wives, and produced the Nephilim, giants whose violence and appetites ravaged the earth. These Watchers did not stop at interbreeding; they taught humanity forbidden knowledge: the working of metals into weapons and ornaments, the use of cosmetics and sorcery for manipulation and deception, the arts of divination and the secrets of the stars and earth. This was technology and occult instruction delivered prematurely, corrupting human development and filling the world with bloodshed and chaos. The judgment of the flood followed, but the influence of these fallen ones and their offspring persisted through bloodlines, secret traditions, and the false religious systems that shaped the great powers of antiquity. The gods of Canaan—Baal with his storms and demands for sacrifice, Asherah and her fertility cults, Molech and the fires that consumed children—were not harmless myths. They were presentations of real intelligences that steered societies toward war, ritual, and control. The pharaohs of Egypt presented themselves as divine incarnations or the recipients of direct oracles from the gods, justifying their absolute rule and military campaigns. Similar patterns appear in Mesopotamian kingship, in the oracles and omens that guided Greek and Roman leaders, and in the visionary experiences claimed by conquerors and rulers across history. From outside the box, these are not random cultural developments; they are evidence of consistent non-human influence operating through the structures of power and belief.
We are seeing the modern face of this same presence in the UAP phenomenon.[^8] These unidentified anomalous phenomena are not new. Ancient texts across cultures record fiery chariots in the sky, beings of light or terror descending, and craft that defies the technology of the time. What has changed is our ability and willingness to document and disclose. Government videos released in recent years, testimony from trained observers including Navy pilots, and statements from intelligence community whistleblowers such as David Grusch have brought the topic into congressional hearings and public debate. In 2026, the push for transparency has led to concrete actions, including the release of historical records through mechanisms such as the PURSUE system under the current administration. Tranches of documents are emerging, adding to the body of evidence that something non-human has been here, interacting at times, and remaining largely hidden. Just as the lab-leak hypothesis for COVID was censored and mocked only to be treated as plausible or likely by multiple intelligence agencies years later, the NHI reality is moving from ridicule to reluctant recognition. The pattern is the same: truth that threatens existing power structures or comfortable narratives is suppressed until it can no longer be contained.
In six or seven years, the conversation will have shifted dramatically. People who today roll their eyes at talk of non-human intelligence influencing human events will be nodding along in podcasts and interviews. The age of disclosure will be in full swing. My book, The Politics of Heaven, completed in 2026 and moving toward publication, is my contribution to providing the framework for understanding what is coming.[^9][^10] It is a treasure hunt through heaven and all human history, tracing biblical conspiracies, the role of giants and demons, the reality of divine rebellion, the nature of spiritual warfare, and the population agendas that have shadowed humanity from ancient times into the present. It connects the dots between the Watchers of Enoch, the false gods of Canaan and Egypt, the hidden influences on empires and kings, and the modern manifestations in technology, media, global institutions, and the UAP question. When you understand the politics of heaven—the real power dynamics that operate behind and through earthly politics—you see why certain patterns repeat, why certain lies persist, and why accountability is so often delayed. The same intelligences that once presented themselves as gods demanding worship and sacrifice have not disappeared; they have adapted their methods to new veils and new technologies.
I was willing to risk confrontation in 2020 because I saw the pattern clearly. The fear was that it would be used to centralize power. Dissent was being pathologized. The Constitution was being treated as optional under the pretext of an emergency. Amy Acton did that in Ohio. I had seen enough of how power operates—in my younger years in the Cincinnati area and across the river in Newport, Kentucky, where I had front-row exposure to the coded ways influence and enforcement worked—to recognize when it was happening again. I was not going to be treated like a January 6 prisoner or have my community subjected to checkpoint enforcement without resistance. Thankfully, cooler heads and some influence in the right places kept the worst from occurring here. But the experience taught me again that being outside the box is not just a preference; it is a survival skill when the box is being used to hide dangerous truths.
Now the question is whether we will learn from the COVID chapter or repeat it on a larger scale. The revelations about gain-of-function and Fauci’s role are vindication for those who spoke early, but vindication without accountability is incomplete. If perjury and the engineering of a pathogen that killed over a million Americans carry no real consequence, then the system has learned nothing. The same applies to the bigger picture. When disclosure of non-human intelligence reaches the point where even former skeptics in the media and politics are discussing it openly, will we have the frameworks to understand it, or will we be caught flat-footed by the spiritual and political implications we have refused to consider? My book exists to help with that preparation. It argues that these influences are real, that they have shaped human history in profound ways, and that the age of disclosure is also an age of decision about who we are and whose agenda we will ultimately serve.
I am an older man now, but I have lived a life that kept me engaged with both the practical and the profound—from aerospace program management and the discipline of precision work, to writing books like Tail of the Dragon, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, and The Symposium of Justice, to my podcasting and activism on behalf of limited government, traditional values, and individual responsibility. The cowboy hat I have worn since childhood is a declaration that I stand apart from the herd. The whip is my personal symbol of discipline, precision, preparedness, and the moral agency to impose order when chaos threatens. But above all, it is the commitment to big-picture thinking that has defined my path. I criticize the regimented life not because I disdain structure, but because too many people never lift their eyes from the trees to see the forest or the forces moving through it.
Six or seven years from now, when the podcasts, news segments, and public conversations are filled with talk of non-human intelligence and its historical role, remember that some of us were saying it when it was still costly to do so. Not for credit, but because the truth matters and because being outside the box allows you to see what is coming before it arrives. The COVID chapter proved that. The disclosure chapter will prove it again. The politics of heaven are the ultimate big picture, and understanding them is the only way to navigate what lies ahead without being steered by forces we refuse to name.
The truth always comes out. It came out on the origins of COVID after six years of resistance. It is coming out on UAP and the deeper history of influence. It will come out on accountability or the lack of it. I hope that when it does, enough people will have stepped outside the box to see it clearly, to demand what is right, and to prepare for the fuller reality of our place in a universe that has never been as empty or as human-centered as the inside-the-box narrative claimed.
Footnotes
[^1]: Tulsi Gabbard’s resignation as Director of National Intelligence was announced on May 22, 2026, effective June 30, 2026, citing her husband’s health; see reports from BBC, CNBC, and the New York Times (May 2026).
[^2]: On gain-of-function research, EcoHealth Alliance, Wuhan Institute of Virology, and Fauci testimony controversies, see RFK Jr., The Real Anthony Fauci (2021) and subsequent congressional reviews and intelligence assessments on COVID origins (2023-2026).
[^3]: Amy Acton served as Ohio Department of Health Director under Gov. Mike DeWine, issued stay-at-home orders in March 2020, and resigned in June 2020 amid criticism; see contemporary reporting from the Columbus Dispatch, WOSU, and the Ohio Capital Journal.
[^4]: Gov. Mike DeWine announced June 16, 2026, that Ohio should abolish the death penalty, reversing long-held support; see Associated Press, Ohio Capital Journal, and New York Times coverage (June 2026).
[^5]: U.S. COVID-19 deaths exceeded 1.1 million; economic impact studies project trillions in GDP losses from the pandemic and policy responses. See CDC data summaries and analyses, such as Walmsley et al. (2020) in the Journal of Urban Economics and Chen et al.’s economic burden projections.
[^6]: Average annual cost of incarceration in U.S. state prisons is around $ 60,000 per inmate (median figures from USAFacts and state reports); federal prisons are around $41,000 per inmate (FY2023 Federal Register). Life sentences for serious crimes impose an ongoing taxpayer burden of tens of thousands of dollars per individual per year.
[^7]: Book of Enoch (1 Enoch), particularly the Book of the Watchers (chs. 1-36), describes the descent of the Watchers, their instruction of humanity in forbidden arts, and the birth of the violent Nephilim giants. See translations by R.H. Charles (1917) and modern editions; scholarly discussion in The Torah.com and related ancient Near Eastern studies.
[^8]: UAP disclosure developments include 2017-2023 Pentagon video releases, the 2021 ODNI Preliminary Assessment, the 2023 congressional hearings with David Grusch’s testimony, and the 2026 releases under the PURSUE system (Department of War/ODNI tranches announced May-June 2026).
[^9]: Ancient historical patterns of divine kingship and oracular influence in Egypt (pharaoh as god-king), Canaanite pantheon (Ugaritic texts, Baal Cycle), and biblical accounts (Genesis 6, Numbers 13, Deuteronomy on Canaanite practices). See Biblical Archaeology Review archives and standard references such as The Oxford History of the Ancient Near East.
[^10]: Broader context on spiritual warfare, giants, and population themes in biblical and extra-biblical literature; see also the author’s forthcoming The Politics of Heaven (target 2027) for an integrated treatment that connects ancient influences to modern geopolitical and technological developments.
Bibliography for Further Reading
• Charles, R.H., trans. The Book of Enoch. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1917 (and subsequent reprints).
• Elizondo, Luis. Imminent: Inside the Pentagon’s Hunt for UAP. New York: William Morrow, 2024.
• Hoffman, Rich. Tail of the Dragon. (Author’s earlier work on personal and philosophical themes).
• Hoffman, Rich. The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business. (On resilience, problem-solving, and imposing will on circumstances).
• Hoffman, Rich. The Symposium of Justice. (Philosophical and justice themes).
• Hoffman, Rich. The Politics of Heaven. (Forthcoming 2027; manuscript completed 2026, exploring biblical conspiracies, giants, demons, spiritual warfare, and population agendas across history).
• Kennedy, Robert F., Jr. The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health. New York: Skyhorse, 2021.
• Biblical Archaeology Review. Multiple issues on ancient Near Eastern religion, giants/Nephilim debates, and archaeological context for biblical texts (ongoing since 1975).
• Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena. June 2021 and subsequent UAP reports.
• Various 2023-2026 congressional hearings and whistleblower testimony on UAP (Grusch et al.).
• Academic and government analyses of COVID-19 economic impacts: Walmsley, Terrie et al. “The Impacts of the Coronavirus on the Economy of the United States” (2020); Chen, Simiao et al. economic burden studies (2021); CDC COVID Data Tracker summaries.
• USAFacts and Bureau of Justice Statistics reports on incarceration costs and prison populations (2023-2025 data).
• Ancient primary sources: Ugaritic Baal Cycle texts; Egyptian royal inscriptions and Pyramid Texts; biblical texts (Genesis 6, Enoch references in Jude and 2 Peter).
• Additional context on Canaanite religion and its influence: Day, John. Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan. Sheffield Academic Press, 2000 (and related scholarship).
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.
The great serpent watches over our dance, and right now in Ohio politics, it’s coiling tightly around the desperate maneuvers of progressives who know they’re in trouble. There aren’t enough Democrats in Ohio, especially when President Trump comes out campaigning this summer. I’ve been involved in politics long enough to see the patterns, and this one is clear as day. Vivek Ramaswamy is going to win the governorship, likely in the 55% range or better against Amy Acton, and that reality has the left losing its mind.¹
It’s early in the general election cycle as of mid-June 2026, but the signs are unmistakable. Recent polling shows a tight race on paper, but I believe it significantly understates Ramaswamy’s strength. Take the Echelon Insights poll from early April showing Ramaswamy at 49% to Acton’s 44%. Or NC Research with Ramaswamy ahead 53-43. Even in tighter surveys like Bowling Green State University’s April poll, it was essentially a statistical tie around 48-47. A late May/early June Fox News poll had Acton at 50% and Ramaswamy at 49%.² But here’s my take, grounded in years of watching Ohio elections: these numbers are better for Vivek than they appear. Conservatives and industrious Republicans like me often don’t answer polls. I had one the other day—someone calling because I vote in every primary and general. I was too busy to engage. Many busy, working people on our side feel the same. We’re not sitting around waiting for pollsters. That non-response bias tilts the real electorate further toward Ramaswamy.³
Democrats know this too. That’s why they’re desperate, rallying around figures like “The Rooster”—D.J. Byrnes, the progressive blogger arrested at the Statehouse in early June for allegedly sending an explicit, digitally altered image of Shrek with an exposed penis to a state senator. They frame it as Republicans crushing free speech, but let’s be honest: sending disgraceful material like that to elected officials isn’t journalism or protected speech. It’s harassment. I don’t want senators dealing with that kind of behavior from so-called media members. The Rooster has a history of pushing boundaries, and Democrats defend it because it fits their pattern—low ethical standards, tolerance for chaos, and hostility toward law and order.⁴
This desperation stems from deeper demographic and cultural realities. Ohio isn’t California or New York. It’s a state that has consistently leaned Republican in recent cycles, especially at the statewide level. There aren’t enough reliable Democratic voters to overcome the MAGA wave, particularly with Trump actively supporting candidates like Ramaswamy and Jon Husted. Trump’s endorsement and summer appearances will solidify the base and pull in independents and even some union Democrats. Sherrod Brown knows the writing is on the wall too—his Senate race faces similar headwinds.⁵
Amy Acton’s campaign is trying every angle. She leans on her time as state health director during COVID, pandering to nurses, teachers’ unions, and public sector interests. “Remember how I supported the unions,” she signals. But that’s a losing message in 2026. Public sector unions, especially teachers’ unions pushing levies every few years, have radicalized themselves. The old model of zip-code-based funding and collective bargaining, which inflates costs, is dying. The future is student-centered funding—money follows the child, not the district bureaucracy. I’ve been saying this for years, going back to my heavy involvement around Senate Bill 5 in 2011-2012.⁶
I had my name all over discussions about SB 5. I was on WLW radio multiple times a week, pushing the argument that public-sector unions bargaining for taxpayer-funded benefits create perverse incentives. It wasn’t perfectly messaged at the time, and Republicans took a hit in the 2011 repeal vote, but the underlying principle was sound. Taxpayers deserve value. Acton’s union pandering won’t win over the broader electorate. Many union members, especially in places like Youngstown and northern Ohio, have shifted toward Trump and MAGA priorities—law and order, economic realism, America First. They’re not buying the big-government Marxism anymore.⁷
I’ve watched this evolution closely from Butler County. As someone deeply engaged in local issues, Lakota schools, tax fights, and statewide races, I see coalition-building underway. Vivek Ramaswamy brings fresh energy—entrepreneurial success, anti-woke clarity, and a vision for reducing government bloat. Pair that with Trump’s endorsement and events this summer, and the path is clear. Internal polling that Democrats have seen must be grim. That’s why the panic attacks and personal attacks ramp up. They can’t win on policy, so they smear.⁸
Progressives like the Rooster crowd—often smelling of marijuana, hanging at music festivals, embracing anarchist vibes—represent a demographic that doesn’t have the numbers. They want big government to shield chaos, erode Christian values, and oppose things like posting the Ten Commandments in courthouses. They hate law and order because it constrains their tendencies. But Ohio voters, by and large, want safety, prosperity, lower taxes, and accountability. Ramaswamy’s message of innovation, school choice, and fiscal responsibility resonates. Property tax relief, income tax reduction—these are winning issues. Democrats’ wealth redistribution and union protection rackets don’t sell here.⁹
Look at the broader national picture. Even in California, there are signs of pushback. I hosted an event at which Steve Hilton announced his gubernatorial run, and I’m optimistic about shifts there, too. Progressive governance has delivered homelessness, crime, and dysfunction. Ohio won’t repeat that mistake. Acton’s COVID record, public sector ties, and alignment with national Democrats who’ve lost touch with working people doom her chances. Polling may fluctuate, but turnout models favor Republicans. Trump’s coattails in a midterm-adjacent year (with strong national sentiment) will help.¹⁰
Republicans need to stay disciplined. Defend school choice, tax reform, and law enforcement without apology. Throw criminals in jail when warranted—like the Rooster case. It’s not about crushing speech; it’s about basic decency and accountability. Democrats do the same when roles reverse and never look back. Balance requires reciprocity. At the polls, make their ideas a footstool. Ohioans want results, not excuses.¹¹
My confidence in Ramaswamy comes from decades of observation. From the Reform Party to the Tea Party to MAGA, the momentum is with commonsense conservatives. Union voters crossing over, independents rejecting radicalism, rural and suburban turnout—the math works. Acton’s path relies on a blue wave that isn’t materializing. Sherrod Brown’s struggles show the same vulnerability.¹²
Trump’s support will seal it. By November, I expect Ramaswamy in the mid-50s, Acton in the 40s. Bank on it. Ohio stays red for good reason.¹³
Footnotes
¹ General observations on Ohio demographics and Trump influence.
² Aggregated from recent polls including Echelon Insights (April 2026), NC Research, Fox News (May/June 2026), Bowling Green State University.
³ Non-response bias in conservative polling.
⁴ Reporting on D.J. Byrnes “The Rooster” arrest for telecommunications harassment involving an explicit image.
⁵ Trump endorsements and Ohio statewide trends.
⁶ SB 5 history and user involvement via WLW radio.
⁷ Union voter shifts toward MAGA.
⁸ Ramaswamy’s platform strengths.
⁹ Progressive demographic limitations.
¹⁰ California parallels and Steve Hilton context.
¹¹ Law-and-order reciprocity.
¹² Broader electoral math.
¹³ Ties to personal philosophy and writings.
Bibliography
• Ohio Capital Journal, “Democrat Amy Acton and Republican Vivek Ramaswamy advance” (May 5, 2026).
• The Hill, Ramaswamy-Acton showdown coverage.
• 270toWin and Wikipedia 2026 Ohio Gubernatorial Polls (various April-June 2026).
• Fox News, Bowling Green State University, Echelon Insights poll toplines.
• Columbus Dispatch and Signal Ohio reporting on “The Rooster” arrest (June 2026).
• Historical coverage of Ohio SB 5 (2011-2012).
• Rich Hoffman’s writings and The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business.
• Additional sources on Ohio politics, unions, and Trump endorsements.
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.
