Former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy glided to victory in the Ohio GOP primary election for governor, solidifying the predicted Nov. 3 General Election showdown between him and the uncontested Democratic nominee, Dr. Amy Acton.
Ramaswamy defeated a political newcomer, Toledo automotive entrepreneur Casey Putsch. The Associated Press called the race at 7:42 p.m. ET, with Ramaswamy holding a 70-point lead.
Ramaswamy, at a watch party in Columbus, called his margin of victory in the primary “historic.” He also said he believed the results showed that the “Republican Party, coming out of a primary for governor, has never been more united.”
To every Ohioan, he said: “Our pledge to you is that we will deliver you lower costs, bigger paychecks, and better schools.”
Rather than attacking Putsch or responding to his criticisms, Ramaswamy has kept his campaign messaging focused on his agenda—emphasizing his plans to eliminate or reduce taxes—a message that resonated with several Ramaswamy voters whom The Epoch Times interviewed in the Columbus area.
Randy Tarrier, who attended a Ramaswamy town hall in a northern Columbus suburb on May 4, called Ramaswamy “one of the most original candidates that I have seen in a while.”
“I like the fact that he is looking at rolling back income taxes, at least for seniors—and property taxes, possibly for people who have paid off their own homes,” Tarrier said. “So, I think that’s a very good place to start.”
Tarrier’s wife, Debra Tarrier, commented: “He’s so approachable on all different issues. He’s such a smart guy. He’s very successful, and I think he can correct a lot of the issues we’re facing in Ohio.”
Discussion of taxes and affordability policies has dominated messaging for both Ramaswamy and his Democratic opponent, Acton.
Her platform calls for tax credits and tax cuts, her campaign website states, along with lowering health care costs, helping people stay on Medicaid, and forgiving medical debt.
Voters and Ramaswamy have also raised Acton’s prior performance as Ohio’s health director during the COVID-19 pandemic as a significant issue. The divide over Acton’s COVID reaction appears to fall largely along party lines—with Republicans mostly opposing stringent restrictions and Democrats favoring them.
That persistent partisan polarization around COVID—more than six years after the pandemic started—reflects a national trend. Last year, the Pew Research Center found 60 percent of Democrats were then worried that COVID was not being taken seriously enough—a view held by only 20 percent of Republicans at the time.
Acton’s COVID response earned praise from some—including Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican. DeWine cannot run again because of term limits. The incumbent has endorsed Ramaswamy—while still defending Acton, who served in his administration.
Voters in the working-class Columbus area of Driving Park told The Epoch Times they voted for Acton because they liked the way she handled the pandemic.
Janice Wicker, 83, told The Epoch Times she voted for the former health director because “I think she will be fair. She was fair during COVID, and they shut her down because she was telling the truth.”
Acton faced death threats and an armed protest in her front yard over her decision to sign DeWine’s restrictions that kept residents and businesses shuttered for about five weeks.
In the run-up to the primary, both Putsch and Acton described themselves as more relatable for everyday citizens than Ramaswamy, a self-made billionaire.
Ramaswamy’s campaign has responded that he will talk to anyone—and that his business successes prove that he knows how to lead, create jobs, and make wise decisions.
A biotech businessman, Ramaswamy left his role with President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency to seek the governorship; Trump has endorsed Ramaswamy.
Ramaswamy supporter Sean Chansler, 55, of Dayton, Ohio, told The Epoch Times after a town hall with Ramaswamy: “A politician can tell you this or that, but he’s got a mapped-out plan—and that’s what stood out to me.”
At that event, Ramaswamy emphasized that he disagreed not just with Acton’s COVID policies, but also with her decision-making process.
He argued that Acton should have “had the intellectual curiosity” to investigate: “Does this [virus] affect children differently than old people?” Probing for that answer would have revealed that children were less vulnerable to the virus and therefore could have safely returned to school sooner, Ramaswamy said.
Acton told reporters at an east side Columbus gathering on May 4: “I’m proud of the work we did in COVID, alongside Gov. DeWine, who absolutely was the person in charge.
“He—we—flattened the curve,” she said. Health officials commonly used that phrase in 2020 to describe how complying with rules such as mask-wearing would reduce the rising tide of infections.
“We saved a lot of lives, and we opened earlier, and got back to life sooner, because we took swift and decisive action, working with experts,” Acton said.
Vicki Evans-Long, a nine-year Driving Park resident, commended Acton for her demeanor while handing the COVID crisis. “I think she cared … She was concerned, and that’s what we needed,” the voter told The Epoch Times.
At age 59, Evans-Long said she thinks more about health care policies now. “I’m worried about Medicare, getting closer to retirement,” the voter said.
Jesse Caton, an event planner who stopped by to vote wearing a necktie patterned with Disney cartoon characters, said Acton appeals to him as “someone that’s running for Ohioans and the working-class family—just making sure that … our voices are heard.”
When he met Acton in person a couple of times, Caton said he used those opportunities to express “appreciation for everything that she stood for in COVID.”
After casting his ballot at Harmon Elementary School in Grove City, a suburb just south of Columbus, Ramaswamy voter Mark Shy said he considers himself a political moderate who can see that Acton has some strengths too.
Asked to discuss his voting rationale, Shy said that might seem simple—but it isn’t.
“I’m 72, and it’s confusing now—the whole process. … I don’t trust the process,” Shy said.
He and his peers grew up in the Vietnam War era, which he said was “a time of ‘distrust the government.’”
“And it feels like that more right now,” Shy said.
Being older, “you have a lot of time to walk, and pray, and all those things,” Shy said, which is why he gave more than just a “rah-rah” cheerleader-type answer about his vote.
Shy said Ramaswamy’s tax policies really appeal to him.
As retirees on fixed incomes, he and his wife worry about “being priced out of our home” by taxes, Shy said.
He called Acton a “qualified candidate” because she is a medical doctor, but said, “I just don’t know how much practical application she has.”
Shy, who owned his own general-contracting business, said he has confidence that Ramaswamy’s business experience taught him how to make solid executive-level decisions. He doesn’t have that same level of confidence about Acton.
However, Shy said, “She’s got some points to be made. So I don’t think Ohio loses if she wins.”
Acton, a native of Youngstown, Ohio, chose a running mate with strong ties to Cincinnati—Ramaswamy’s hometown. David Pepper formerly served as a Hamilton County commissioner and Cincinnati city councilman. He also made two unsuccessful attempts to win statewide offices: attorney general and treasurer.
Ramaswamy’s lieutenant governor choice is a man with detailed knowledge of how the state government works in the capital, Columbus: Ohio Senate President Rob McColley.
Ramaswamy’s financial standing enabled him to contribute $25 million toward his campaign. He had almost $31 million on hand after spending about $12.6 million, a pre-primary campaign finance report shows.
During the second half of 2025, Ramaswamy’s war chest grew by nearly $10 million—an amount that excludes any of his personal funds, his campaign said early this year.
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Pre-primary cash available for Acton totaled about $5 million, after expenditures of about $3.3 million. Her campaign asserted that contributions were rising, with “clear momentum and support from every corner of the Buckeye State.”
Putsch’s report showed he had less than $9,000 on hand after spending about $94,000.
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Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.