(LifeSiteNews) – Businessman, former Republican presidential candidate, and MAGA personality Vivek Ramaswamy overwhelmingly won the Republican nomination for governor of Ohio, advancing to face former Ohio Department of Public Health director Amy Acton in November.

Ramswamy secured 82.1% of the vote against his GOP primary opponent, businessman Casey Putsch, boosted by endorsements from President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, and term-limited outgoing Gov. Mike DeWine. Ramaswamy’s lieutenant governor running mate will be state Rep. Rob McColley.

The Republican nominee is running on a campaign focused on economics and education, declaring he wants “Ohio to set the standard” with “conservative solutions and approaches that have not yet been tried in any of the other 50 states.” Ramaswamy’s “three core pillars,” his campaign says, are “educational achievement,” “crush(ing) crime,” and “unity over division.”

Ramaswamy is considered generally conservative, but not without bouts of moderation. He ran as a pro-life candidate in his short-lived bid for president and is expected to be directionally pro-life as governor, though his stance did shift at points to conform with the Trump campaign.

In December 2023, Ramaswamy said the “winning path for the GOP on abortion isn’t to compromise on our principles, it’s to practice what we preach” by making men legally responsible for the babies they conceive. By July 2024, however, he was touting the fact that Trump’s rewritten GOP platform “does NOT support a federal abortion ban,” which Democrats were “freaking out” about because “we’re picking off your voters.” In September 2024, he said that the “most important point of the debate (against former Vice President Kamala Harris) was Trump stating with crystal clarity to voters that he’s against a federal ban on abortion & he’s a champion for IVF.”

By contrast, Acton lists “ensuring reproductive freedom” as a priority of her campaign, declaring, “As a doctor, I trust women in consultation with their health care providers to make decisions about their own bodies, not politicians, and Ohioans have made clear that they do too. As Governor, I will stand up to attacks from politicians against our fundamental freedoms and continue to protect abortion access.”

The polls currently have Ramaswamy leading Acton 48.5% to 45.5%.