Ohio heads to polls as Ramaswamy hopes to lock in as Republican candidate for governor – US politics live

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Former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is hoping to lock in his position as candidate in the race to become Ohio governor.

Much of the Trump-endorsed biotech entrepreneur’s campaign has been spent focused on November’s election, as he positions himself for an expensive run against Dr Amy Acton, a former state health director running unopposed for the Democrats.

Contests on the ballots also will set the stage for Ohio’s third competitive US Senate race in the last four years, as well as a handful of US House races that are expected to be closely fought in the fall.

Every statewide executive office is open this year due to term limits, but the governor’s race has captured the bulk of the attention so far, AP reports.

Ramaswamy, a 2024 GOP primary presidential candidate, swept onto the state’s political scene early last year. Then-senator JD Vance was ascending to the vice presidency and front-running gubernatorial candidate Jon Husted was being appointed to replace him in Washington.

Though he is a newcomer in state politics, Ramaswamy’s national profile, tech industry connections and proximity to Trump landed him the Ohio Republican Party’s endorsement. With it, he cleared a prospective field that included the sitting state attorney general, state treasurer and lieutenant governor. But he still faces a long-shot challenge from car designer and YouTube provocateur Casey Putsch.

“[Ramaswamy] is a polarizing figure,” said Jessica Taylor, an analyst for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, which forecasts US elections.

“What certainly indicated to me that there’s just a likability problem for him was anytime you see a candidate’s first ad featuring their wife and children. It certainly looks like it’s trying to soften his image as a candidate.”

In other developments:

• Donald Trump has threatened that Iran will be “blown off the face of the earth” if it attacks US vessels trying to reopen a route through the strait of Hormuz. The US launched an operation to help hundreds of ships trapped with their crews in the Gulf, dragging the region back to the brink of full-scale war. While the US military claimed to have destroyed six Iranian small boats and intercepted both Iranian cruise missiles and drones, this was denied by Iran. More here.

• The Trump administration moved to block a lawsuit Minnesota officials filed almost six years ago alleging oil companies and a petroleum trade group deceived state residents about climate change. The justice department, the administration’s law enforcement arm, filed an action in federal court in Minneapolis arguing that the federal government has the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, not states, and that Minnesota officials are trying to improperly impose their policy preferences on the rest of the country.

• The US supreme court went out of its way to help Louisiana Republicans redraw their congressional maps ahead of this year’s midterm elections. The procedural move comes less than a week after the court’s landmark decision striking down Louisiana’s congressional map and gutting section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

• The Trump administration is continuing to pressure the United Nations and the international aid sector more broadly to adopt trade-focused policies to benefit US firms – or face the threat of further budget cuts. Donald Trump’s second term has already seen USAID suffer mass layoffs and have its remaining operations folded into the state department, with a ripple effect across the globe that has many experts warning will cost thousands of lives as vital programs are cut. More here.

• The Trump administration’s attack on the 87-year-old food aid program that supports tens of millions of low-income Americans escalated last week as the agriculture secretary, Brooke Rollins, claimed that 14,000 Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (Snap) recipients included owners of luxury vehicles such as Ferraris, Bentleys and Teslas. More here.