Did Vivek Ramaswamy once say Ohio was 'a good state' but not 'the best'?

A rumor that Vivek Ramaswamy once made a remark that Ohio was not the best state circulated online in early May 2026, as Ramaswamy won the state's Republican primary for governor. 

Users on social media shared the purported quote along with a short video clip that appeared to show Ramaswamy saying, "Ohio is a good state; I can't say it's the best state." 

 

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The quote was correctly attributed to Ramaswamy. 

The Republican gubernatorial candidate made the statement during a speech at Michigan's Hillsdale College, a private Christian school, on Jan. 24, 2023. 

The full speech was available to view on YouTube (archived). The Hillsdale College YouTube channel uploaded the speech on Feb. 16, 2023, and the footage matches the angle shown in the circulating clip. The statement in question occurs about 20 seconds into the speech, when Ramaswamy said: 

I was sitting next to Emily, who asked me what my favorite state was. Was it Ohio, where I'm from? And I said, "Ohio is a good state; I can't say it's the best state." She said, "I can tell you what's the best state, it's Indiana," where she's from. So it's the cussedness of the Hillsdale student.

The remark seemed to be intended as a joke based on Ramaswamy's delivery and the reaction of laughter from the crowd. Ramaswamy's YouTube page (archived) also uploaded the speech on Feb. 12, 2023. That footage was taken from a different angle but matched the speech depicted in the Hillsdale video.

Hillsdale issued a news release about Ramaswamy's speech, titled "The Rebellious Entrepreneur," on Feb. 1, 2023. The school described it as a talk that "highlighted the need for businesses to return to a focus on excellence over politics."

Ramaswamy, a billionaire businessperson, has written books about so-called woke culture as it relates to business, including "Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America's Social Justice Scam" and "Nation of Victims: Identity Politics, the Death of Merit, and the Path Back to Excellence." 

His statement recirculated online in the lead-up to  Ohio's gubernatorial primary on May 5, 2026, in which Ramaswamy beat out Casey Putsch for the Republican Party's nomination. Ramaswamy will square off against Democrat Amy Acton in November to take the seat of outgoing Republican Gov. Mike DeWine. 

The tech entrepreneur previously made in a bid for the White House in 2024 and endorsed U.S. President Donald Trump after dropping out. 

Snopes reached out to Ramaswamy for further comment and received a response from Alex Triantafilou, chairman of the Ohio Republican Party, who said via email, "Vivek Ramaswamy is a born and bred Ohioan whose passion is to make the Buckeye State a place of excellence for generations to come. Anyone who claims otherwise isn't paying attention."