'Hard no': Politico exposes simmering tension hitting Ramaswamy from inside his own team

Ohio Republican gubernatorial nominee Vivek Ramaswamy may have an unexpected problem: his own campaign captain doesn't fully buy his pitch.

At a recent county GOP Lincoln Day dinner in Piketon, Ohio, Ramaswamy delivered his now-trademark riff on opportunity in America.

"We call it the American dream for a reason, because there is no Canadian dream, there is no British dream, there is no Chinese dream. I understand why many are skeptical, but what I’m talking about tonight is how we are going to turn Ohio into the cradle of the American dream once again," he told the crowd, Politico reported Saturday.

But Setys Kelly, the Ramaswamy campaign's captain in nearby Clark County, wasn't sold on his pitch that anyone can come to the United States and achieve that dream.

She shook her head as he shared his version of the American dream.

"I'm going to be a hard no on that. You need to be an American to do the American dream," Kelly, who is white, told the outlet. "I come from Springfield, land of the Haitians. … I just don't want any more of that kind of immigration where they just dump them on you."

The public break underscores the strain running through Ramaswamy's campaign.

Indian American and Hindu, Ramaswamy has been the target of escalating racist attacks from elements of the online right, including a far-right Christian nationalist pastor who said the candidate must be "demolished."

Ramaswamy has pushed back publicly on the racist attacks, writing in December: "Americanness isn't a scalar quality that varies based on your ancestry. It's binary: Either you're an American or you're not."

Politico interviewed more than 20 voters and strategists across Ohio, which is 80 percent white and two-thirds Christian, and found that Ramaswamy's background was viewed as a real political hurdle. Few admitted their own uneasiness with Ramaswamy's race, but several said they knew a neighbor who won't vote for him because he is nonwhite. None said they would reject him because of his religion, but several said they know people at church who will.

"Most of us, the only time we've ever been in a room with someone of color like him was when you went to see your doctor," Denny Malloy, a white Trumbull County GOP chair who supports Ramaswamy, told Politico. "When you get to eastern Ohio, they look at him like they don't know how to accept him."

He'll face Democrat Amy Acton in November.