Today is the deadline to register to vote in the May primary. But both leading candidates for governor have been pushing the issue of affordability for a few weeks.
Dr. Amy Acton has no opponent in the Democratic primary for governor, but she spoke about affordability at an event Monday morning. It’s an issue also mentioned by Vivek Ramaswamy, who does have opponents in the Republican primary for governor.
Ramaswamy launched his first ad buy last month—$10 million for a pair of commercials. One of them features his family and his newborn daughter.
“Like any parent, he wants safe communities, great schools, and a state where hard work means you can afford your home, your groceries, and your future," Ramaswamy's wife Apoorva said in the ad.
Ramaswamy has long said he wants to eliminate the income tax, which brought $10,461,519 billion into the state in the last fiscal year, according to the state Office of Budget and Management. He's also talked about property taxes, saying when he launched his campaign in February 2025 that he wanted to see them eliminated. He's backed off that proposal, and now talks about
instituting "the largest rollback of property taxes in the history of Ohio."
“He’ll roll back property taxes to levels before the end of the pandemic, while maintaining strong education and dependable police and fire," said a speaker identified as homeowner Roger Walker in another more recent ad from Ramaswamy that's not part of that initial ad buy.
Ramaswamy has said he thinks lower taxes will grow Ohio’s population to 15 million.
"We're going to be 15 million people and growing by the time I'm done as governor," Ramaswamy said in an interview for "The State of Ohio" in April 2025. "That addresses our workforce shortage issues. It addresses our revenue issues. Think about what that does to our sales tax revenue."
That would be about a 26% increase in population, which would be a higher percentage of growth than any other state.
Democrats and left-leaning researchers have called out the income tax elimination and property tax rollback ideas as potentially devastating to schools and local services that depend on them.
The progressive group Innovation Ohio wrote in a report that replacing the state income tax with growth alone "would require roughly a 34% increase in total state tax collections." The report also said replacing that tax revenue in other way would require "substantial increases in property or sales taxes, fundamentally shifting how Ohio finances public services."
Democratic candidate for governor Dr. Amy Acton has also spoken out on these proposals.
"Vivek Ramaswamy’s policies are devastating for Ohio’s families and would make life even more unaffordable," Acton's campaign said in a statement last month. "His tax scheme to eliminate property and income taxes will gut schools, healthcare and public safety."
"He is a billionaire who would make Ohio more expensive and less safe while he flies above it all in his private jet,” said Acton's communications director Addie Bullock in that statement. “This state won’t forget that Ramaswamy called Ohioans lazy and said that the affordability crisis was a figment of our imagination."
