Staff photo / David Skolnick Vivek Ramaswamy, left, a Republican candidate for governor, signs his book, “Truths: The Future of America First,” for Mark Munroe of Boardman, a former Mahoning County Republican Party chairman. Ramaswamy was the keynote speaker at Thursday’s county Republican Party’s Lincoln Day dinner.

CANFIELD — Vivek Ramaswamy, the 2026 Republican Party’s gubernatorial front-runner, told a crowd of about 740 at the Mahoning County GOP’s Lincoln Day dinner that he wants to make Ohio the envy of the rest of the country, but it’s going to take work.

Ramaswamy said Thursday he wants to improve the state’s education system, reduce regulations, eventually eliminate Ohio’s income tax and have the state “lead about the next Industrial Revolution.”

Ramaswamy said: “I want to lead Ohio to be the top state in the nation to raise a family.”

Ramaswamy has been keynoting county Republican Lincoln Day dinners across the state to packed crowds, delivering a very similar speech at each event.

Ramaswamy said he wants young people to know “the American Dream is your birthright. A world-class education is your birthright. Success is your birthright. Freedom is your heritage and excellence is your destiny.”

There were about 740 tickets sold for the dinner at Wayfair 4180 in Canfield with a waiting list of about 50 more, said county Republican Chairman Tom McCabe.

Ramaswamy, a wealthy biotech entrepreneur, is seen as the Republican Party’s gubernatorial front-runner in next year’s election based on early polling and getting the coveted endorsement of President Donald Trump — given a few hours after he announced his candidacy on Feb. 24. Attorney General Dave Yost is also running for the Republican nomination.

Dr. Amy Acton, the former state health director during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, is the only Democrat to declare her candidacy for governor.

“I’m not running this as some sort of primary (election) campaign,” Ramaswamy said before giving his speech. “I’m running the general election campaign with a clear message to every Ohioan — whether you’re Republican or not — if you care about educational achievement for your kids, if you care about giving your kids the same shot at the American Dream that this state and this country gave to me, then we’re on the same team.”

Ramaswamy mentioned Trump a number of times in his speech, touting the accomplishments of the president.

But during an interview before his speech, Ramaswamy declined to answer a question from a reporter with The Vindicator and the Tribune Chronicle about the president’s tariffs and the impact they are having on retirement funds, the stock market and the economy.

Instead, he said when asked that question: “What I want to see is what’s getting in the way of production in our state, in our region, which is, in part, government overreach and the regulatory state. I want to create the most competitive environment we can for improving production, for bringing a business boom, a kind of Industrial Revolution we haven’t seen since the last one.”

Asked how he can phase out the state’s income tax, which brought in close to $10 billion in Ohio’s last fiscal year — about one-third of the state’s revenue — Ramaswamy said, “It’s not going to be immediate, but what I’ve said is we need to bring down the income tax eventually to zero because Ohioans deserve to keep what they earn. It’s your money and not the government’s. There are eight other states that got down to zero income tax that people from Ohio are moving to. You want to know what I see as the No. 1 problem in our state? It is the population decline in Ohio.”

He added: “One of the things I’m focused on is how do Ohioans get to keep their wealth, how do they generate more of that wealth, how do they generate more of that wealth in the state? I think bringing down the income tax eventually to zero is a crucial way to do it and also to market our state to the rest of the country so people can move in. Now when people move in that drives economic growth. That’s more revenue through existing sales tax — just more volume of transactions.”

Ramaswamy also said the state can “be more effective in consolidating government overreach or government spending. The combination of those cost reductions combined with expanding the revenue from economic growth is going to more than enough put us on a path to zero income tax.”

Ramaswamy said he wouldn’t increase the state’s sales tax to generate more money.

Ramaswamy talked about changing the state’s reputation as being part of the Rust Belt to what he calls the Platinum Belt.

He said: “What I mean by the Platinum Belt is that’s the highest standard we ought to aspire to. I want to lead Ohio not just to be one of the better states in the Midwest. I want to lead Ohio to be the top state in the country.”

That means focusing on “sectors of the future,” including semiconductor production, nuclear energy, natural gas, biotech and the defense industrial base, he said.

Ramaswamy said: “There is no winning Ohio without winning the Mahoning Valley and I will tell you Mahoning County is not just, I believe, the heart of Ohio, in some sense it is the heart of our country. It’s the heart of how we’ll revive America.”