Wow, My Billy Cunningham, the Great America and of course Reds Baseball kicks off in about an hour and a half in Boston. They had a suspended game. They're losing two to one in the fourth fifth. They're going to hopefully win two today. But until then, Vake Ramaswami, the man who would be governor, welcome again to the Bill Cunningham Show in veg. First of all, before we talk about property tax relief two point seventy five percent flat tax.
Before we talk about overriding governmental governor's vetos some I'm sixty seven of them. Fundraising hall, I saw this in the Columbus Dispatch. A record was set by you in raising money to become the next governor of Ohio. Please tell the American people what happened.
Well, look, I think we have unprecedented unity in our Republican party, Billy. At this point, I'm running unopposed in the Republican primary.
We've achieved great unity.
I've traveled over sixty of the counties in the state already in the last several months. We raised what no, Nine point seven million dollars in the first four months of this campaign, which sets a record and history of our state for what a first quarter of fundraising looks like. And yet at the same time, that's coming from bottom up donations forty thousand plus donors, and a lot of these are small dollar.
Donors as well.
To me, that shows a grassroots uprising that really says that we want to take our state to the next level. And that's the message that really is getting people aboard this campaign across the state, up and down. Billy is We're not just leading Ohio to be one of the best in the Midwest, because frankly, we are already the best in the Midwest. I'm in this toled Ohio to be the top state in the country, to raise a young family, to build a business, to give our kids
a world class education. And the fact that as a first time statewide candidate here we're able to achieve this level of unity not just in our Republican party, but to have even in that base of donors many independents,
many first time political donors, forty thousand of them. And to break fundraising records when you have seasoned political veterans that have historically been the ones who have run for governor, I think it just says a lot less about me, but more about the energy that we have in our state for this new vision.
And Vivek, when you talk to the power brokers of which you're not a part, when I talk to those who have raised money for a long time, and some of the gray beards, they won a Republican party like a country club Republican party and not a cloth coat Republican party. When you say like, we're going to make the states so much better for those who've been entrenched in power for a long time, they don't want to hear that. They think the state's already wonderful, can't be
any better. So when Viveke Ramaswami comes horizontally to politics, not vertically, some of the power brokers say, well, who the hell is this guy? Even though he was a valedictorian in the Senate class, he spent a lot of time out and out west. He's a billionaire and he's here now in Ohio. Who in the hell is the bag Ramaswami? Why does he think he can be the next governor? And we have a lineup of other shall we say, office holders ready to take over. Why does
the vag Rama Swami want to do this? When you're a billionaire already.
Yeah. Sometimes members of my family have asked me that question as well, Billy, But when you have a call to serve, you can't put that call back in the bottle, right, And I think we're each put here for a purpose. This country, in this state, frankly, has allowed me to achieve an American dream at a height that my parents would have never imagined when we were born and raised in Cincinnati, growing up in Westchester, and then growing up
in Evendale, Ohio after that. This is what makes this country extraordinary is that now I'm in a position to lead that very state. After founding successful businesses, after marrying my wife, Aporva, who's one of the most successful throat surgeons.
In the country, she's at Ohio State.
She's lived the American dream, the kid of immigrants to this country who came here again with little to their name. The extraordinary thing about that story is that it's not that extraordinary in the United States of America, and I don't think it should be extraordinary in the state of Ohio either. I want every one of the kids born and raised in our state to be able to live that same American dream at even greater heights.
Than I have. But that's going to.
Take I think somebody who's willing to lead our state to the next level, somebody is willing to be ambitious. And I want to bring that sense of ambition back to our country, our culture, our state, our politics, to say that we're the state to put a man in the moon. We're the state that sent the first American into orbit around the Earth. We're the state that sent the Right Brothers to fly at a moment they were told to believe that was impossible. I think that ambition
is part of our heritage as Ohio. It's part of our heritage as the United States of America. And I want us to aspire to more, to be more ambitious in education, in academics, to be more ambitious from science to the arts, to economic ambition, to even ambition in what we hope to achieve for our kids, Spiritually ambitious, morally ambitious in every domain of our life, to expect
more of ourselves. And yet in order to do that, I don't think it's going to take a politician from yesterday's model of coming out on an assembly line that produces politicians that climb the rungs of a ladder and then end up in the seat of governor, inspiring their whole life.
To do it. That has not been my life aspiration. I promise you that you bring up the same point in your question.
I've never set up my whole life with the goal of being a governor or even being a politician. But I'm in this because I've lived that American dream. I think it's going to take a businessman and someone with an entrepreneur's mentality to bring that ambition of leading our
state to the next level. And I'll be glad to work with many of the people, and we will work with many of the people who have that experience in our state to be able to not only bring the ambition, but actually get things done, like moving to zero income taxation, like putting a cap on property taxation, like lifting up our educational standards.
I'm not just going to talk about it. Really, we're going to get it done.
That's that's part of an entrepreneur's mentality too, and that requires working with many of those people who have been experienced in state government, most of whom are already supporting me in the state. But it's going to be that team effort led by a businessman, an entrepreneur, and at this point in our history, a political outsider at the top to help get Ohio to be the top state in the country, not just living in the shadow of
Texas or Florida. If we do our jobs right, it's going to be Texas and Florida following Ohio's lead, not the other way around.
Favek Ramaswami, you talk about a zero percent income tax. Right now, the state budget appears to be a flat
tax of two point seventy five percent. And when I talk to Matt Huffman and others in Columbus, they tell me there's a potential catastrophe coming next year that you'll have to deal with, and that is that if Ohioans vote to eliminate all real estate taxes and vivek Ramaswami wants to eliminate all income taxes, I'm told by Huffman and others at these sales tax would have to be like twenty percent to make up the differential.
There's such a thing as a pretty Look, there's a lot of extrapolation going on there.
First of all, they're saying that if there's a new ballot measure that does eliminate the property tax. Obviously, in that scenario, we'd have to take a revised look. But the catastrophe that I see is actually the catastrophe of property taxes being way too high and burdening Ohioans in a way that too many of our politicians have ignored for too long. Correct And to be clear, I want to praise the legislature for getting to a flat income tax.
I think that's a great step forward. But I also think that you know, at least as where we're sitting today, there is no major property tax reform that people have been clamoring for. And I do think that property tax reform is necessary. And so if people across the state are clamoring, and they are with good reasons, paying more in their property taxes than they do on the principle and interest repayments on their mortgage combined, that's unjust.
It's Unamerican.
It's antithetical to our values in Ohio. It's your land, not the governments. But when you're paying more in property taxes than you are on your principle and interest on your mortgage, it feels like the land that you own is really just the least from the government.
And that's wrong.
So it's the job of elected leaders to stand up and deliver that reform that are people need, that they're clamoring for. And if they don't, then you know what, the people are going to take it into their own hands and do it via constitutional amendment. But what I will say is that I'm prepared as governor to look to the future of bringing down property taxes, putting a ceiling on them, while also sensibly putting our state on the path to.
Zero income tax.
If that ballot measure passed, we'd obviously have to rethink the overall approach to tax policy.
It'd be a zero property tax then.
But my view is we have a coherent plan to both cap property taxes as well as to take income tax including capital gains taxation, down to zero in our state to make Ohio the most competitive state in the country for entrepreneurs and younger workers to move into to remain in. So many of our young people, Billy, you know this, they'll leave our state to pursue opportunity elsewhere
after getting educated here. I want to turn that ship around, not by forcing them to stay here, but by making this so obviously the state where the best opportunities are available to them, and that means that we have to compete with Texas and Tennessee and Florida states that are zero income tax states. Today, so many of our people are flocking and I'm not going to be a governor of a state where people are leaving. I want to be a governor of a state where we have people
and businesses moving in and moving back in. That's what motivates me to run, and it's a big part of why I think it is going to take someone coming from the outside to lead our state to the next level. A great state already, I want to give credit where.
Credit is due.
We're a great state, but great is not good enough. We want to be the greatest version of ourselves. And that's where I'm here to lead us.
Serveg Ramaswami way of cities and collapse. Of course, you're a Cincinnati, and I think the last Cincinnati and we had his governor. It was probably John J. Gilligan, and I thought he ran a good funeral homes, but he was terrible. But nonetheless, you may not be aware of this, but Cincinnati is in the throes of a terrible crime wave in which every year, according to a shot Spotterer. There's about twenty thousand shots fired in the city of
Cincinnati and about ten different zip codes. We have hundreds of people that are wounded. We had another rash of shootings last night. The night before we had five. We have a police force which is down one hundred and fifty cops. We have many judges that don't want to send people to prison. The governor's job I guess specifically about crime, and I would think Cleveland, Toledo, Dayton, Columbus.
I don't know much about Columbus, but I assume it was not much different, just as his son of immigrants and a person of color. Why do we have such unspeakable violence in urban areas? Because we can't be a great city and great state unless we have great cities. And right now there's fleeting out of Cincinnati and Columbus and Dayton and Toledo and Cleveland. And what can you say to those that see crime as the way out
of the circumstances in which they find themselves. We can't be a great state with lousy cities.
Yeah.
Well, look, I don't speak as a person of color, or as a Republican or any other label. Let's put it aside because I don't view everything through a racialized lens. What I view it through the lens of consense.
Most Americans, I don't care whether you're black.
White, brown, or anything in between. I don't even care whether you're a Democrat or Republican. Most Americans believe correctly that we're founded on the rule of law, and we've got to fly that rule of law even handily in all directions. And right now, the fact of the matter is the police in our cities are not fully equipped and able to do their jobs well. I don't want them to look over their shoulders the fear of being sued.
I want them to be able to apply the rule of law regardless of I don't want people to bring any color focused or raised focused legs in a color blind way, in a neutral manner to restore law and order to actually apply the laws we already have on the books. In many cases, we don't need new laws. Arguably, I think in the country and even in the state, we have too many laws, and it's very confusing for
people in ordinary citizens to follow them. What we need is simple laws that are actually enforced in an even handed way. I don't think that's too much to ask. This is not about left versus right. This is about up versus down. It's about common sentence, and that's certainly what I want to bring to the leadership of our state. But there, I say, Billie, hopefully in a way that sets the standard for other states across our country as well. I was in Los Angeles a couple of weeks ago
the areas where buildings were being defaced. Earlier this month, I was in Minnesota as earlier this month, in the last month as well. Is are states where when I say we're the best in the Midwest, I can confirm that after having visited Minnesota, we are the best in the Midwest.
But it's sad because I've had.
A story from somebody who was in Minnesota who told me that he had had a hole in the glass of his car put there because of the bumper sticker he had in the back of his car.
That's not America. That's not American.
If we disagree with one another, let's settle it at the ballot box, through civil discourse and debate at our best, even getting together at the dinner table.
At the end of it. That's the Cincinnati I grew up into.
That's the Ohio I grew up into, and that's the Ohio in the America I want to bring back to our country. But it does start with an even handed enforcement of the rule of law. We're fully behind our police, were fully behind our sheriff's offices across the state, many of whom I've already visited with to bring back that common sense of law and order. Frankly, some of it
starts even at a young age. Billy, one of the things I want to do in our educational reform is actually to give teachers, especially in our inner cities, something they've been clamoring for, something they've been asking for but have been falling on deaf ears. We have the ability to bring discipline back to the classroom many principles. Teachers no longer can discipline a student, even for issuing threats, sometimes even for physical violence that teachers' hands are tied.
That wasn't that way in the nineteen nineties, and I think it's wrong today.
I think we need it to be able to be a state of common sense that sets a standard for the United States. Eighty plus percent of US across the country, and I believe more than eighty plus percent of us in Ohio are rooting for that outcome.
There's a governor.
That's what I want to bring, not in a partisan way, but in a unifying way. Even as parents of children in the next generation, that's.
Part of what we want for our kids.
I'm a father of two sons, and I speak for my wife and I both when I say this is we want them to grow up into a country in a state where law and order is respected, where they're in an education system where there's a sense of order and discipline. That's part of what it means to be an educated citizen in the state of Ohio. That's part of what we're going to bring here, and it's a big part of why I'm in this race.
Well, we have to run but a veg rama swamp. You've set records when it comes to fundraising, and we can't be a great nation when New York is run by a communist named mom Donnie that Johnson and Chicago is in complete collapse. The school system is awful. In Los Angeles, there's skid row and fornication and urin nation
all over city streets. And there's ten cities one hundred thousand homeless and two hundred thousand gang members in the city of Los Angeles, and I wont Cincinnati, Columbus and Cleveland, Toledo, Dayton. I went to law school in Toledo to be shining cities on the hill and right now they're not. And it's said, we can't be a great state with lousy cities and viveke Ramaswami. We'll see what happens down the road.
But once again, thanks for checking in to your hometown here in Cincinnati, and may God bless you and God bless America. I have a great Fourth of July you and your family, Thank you.
Of AC Happy for my friend.
Take care, God bless America. Let's continue with more your reaction five one, three, seven, four, nine, seven thousand. Rights Baseball starts in about a little over an hour on news radio seven hundred WLW