Chris Christie says Vivek Ramaswamy now in ‘dustbin of history’, thinks he’s going to drag JD Vance down with him

Vivek Ramaswamy has lost the Ohio gubernatorial race to Amy Acton by a humiliatingly large margin. Once the favorite to win, Ramaswamy’s campaign rose to national attention after he released an attack ad featuring Acton’s estranged mother, which was widely seen as using the abuse she says she suffered as a child against her.

Ramaswamy stood by his ad, even vowing to spend more money to ensure as many Ohioans as possible saw it. This strategy appears to have backfired, with him getting just 44.4% of the vote to Acton’s 52.3%. In his concession speech (via the BBC), he said, “sometimes these things happen for a reason” and that he must have “patience”.

Now prominent Republican and former governor of New Jersey Chris Christie has expressed his personal disgust with Ramaswamy and his ad. During ABC News’ election night coverage, Christie argued that Ramaswamy not only has himself to blame for his loss, but that JD Vance publicly standing by him will crater the vice president’s reputation too.

“We know what Vivek Ramaswamy is, and voters have judged him as such”

Christie didn’t hold back, criticizing Ramaswamy’s “judgement” in producing this ad: “You not only have to question the judgement of a man who would take a woman — an elderly woman, out of the car she was living in out of the parking lot in a church in Pennsylvania with her cats and put her in front of a video camera, and make that a TV ad in the gubernatorial race.”

He went on to say that, “We know what Vivek Ramaswamy is, and voters have judged him as such” and that soon he “will be forgotten. He is going to be sent to the dustbin of history.” But he then turned on Vance, pointing out, “Vance stood 100 percent with Vivek Ramaswamy. Not only as a person and a candidate, but he stood behind that advertisement.”

Christie then gave Vance both barrels: “J.D. Vance is going to be remembered, I think, for this campaign, for more than anything else, that he stood by that ad, a man who wrote a book on Catholicism, stood behind that ad. It’s a disgrace.”

Only time will tell if Christie is proven right. But, though Democrats are rightly celebrating a midterm rout of MAGA that has exceeded most predictions, all eyes will soon be on the 2028 presidential race. Vance remains the most likely candidate to succeed Donald Trump and run for president as his standard-bearer, so expect Democrats to seize on this incident as proof that he’s unfit to be president.