Throughout August, Vivek Ramaswamy has avoided a question that two Republican senators, including one who endorsed him, already answered: should Rep. Max Miller, accused of domestic abuse by his ex-wife, remain on the ballot? Now, audio shows Ramaswamy answering a supporter, but he focused on keeping a Republican majority instead of addressing the allegations.
HuffPost got a recording from a Columbus campaign stop last weekend. In it, a man thanks Ramaswamy for supporting Miller. Ramaswamy replies that he is “supporting everyone up and down the ticket.” When asked if he will campaign with Miller, Ramaswamy changes the topic and asks the man about where he lives and grew up.
He later returns to the question and tells the supporter that this election is crucial for keeping Republican control of the House, the Senate, and the state. “If we compromise that, we’re done,” he says.
This is the clearest reason Ramaswamy has given for supporting Miller. It does not address whether the allegations are true or if someone facing them should be in Congress. His focus is on keeping seats.
Max Miller Is Accused Of Abuse
Miller is a two-term Republican from Ohio’s 7th District, a former Trump White House aide and Marine who got Trump’s endorsement in 2021 to challenge Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, one of the ten House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump after January 6. Gonzalez announced his retirement, Miller won the redrawn seat in 2022, and he was reelected in 2024 by 15 points.
Miller was married to Emily Moreno from 2022 to 2024, and the two share a daughter who is now 2. Moreno has alleged in court filings that Miller threw scalding water on her, held a gun to her head, and threw her against a wall hard enough to leave a mark on her arm, and that their daughter suffered a broken collarbone while in his care.
Here’s our initial reporting on the situation:
Her account is laid out in police reports describing multiple violent incidents that ABC News obtained this month, and Miller has denied every part of it, saying no criminal charge has ever been filed against him and that no court or agency has substantiated the claims. He has sued his ex-wife for defamation.
This is not the first time a woman has accused Miller of violence. In 2021, Stephanie Grisham, the former White House press secretary who dated Miller while both worked for Trump, wrote that the relationship had turned violent by the time she ended it, months after Politico reported that Miller had pushed her against a wall and slapped her. Miller denied that too and responded with a defamation lawsuit, the same move he would make against his ex-wife five years later. Trump kept campaigning for him anyway.
Republicans In Ohio Are Calling For Max Miller’s Resignation
Bernie Moreno is Emily Moreno’s father. He is also Ohio’s senior senator, a Republican, and one of Ramaswamy’s endorsers. After Miller went on a livestream at the start of this month to dispute the allegations, Moreno answered him publicly, writing that if elected office requires any basic standard of character, “Max Miller fails them,” and adding, “I hold my breath every minute he has custody of my granddaughter.”
Sen. Tim Sheehy of Montana called Miller a “degenerate sociopath” on X and warned that staying in the race made it far more likely Republicans would lose the seat, and Sen. Jon Husted, Ohio’s other Republican senator, joined the calls to step aside within days. Ramaswamy, who will be on the same Ohio ballot as Husted this November, took no public position.
Miller’s response was to dig in. He asked the House Ethics Committee to investigate him, saying he wanted to clear his name, and within hours the committee announced it was reviewing allegations of domestic violence and illegal drug use. Three days later he said he would loan his campaign $1 million in two installments, telling the Wall Street Journal he was “in this for the long haul.” The window for Ohio Republicans to replace him on the November ballot closed on August 10 with Miller still running.
The seat, once considered safe, is now competitive. A Republican polling firm, co/efficient, found Miller trailing Democrat Brian Poindexter by 14 points in early August, compared to a 5-point gap in late July. This shift came as more voters learned about the allegations, with awareness rising from 53% to 86%. Poindexter, a Brook Park city councilman and union ironworker, called the allegations credible and outrageous, but said his campaign focuses on working families, not Miller. According to Axios, Trump called Miller to share concerns about the race, though he has publicly called Miller a “good person.”
More About Vivek Ramaswamy
Ramaswamy is a Cincinnati native with degrees from Harvard and Yale, and he made his fortune in biotech. In 2015, his company Axovant raised $315 million in what was then the largest IPO ever for a drug company with no revenue, and it did so on the strength of a single experimental Alzheimer’s drug that Ramaswamy had bought from GlaxoSmithKline for $5 million after GSK abandoned it following four failed trials. The drug failed its own late-stage trial in 2017, and the stock lost roughly three quarters of its value in a day. Ramaswamy, who had sold tens of millions of dollars in shares after the IPO according to a New York Times report published during his presidential run, called it his “single greatest failure.” The Acton campaign points to this episode when it calls him a scam artist who rips off families dealing with Alzheimer’s.
He ran for president in 2024, dropped out after finishing fourth in Iowa and endorsed Trump the same night, then was named co-leader of DOGE alongside Elon Musk, a job he left on Inauguration Day. Five weeks later he launched his campaign for governor in Cincinnati, and Trump endorsed him that evening, calling him “something SPECIAL.”
The state party fell in line fast. The Ohio Republican Party endorsed him in May 2025, a full year before the primary and over the objections of term-limited Gov. Mike DeWine, who had worked the phones to delay the vote. Attorney General Dave Yost, his only serious rival, quit the race a week later, writing that his path to the nomination had become “a vertical cliff.” Bernie Moreno endorsed Ramaswamy. Elon Musk endorsed him. He built a massive fundraising lead in 2025 and won the May primary over token opposition.
When the general election began, Amy Acton, who led Ohio’s Department of Health during the pandemic, raised more money than Ramaswamy in 2026. Polls now show the race is tied, even though Trump won the state by 11 points in 2024. Ramaswamy’s favorability was negative in April but about even by June.
Vivek And His Party Keep Trying To Change The Subject
Ramaswamy’s campaign did not answer HuffPost’s questions, and neither did Miller’s. The Ohio Republican Party sent a statement from chairman Alex Triantafilou that did not mention Miller. Instead, it said Ohio Republicans are focused on affordability, a word Donald Trump recently said was “made up” by Democrats.
Acton’s campaign did not change the subject. Spokeswoman Addie Bullock said Ramaswamy “stands side-by-side with creeps and abusers” and argued that his refusal to break with Miller is part of a pattern, one that includes how he has treated Acton’s own history.
That history became a campaign issue in April, when Ramaswamy’s allies circulated a 2019 police report about a verbal argument between Acton and her husband and surfaced a 1994 medical licensing form on which Acton disclosed seeking therapy as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. The day after her campaign condemned those attacks, Ramaswamy posted a video dismissing Acton as having no vision for Ohio beyond complaining about what someone else did to her and did not respond when Cincinnati public radio asked him to explain the remark.
If you look past the statements, the recording is straightforward. The candidate for governor was asked if he supports a congressman accused of holding a gun to his wife’s head, and he replied that he supports everyone. When asked if he would campaign with the congressman, he changed the subject to the voter’s background.
When he finally gave an explanation, he focused on the number of seats. Two Republican senators, including the accuser’s father, said character still matters in Ohio. The candidate endorsed by Donald Trump told a voter that keeping Republicans in power is most important, and he will have to stand by that answer in November.
And just a reminder that Kevin McCarthy recently said that when there is a bad person on their ticket, they always walk away:
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