CLEVELAND, OH – The personal relationships and endorsements of top of the ticket national and Ohio Republicans are creating problems for Republican office holders and candidates seeking municipal offices for mayor, council, municipal court and school board in 2025, and those who’ll be seeking county, state and federal offices during 2026 mid-term elections.
In an effort to limit competition in next year’s campaign for governor, top Ohio Republicans are joining President Donald Trump in endorsing Asian Indian Vadakanchery “Vivek” Ganapathy Ramaswamy. It’s a move that will leave down-the-ticket Republican candidates, who don’t want Ramaswamy, with a top-of-the-ticket candidate rank and file Republicans are forced to support and defend for “party loyalty.”
Ramaswamy is an illegal immigration lightning rod and Republicans in the state’s 88 counties should demand that there be a competitive 2026 primary election campaign for Ohio governor. The early manipulation reeks of the tactics Democrats engaged in last year to suppress ex-President Joseph Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’ primary election opposition.
The Moreno / Ramaswamy Citizenship Problem Ohio’s Secretary of State’s Endorsing
In his official capacity as the Ohio Secretary of State Frank Larose has legal duties to register only citizens of the United States of America (U.S.) to vote in our state. Ohio voters made it clear by a 76.9 percent margin in 2022 we wanted U.S. citizenship affirmed as a constitutional requirement to vote. That same constitutional-affirming vote gave LaRose the mandatory duty to ensure that only U.S. citizens place their names on Ohio’s ballots for elected offices. No exceptions.
It’s also a violation of Title 18, Section 911 of the United States Code to call oneself a citizen of the U.S. when you’re not. The federal law is captioned, “Citizen of the United States.”
“Whoever falsely and willfully represents himself to be a citizen of the United States shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.”
Despite a duty to verify the U.S. citizenship of Ohio candidates for elected office, and after losing to him in the 2024 primary for U.S. Senate, LaRose endorsed Moreno Mejia and allowed the Colombian alien to continue to campaign under the pseudonym of “Bernie Moreno.” There’s no record of him in Florida, Massachusetts or Ohio applying with a probate court to change his birth name of Bernardo Fernando Moreno Mejia to Bernie Moreno. During the 2024 Republican Party primary election, LaRose attacked Moreno Mejia on his belief that children of alien parents who entered and remained, illegally, in the U.S. like his did should have a path to “permanent residence.”
Congress didn’t offer visas in 1971 for rich Colombian aliens to enter, reside and work in the U.S. to keep their privileged children from being spoiled in their birth countries as Moreno Mejia claimed. When he arrived in the U.S. at 4 in 1971, and his family moved into his mother’s sister’s million-dollar Miami-Dade condo, Moreno Mejia was required 10-years-later to register with U.S. Customs & Immigration Enforcement Services (USCIS) by the age of 14. He would have been given an “Alien Registration Number” on a card immigration officials would have told the 14-year-old to keep on his person. The requirement is mandatory.
If Moreno Mejia’s parents entered the U.S. legally, his initial Alien Registration Number would have been placed in his existing file with the H4 visa he received as a dependent child in 1971. If his parents didn’t obtain an H4 visa for him and his siblings, all the Moreno Mejia children were required to register with USCIS and obtain an Alien Registration Number at age 14. Without meeting these requirements there was no path to U.S. citizenship for Ohio’s newest federal senator.
Moreno Mejia told interviewer Andrea Vecchio during a “driving” podcast how he didn’t know the location of his immigration records. The Colombian U.S. Senator impersonating a citizen of the U.S. added that his immigration records would be easy to forge as he promoted block chain as a way to secure and access them. He claims without sharing his Alien Registration File contents that he was naturalized at 18.
When former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe Velez used his X page to congratulate Bernie Moreno Mejia on his U.S. Senate victory over ex-U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown last November 2024, he revealed a familiarity with his family history that was unknown to Ohioans. Uribe’s wife, Colombia’s former First Lady, is named Lina Maria Moreno Mejia. The Uribe surname is also among those in the Moreno Mejia family tree. So are the surnames of Restrepo, Gavira, Escobar, Ochoa and McAllister.
What Ohioans didn’t know is the U.S. Senator’s brother, Luis Alberto Moreno Mejia, worked for Uribe and two other cartel-connected Colombian presidents. Uribe, according to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), was a close personal friend of Pablo Escobar’s. Our CIA described a Colombian president who is very close to Moreno Mejia’s family as being “dedicated to collaboration with the Medellin Cartel at high government levels” and having “worked for the cartels.” It’s understood why Moreno Mejia doesn’t want Ohioans digging in his Colombian family background.
Both LaRose and Moreno Mejia are members of the same Ohio Republican Party of which I am a member. So is Vivek Ganapathy Ramaswamy. He’s the Asian Indian who told NBC reporter Katherine Koretski during a September 23, 2023 interview that neither of his parents were naturalized as U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents when he was born in Cincinnati, Ohio on August 9, 1985. His grandmother, Thankam Ammal, told a reporter for New Indian Express that her grandson, Ramaswamy, was conceived by his parents in India and was born in the U.S. Ammal was 96 in 2023 and living in the U.S. among six of the chain-migrating children she birthed in India. An internet search identifies a lot of Ramaswamy’s now living in Ohio.
Ramaswamy told Iowa voters during a FOX presidential debate in August 2023 that his parents arrived in the U.S. together, with no money, 40 years ago in 1983. His grandmother told reporters his father, Vadakanchery Ganapathy Ramaswamy, arrived in 1974 with his married sister, Brinda, at the age of 21 to study. Ramaswamy’s mother, Geetha, was 14 years old and her Ohio Medical Board application . Hindu marriages are arranged. He doesn’t understand the “no money” story implicates his parents as liars on federal applications for student visas where they had to prove they were self-sufficient.
Aliens applying for visas to attend U.S. colleges and universities must swear they can afford the tuition and living expenses that an alien with no money can’t afford. They also swear their intent to return home. Had Ramaswamy studied U.S. immigration laws in effect when his father and mother arrived, his “bootstrap” fabrications about their border crossing would not contradict them.
Ramaswamy lacks the understanding of the 14th Amendment and federal immigration laws to know his story about his parents’ immigration to the U.S. is a crime confession. An alien student has a 60-day grace period to leave the U.S. when they graduate or to obtain a “change of status.” A work visa expires in two years with a one-year extension if the employer seeks it in advance from the U.S. Department of Labor. To have hired Ramaswamy’s father, General Electric was required to certify that no qualified American wanted the engineering or attorney jobs they gave him.
Transitioning from a 1974 student who swore he was returning to India, to a career engineer and a patent attorney for General Electric in Cincinnati 21-years later, is more than circumstantial evidence that Ramaswamy’s visa violating father violated multiple federal and state laws to stay and retire. That’s especially since his son has publicly admitted the elder Vadakanchery Ganapathy Ramaswamy “chose” not to become a naturalized U.S. citizen “for familial reasons.”
It’s obvious the Supreme Court of Ohio’s attorney registration division did not investigate and confirm Vadakanchery Ganapathy Ramaswamy’s visa status with federal authorities when they admitted him to the Ohio bar to practice law. Federal laws prohibit states from issuing professional licenses to undocumented aliens. Ramaswamy’s father was not a “qualified alien” pursuant to Title 8, Section 1621, “Aliens who are not qualified aliens or nonimmigrants ineligible for State and local public benefits.”
Trump’s Position on Birthright Citizenship Says Ramaswamy is Not Like Us
Ramaswamy is exactly the category of alien President Trump says is not the “birthright” U.S. citizen he thinks his birth certificate makes him. He dismissively quoted the “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to NBC’s Koretski to support his claim of U.S. citizenship that Trump, correctly, says is not applicable to him.
Trump acknowledges that the primary purpose of the 14th Amendment was to grant U.S. citizenship to emancipated Negro slaves freed during and after our Civil War. Indians indigenous to the U.S. weren’t made citizens by the 14th Amendment, and didn’t acquire U.S. citizenship until the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924. Asian Indians had no presence in the U.S. before the American Revolution or in 1868 after the Civil War. They were excluded with the Chinese by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882; and later singled out for exclusion with the Asian Exclusion Acts of 1917 and 1924.
The Supreme Court of the U.S. in 1923 ruled in Baghat Singh Thind that an Asian Indian couldn’t be naturalized even if they called themselves Aryan or Caucasians. The 33 god Hindus were among the “unassimilable hordes” Congress could choose to exclude the Supreme Court of the U.S. ruled in Chae Chan Ping in 1889.
On February 10, 2025, LaRose shared a video he created on Elon Musk’s “X” social media site promising to back his friend, Ramaswamy, for Ohio governor as a Republican. In a February 27, 2025 Rumble newscast, LaRose told his interviewers that Ramaswamy had endorsed him for Ohio Auditor of State. The Ramaswamy “fan boy” submissively described his Asian Indian friend as “a leader you follow because you want to.” Ramaswamy’s parents have said their son sees himself as a leader with a message for the White population that will convert them from “whiners to winners.”
The Ohio Secretary of State’s misuse of his elected office to endorse his “friend” creates an exploitable conflict of interest Democrats can use against Ohio Republicans should Ramaswamy’s U.S. citizenship be challenged by an Ohioan who wants the citizens only constitutional amendment enforced. Endorsing instead of investigating and confirming Ramaswamy’s parents’ immigration status, to verify his claim of U.S. citizenship, raises concerns that LaRose is making a politically exploitable exception for his friend.
Democrats Might Use Trump’s “Birthright Citizen” Playbook Against Ramaswamy
LaRose’s Ramaswamy endorsement, and letting Moreno Mejia on the ballot, is a gift to statewide Democratic Party candidates attacking my party’s hypocrisy on illegal aliens. He is not who Republicans need at the top of the ticket. Now that Moreno Mejia has endorsed Ramaswamy, I see it as one illegal alien Republican endorsing another illegal alien Republican for elected office. Down ticket Republican candidates and elected officials don’t need the drama of having to defend this top-of-the-ticket political lunacy.
Should he make it to the ballot, and Democrats take a page out of Trump’s “kick them all out” playbook, they’ll do what ex-U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown did not do with Moreno and make Ramaswamy’s U.S. citizenship a campaign issue. Brown could have destroyed Moreno Mejia had he familiarized himself with immigration laws under his authority to write and amend and critically examined the Colombian’s parents’ immigration history. Republicans backing Ramaswamy are setting up the party to have its credibility attacked for harboring and promoting illegal aliens for elected office.
Consider that Trump’s U.S. Department of Justice under U.S. Attorney General William Barr targeted Confucius Institutes like the one at Cleveland State University (CSU) for closure. Brown didn’t bother to learn that Moreno Mejia was chairman of CSU’s board of trustees when the Confucius Institute contract with the Communist Chinese government’s Hanban Institute, that was written in Chinese, was approved.
It’s like Brown was too woke to call Moreno Mejia an illegal alien and question his infiltration of Communists around American CSU students. Under Moreno Mejia the Confucius Institute’s Communist Chinese president, a visa violating alien, Jianping Zhu, was given authority to hire over 200 employees as provost for six years.
Moreno Mejia was a “gift” to a savvy Democratic candidate and remains so as knowledge of his immigration background and connection to Colombia’s cartel-influenced political underworld grows.
The Ohio GOP’s Immigration Credibility is on the Line
Lucas County State Rep. Josh Williams, another Ohio Republican, has introduced bills to punish sanctuary cities and to require government agencies to document interactions with undocumented aliens. Williams, like LaRose, is endorsing Ramaswamy for governor.
Both Republican politicians, LaRose and Williams, talk tough on illegal aliens but say nothing about those who are seeking elected office from inside our political party. It’s as if Republican voters are supposed to accept only Moreno Mejia and Ramaswamy’s proofless affirmations of citizenship because they’re with us. That’s not flying with Republicans looking for immigration enforcement consistency from the Republican candidates seeking our votes, endorsements and support.
The unquestioned presence of the children of visa violating aliens like Moreno Mejia and Ramaswamy will kill the Ohio Republican Party’s immigration enforcement credibility during 2026 statewide and mid-term federal elections. Millions of American voters, including Republicans, are already angered over some decisions being made by Trump and his illegal alien South African buddy, Elon Musk. Tesla owners are facing vandalism and destruction of their vehicles as Republican elected officials are fleeing their town hall meetings.
There’s a growing undercurrent discussion among Republicans who are not associated with the MAGA red cappers that Trump’s cabinet has even more foreign-born officials than ex-President Joseph Biden’s. Our concerns as Republicans should not be ignored. Every time he pisses off another segment of Americans, Musk’s status as a visa violating illegal alien becomes a talking point for critics who want him deported. His illegal alien presence in the White House offends millions of Americans for the “in your face” nature of the hypocrisy.
Not all Ohio Republicans want our party’s leaders and office holders promoting aliens who can’t prove their U.S. citizenship for elected and appointed public offices to the party’s voters. We want proof that alien candidates, and their families, have complied with federal immigration laws and are not criminally impersonating U.S. citizens.
Proof for Republican candidates and elected office holders like Moreno Mejia and Ramaswamy is found in their parents and their own federal Alien Registration Files if they crossed our borders legally and possess them. The Secretary of State of Ohio has a duty to obtain the immigration records of the parents of candidates like Moreno Mejia and Ramaswamy to verify that their children, whether born in the U.S. or not, are legally U.S. citizens.
Republican voters are among the Ohioans who are demanding consistency from the Republican elected officials we’ve elected to obey and enforce our laws.
