President-elect Donald Trump has reportedly nudged DOGE leader Vivek Ramaswamy, currently overseeing an effort to slash government spending, to succeed Vice President-elect JD Vance in the U.S. Senate.
Trump chose Ramaswamy, a former 2024 GOP primary rival, to co-lead the Department of Government Efficiency alongside billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk not long after the election — at which time Ramaswamy said he wasn’t interested in an appointment to Vance’s Ohio-based seat.
But Ramaswamy has since emerged as a top contender for that seat, which Vance vacated last week in order to become Trump’s VP, per The Washington Post. Vance served in the Senate for two years, leaving four more years in his term.
Ramaswamy is an investor in HuffPost’s parent company, BuzzFeed.
It’s ultimately up to Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican who hasn’t always seen eye to eye with Trump, to appoint someone to fill Vance’s old seat until a special election in 2026 determines who’ll serve out the remainder of the term through 2029. DeWine’s appointee could choose to run for election in 2026, or leave it to someone else.
On the Democratic side, former Sen. Sherrod Brown hasn’t ruled out another run after losing in November to Republican Bernie Moreno.
DeWine recently made the pilgrimage to Trump’s Florida golf club to discuss the appointment with Trump, and said he’d be announcing his pick this week. Also in the running for the seat are Lt. Gov. Jon Husted and former Ohio GOP chair Jane Timken. Both Husted and Ramaswamy had been eyeing a run for governor, since DeWine will be term-limited from running again in 2026.
It’s not clear how a Senate appointment would affect Ramaswamy’s work on the DOGE panel, which is not an official government agency. Musk has said the group’s objective is to identify sources of government waste and ultimately recommend ways to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget. The panel is supposed to dissolve in July 2026.
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A spokesperson for Ramaswamy declined to comment for this story.