In the seven weeks after Vivek Ramaswamy won Ohio’s Republican primary for governor, his campaign collected the legal maximum donation — $16,615 apiece — from a tight circle of people with one thing in common: they built the cryptocurrency company that has made the family of President Donald Trump more than a billion dollars.
The donors include Chase Herro and Zak Folkman, the two entrepreneurs who founded World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s crypto venture; their spouses; and Zachary Witkoff, a World Liberty co-founder and the son of Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East. The chief executive of Paxos, a major stablecoin company, gave the maximum the same day.
Together, the cluster routed roughly $116,000 into Ramaswamy’s campaign account, nearly all of it on May 5 — primary day — or the morning after, according to the post-primary campaign-finance report his committee filed with the Ohio Secretary of State ahead of Friday’s deadline.
Ohio’s five pension systems hold roughly a quarter-trillion dollars in assets. The governor does not control them outright, but appoints an investment-expert trustee to each board — and a provision slipped into the 2025 state budget shifted the teachers’ pension board toward a majority of government appointees.