Why Vivek Does Not Have My Vote for Governor of Ohio

Middle management isn’t a stepping stone - it’s where leadership begins and where moral courage and structural clarity collide. We’ve spent decades glamorizing the top and empathizing with the bottom. But real systems don’t change at the edges — they change in the middle. It’s the place where vision becomes execution, where values get tested, and where accountability lives. It’s where you see both the strategy and the symptoms. Where you answer to those above you while advocating for those beside and below. The middle is the nerve center. The heartbeat. The turning point. The thing that absorbs dysfunction until it breaks.

I’ve seen no evidence that Vivek has ever lived or led from the middle. Like many of us, he started at the bottom — young, hungry, uncertain. But then something clicked, and he leapfrogged straight to the top. One moment he was a student; the next he was navigating billions.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with that path — but it skipped the middle. And skipping the middle leaves blind spots where he hasn’t had to reconcile conflicting priorities under pressure, he hasn’t had to answer upward while advocating downward, he’s never held a team together during broken systems and tight budgets. I don’t believe he’s had the lived experience to understand how change actually happens.

This isn’t a personal attack. I don’t think Vivek is a bad person. In fact, I was intrigued by his 2024 presidential run. He said some things that needed to be said. But this is different. He’s been endorsed by the President of the United States to be the next Governor of Ohio. While nowadays that seems plenty enough to win an election, I’m urging my fellow Ohioans to take pause and consider this argument. Ohio doesn’t need a billionaire figurehead. It needs someone who understands what it means to build from the middle out - a truth teller with power, permission, and protection to do what’s right.