The questions surrounding Vivek Ramaswamy are piling up.

His answers increasingly are not.

Less than three months before Ohio voters choose their next governor, the Republican nominee is facing new scrutiny over the biotech venture that helped make him wealthy, the convicted fentanyl trafficker who guarded his family, a Republican congressman facing abuse allegations whose endorsement he continues to advertise, and campaign spending that reporters spent months trying to untangle.

Now Ramaswamy is facing a blunt accusation from Democrats: He is hiding.

“Vivek is hiding from Ohioans because he knows he can’t own up to his record of scheming to get himself richer at the expense of Ohio families,” the Ohio Democratic Party said Tuesday. “He can dodge the questions all he wants—he can’t hide from the clear choice at the ballot box in November.”

Ramaswamy has spent years cultivating a political persona built around long interviews, town halls and unscripted exchanges.

But that defense does not answer the problem now confronting his campaign.

When questions have turned to some of the most difficult controversies surrounding his business record, campaign operation and political allies, Ramaswamy has repeatedly avoided answering them — or his campaign has not responded at all.

A new investigation into the business that made him rich

The latest questions concern the Alzheimer’s drug venture that became one of the defining episodes of Ramaswamy’s business career.

An Aug. 12 investigation by Oligarch Watch examined previously unreported details about the role Ramaswamy’s mother, Geetha Ramaswamy, played at Axovant Sciences, the company created under Ramaswamy’s Roivant Sciences umbrella to develop an experimental Alzheimer’s drug.

The drug had already failed multiple Phase 2 clinical trials before Axovant acquired its rights from GlaxoSmithKline for a $5 million upfront payment.

Axovant then hired Ramaswamy’s mother as vice president of medical and scientific strategy. She co-authored new analyses of data from the earlier trials before Axovant raised $315 million in what was then the largest biotechnology initial public offering in U.S. history.

Oligarch Watch reported that the analyses excluded or recategorized portions of the underlying trial data in ways that produced more favorable findings. The outlet cited medical researchers who have criticized the types of analytical methods used because they can introduce bias or increase the risk of false findings.

TiffinOhio.net examined those findings Sunday. Ramaswamy ultimately earned an estimated $260 million during his time at Roivant, according to Forbes. Intepirdine later failed its Phase 3 trial, sending Axovant shares down roughly 70% in one day.

Ramaswamy has never been charged with fraud or any crime related to Axovant. He has defended the company’s decision to continue developing the drug, saying after its failure that he would make the same decision again given the same information.

But the new reporting raised a different set of questions about what Ramaswamy knew, why his mother was placed in the role, how the failed data were reanalyzed and how those results were presented to investors.

His campaign did not respond to Oligarch Watch’s request for comment.

The Ohio Democratic Party followed with five questions for Ramaswamy, including why he promoted the drug after earlier clinical failures and why his mother was chosen to work on the trial analyses.

Ramaswamy has not publicly answered those questions.

His family bodyguard pleaded guilty. One question never went away.

One day after the Axovant investigation was published, another controversy returned to Ramaswamy’s campaign.

Justin Salsburey, the man who had guarded Ramaswamy and his family, pleaded guilty in federal court Aug. 13 to conspiring to distribute and possess with intent to distribute methamphetamine and fentanyl.

Federal agents had arrested Salsburey in December after searching his Bellefontaine home. Authorities recovered 264 grams of fentanyl, along with methamphetamine, firearms and other evidence. Prosecutors said Salsburey and his wife were involved in mailing hundreds of drug packages.

There is no evidence Ramaswamy knew about or participated in Salsburey’s drug trafficking.

But the arrest created another question about Ramaswamy’s campaign that has never been publicly explained.

After Salsburey’s arrest became public, the campaign continued paying ARK Protection Group, the security company that employed him.

Campaign-finance records reviewed by TiffinOhio.net showed $14,000 in payments to ARK after the arrest. That included a $2,000 payment on Jan. 20 — four days after the campaign announced that the Ramaswamy family had begun “relieving Ark Protection Group of their responsibilities and transitioning to a new service provider.”

TiffinOhio.net asked Ramaswamy to explain why the campaign sent another payment after making that announcement.

He did not respond.

ARK shut down the following day.

Asked about Max Miller, Ramaswamy talked about something else

Ramaswamy has also been confronted directly with questions about U.S. Rep. Max Miller, the Republican congressman whose endorsement remains advertised by Ramaswamy’s campaign.

Miller has faced allegations of domestic violence from his former wife, Emily Moreno, the daughter of Republican U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno. Miller denies the allegations and has not been criminally charged.

The House Ethics Committee has opened an investigation. Moreno has said Miller should not serve in Congress. Ohio’s other Republican senator, Jon Husted, went further and called on Miller to resign and withdraw from the November ballot.

Ramaswamy had an opportunity to say where he stood when reporters approached him at the Ohio State Fair on Aug. 5.

He did not.

Signal Ohio reported that Ramaswamy “avoided weighing in on Miller”.

“I wish everybody’s family well,” Ramaswamy said. “My prayers are with the granddaughter who’s involved in that situation. And I think that is the most important thing.”

That answer did not address whether Miller should remain in Congress. It did not address whether Ramaswamy believes Miller is fit for office. And it did not address whether Ramaswamy still wants Miller’s endorsement.

Miller’s name remains on Ramaswamy’s campaign website.

As TiffinOhio.net reported Tuesday, the continued silence has become more conspicuous as other Republicans have taken positions and as the super PAC working to elect Ramaswamy has attacked Democratic nominee Amy Acton using her own history as a childhood abuse survivor.

The half-million-dollar credit card

The pattern predates the latest controversies.

Earlier this summer, reporters discovered that Ramaswamy’s gubernatorial campaign had reported more than half a million dollars in payments to American Express without initially disclosing the individual purchases behind those bills.

The Ohio Capital Journal repeatedly sought the underlying documentation and an explanation from the campaign.

The campaign did not initially answer an email. After a follow-up phone call, a Ramaswamy spokesperson said he would look into the matter but did not provide the documentation by the outlet’s deadline.

The result was an extraordinary number sitting in plain sight on Ramaswamy’s campaign reports with little indication of what the money actually purchased.

State Sen. Kent Smith, D-Euclid, eventually filed a complaint over $509,473.01 in American Express payments, accusing the campaign of violating Ohio’s campaign-finance disclosure requirements.

The Secretary of State’s office gave the campaign additional time to update its filing. Ramaswamy’s campaign subsequently amended the records and said it was in full compliance with Ohio law.

Whatever the ultimate legal significance of the reporting dispute, the episode followed the same sequence now repeating elsewhere: reporters raised a straightforward question about Ramaswamy’s operation and initially received no answer.

The questions keep coming

That is what makes the newest accusation politically different from a generic campaign attack.

Democrats are not simply arguing that they dislike Ramaswamy’s answers.

They are arguing that on some of the biggest questions now surrounding the Republican nominee, there have been no answers at all.

Why was his mother placed in a position to reanalyze failed Alzheimer’s drug data before an historic IPO?

Why did his campaign continue paying ARK Protection after the arrest of the man guarding his family — including after announcing that it was transitioning away from the company?

Does he still stand behind Max Miller?

And what does Ramaswamy say to Ohio voters about a business venture that made him enormously wealthy even as the Alzheimer’s drug at its center ultimately failed?

The Ohio GOP’s response is that Ramaswamy is available. He attends events. He talks to voters. He talks to reporters.

But availability and accountability are not the same thing.

Ramaswamy built his national political brand in part on his willingness to walk into hostile rooms, take questions and argue his case.

Now, with Election Day approaching and scrutiny of his record intensifying, the unanswered questions are becoming a story of their own.

Ohio voters can see Ramaswamy.

The question is whether he will answer them.