Abuse allegations, an ethics probe and GOP calls to quit — Max Miller still makes Ramaswamy’s list

The window closed at 4 p.m. Monday, and the thing worth watching was never really the window.

U.S. Rep. Max Miller is the Republican nominee in Ohio’s 7th Congressional District, and now he is stuck there. Under state law, Republicans had until Monday to certify a replacement on the November ballot. Because the county party chairs who would pick that replacement must be given two days’ notice before they meet, Miller would have had to withdraw by Saturday for the process to finish in time. He did not. His campaign spokesperson, Abigail Angelos, told The New York Times on Saturday that he was staying in.

He can still leave. If he does now, Republicans have no nominee at all in a district President Donald Trump carried by about 11 points in 2024, against Democrat Brian Poindexter, a union ironworker.

All of that was decided by Miller. What was decided by Vivek Ramaswamy is a smaller thing, and it is the thing this newsroom has been watching since last weekend: a name on a web page.

The one variable he controls

As of Monday, Miller’s name still appeared on the endorsements page of Ramaswamy’s campaign for governor, listed under “Ohio Congressional Delegation” alongside U.S. Reps. Jim Jordan, Dave Taylor, Michael Rulli and Warren Davidson.

Two headings above him on the same page are U.S. Sens. Bernie Moreno and Jon Husted.

Moreno is Miller’s former father-in-law and the father of Emily Moreno, whose court filings and police reports accuse Miller of holding a gun to her head and injuring their toddler. Moreno said Miller is a danger to his daughter and should not serve in Congress. Husted, in the middle of his own November race against Sherrod Brown, called on Miller to step aside as a candidate and to resign from the House.

So Ramaswamy’s endorsements page currently collects, in one column, a congressman accused of domestic abuse and the two Ohio senators demanding he leave public life. Gov. Mike DeWine, who called the allegations troubling, is on it too.

Ramaswamy has not resolved the contradiction. Asked about Miller at the Ohio State Fair on Wednesday, he said: “I wish everybody’s family well. My prayers are with the granddaughter who’s involved in that situation. And I think that is the most important thing.”

He did not say whether Miller should resign. He did not say whether Miller should leave the ballot. He did not say whether the endorsement still stands. It is worth being precise about direction here: Ramaswamy has never endorsed Miller’s re-election. Miller endorsed him. What Ramaswamy has done is keep publishing it.

April proved how fast the page can move

An endorsements page is among the cheapest things a campaign can change, and this campaign has already shown how quickly it changes one when a name becomes inconvenient.

In April, TiffinOhio.net reported that Ramaswamy’s campaign was promoting the endorsement of state Rep. Rodney Creech, who was accused by a minor female relative of climbing into bed with her while erect and wearing only his underwear, according to Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation documents obtained by the Statehouse News Bureau. Creech denied wrongdoing and was never charged.

Two days later, Creech’s name was gone from the page — and so was state Rep. Gary Click’s. Web Archive snapshots captured both removals. The campaign announced nothing. Then Click’s name reappeared roughly two hours after this outlet documented the change, and Click told his Facebook followers that reports of his removal were greatly exaggerated. The archive said otherwise.

Creech has not been back on the page since. He is not on it today. That is the standard the campaign set for itself in April: a BCI file and a news story, and a name comes down inside 48 hours.

Since that standard was set, Miller has been the subject of a House Ethics Committee review, opened Tuesday at his own request, into whether he “may have engaged in domestic violence and abuse or illegal drug use.” The committee noted that opening a review does not itself indicate a violation occurred. He has been publicly told to quit by two U.S. senators from his own party and his own state, one of them his former father-in-law. A Strongsville GOP rally featuring Miller and U.S. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, scheduled for Monday, was canceled after chair Shannon Burns cited the number and nature of threats. Miller told The Wall Street Journal he would loan his campaign $1 million.

Miller denies every allegation. He has not been charged with a crime, and he is suing his ex-wife for defamation.

Through all of it, the page did not change. Whatever else Miller was hearing last week, from the top of his party’s statewide ticket he was hearing nothing at all — and he could look at vivekforohio.com and see the light still green.

Why a Seneca County reader should care

Nobody here votes in the 7th District. But the same page carries names that appear on ballots in this part of the state, and it carries them under the same logic.

State Rep. Gary Click, the Vickery Republican who represents House District 88, is listed among Ohio state legislators — the endorsement he lost in April and got back the same afternoon. Senate President Pro Tempore Bill Reineke of Tiffin is listed by title. Seneca County Sheriff Fred Stevens is listed under Ohio sheriffs.

The endorsements page is the closest thing a campaign publishes to a public statement of whose company it will keep. Voters in Seneca County are being asked in November to hand the governor’s office to the person maintaining that list.

The pattern the opposition is betting on

The Ohio Democratic Party has spent a week demanding Ramaswamy reject the endorsement outright. “Vivek Ramaswamy’s silence regarding the horrifying abuse allegations against Max Miller is disqualifying,” ODP spokeswoman Katie Seewer said in a statement. “If Ramaswamy can’t even condemn Miller’s violent behavior, let alone reject his endorsement, how can Ohioans trust him to protect their families?”

Democrats are pressing the point because Ramaswamy’s handling of sexual violence has already been an issue in this race. In April, after his allies circulated Democratic nominee Amy Acton’s disclosure that she had sought therapy for childhood sexual abuse, Ramaswamy posted a video saying she had no vision for the state other than to complain about what someone else did to her. Acton has spoken publicly for years about being molested between the ages of 9 and 12 by her mother’s husband. Her campaign manager, Phil Stein, called the remark shameful.

Ramaswamy has also declined for months to call for release of the Jeffrey Epstein files.

The Cook Political Report moved the Ohio governor’s race from Lean Republican to Toss Up in July. Spokespeople for the Ohio Republican Party and the Ramaswamy campaign did not respond to a request for comment from the USA TODAY Network last week.

What Monday actually settled

Ohio Republicans spent a week trying to get a different name onto the November ballot in the 7th District. Trump, who attended Miller and Emily Moreno’s wedding, told CBS News on Aug. 3 that Miller is a “very good person” and that he would let the families figure it out. Moreno and Husted said the opposite, loudly and by name. House Speaker Mike Johnson stood by Miller and pointed to the ethics process.

Miller listened to all of it and stayed. That was his call to make, and he made it.

Ramaswamy’s call was narrower and it was entirely his own. He did not have to hold a press conference or issue a statement or call for anything. He had to decide whether to leave a name up. He had until 4 p.m. Monday to make that decision quietly, the way he made the last one, and be able to say afterward that he had acted before the deadline rather than after it.

The deadline came. The name is still there.

Ohioans vote for governor on Tuesday, Nov. 3.