Republican Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy paid a Wikipedia editor in early 2023 to remove references to his Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship and his role on Ohio’s COVID-19 Response Team, just weeks before he launched his presidential campaign, according to reporting first published by Mediaite in May 2023.
The article’s version history showed that on February 9, 2023, an editor using the handle “Jhofferman” removed language documenting Ramaswamy’s 2011 receipt of the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans — a graduate-school funding program for immigrants and children of immigrants — along with references to his participation on Ohio’s COVID-19 Response Team. The editor’s user page disclosed that the account had been paid by Ramaswamy for the edits.
Ramaswamy announced his presidential candidacy roughly two weeks after the changes.
The Soros connection Ramaswamy removed
Paul Soros, who died in 2013, was the older brother of billionaire Democratic donor George Soros — a figure frequently invoked by conservative commentators and a recurring target of right-wing conspiracy theories. The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship program is a merit-based graduate scholarship; it is not affiliated with George Soros’s political or philanthropic giving.
Ramaswamy received the fellowship during his time as a Yale law student. He has publicly acknowledged the scholarship when pressed directly, but has also made attacks on the Soros name a recurring feature of his political rhetoric.
Campaign response
After Mediaite’s report, Ramaswamy senior adviser Tricia McLaughlin told HuffPost the edits were not a “scrub” but corrections of “factual distortions” on “a number of topics, including family members’ names.” McLaughlin said the information was “Googleable” and accused a pro-DeSantis super PAC of amplifying the story.
After other Wikipedia editors debated the conflict of interest, the Soros fellowship reference was restored to the page. The current Wikipedia entry states that Ramaswamy’s campaign “admitted that he had paid an editor to alter his Wikipedia biography before announcing his candidacy, but denied that the payment for edits was politically motivated.”
The Ohio COVID-19 Response Team role
The same February 2023 edit also removed references to Ramaswamy’s service on Ohio’s COVID-19 Response Team. According to Mediaite’s review of the edit history, the editor recorded that the COVID-related content was removed at Ramaswamy’s explicit request, while the Soros fellowship was characterized by the editor as “extraneous material.”
Relevance to the 2026 Ohio governor’s race
Ramaswamy ended his presidential campaign in January 2024 after finishing fourth in the Iowa caucuses and endorsed Donald Trump. He launched his campaign for Ohio governor in 2025 and has since received endorsements from Trump and the Ohio Republican Party. He faces Democrat Amy Acton, who led Ohio’s public health response during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic — the same period Ramaswamy’s paid Wikipedia edit sought to remove from his public record.
