Vivek Ramaswamy, a leading candidate in Ohio’s Republican gubernatorial primary, accepted a $50,000 Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans in 2011 to attend Yale Law School — the same year his own tax returns show he reported $2,252,209 in total income, according to records reviewed by Fox News Digital.

The fellowship, founded by the late Paul Soros — the older brother of liberal financier George Soros — awards funding specifically to immigrants and children of immigrants pursuing graduate education in the United States. The program describes itself as merit-based and states that selections are made “without regard to race, color, ethnicity, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, disability, or any other protected characteristic.”

Ramaswamy’s acceptance of the award drew significant scrutiny in September 2023, when MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan confronted him on camera during the full interview on Peacock’s The Mehdi Hasan Show. Ramaswamy has built a public identity around opposition to affirmative action and identity-based politics — positions critics say sit awkwardly alongside his decision to accept a fellowship whose eligibility is explicitly tied to immigrant heritage.

“You say you’re anti-identity politics, anti-affirmative action, in a party that hates the Soros name, yet you accepted a Paul and Daisy Soros scholarship at law school that was specifically set up for the children of immigrants,” Hasan told Ramaswamy during the interview. “It was an affirmative action scholarship, and your defense for that is that you didn’t have the money to pay for law school, even though you’d already made over a million dollars at the time.”

Ramaswamy disputed the financial framing. “My defense of that is somebody gives you a merit scholarship at the age of 24, you take it,” he said. He also pushed back on the income claim, arguing that his hedge fund bonus at QVT Financial was not paid until December 31 — after he had submitted his application in September — meaning, he said, that money was not available at the time he applied.

Tax records complicate that defense on a broader basis. Hasan, citing the returns Ramaswamy himself released, stated that Ramaswamy made $650,000 in 2009 and $450,000 in 2010. Fox News Digital’s review of the same records reported a combined $1,173,690 in income in the three years before 2011, during which he worked as an investment analyst at QVT Financial.

“You accepted a Soros scholarship for $50,000 when you didn’t need it,” Hasan said. Ramaswamy replied: “The fact is, Mehdi, $50,000 did make a big difference to me back then. And anybody who has a few hundred thousand dollars in the bank is going to take $50,000 without strings attached.”

In a separate interview, Ramaswamy characterized the decision as unremarkable. “At the age of 24, I unthinkingly accepted $50,000 bucks — I’ll take that,” he told James O’Keefe of Project Veritas in September 2023. “That’s the Soros connection.”

The fellowship was not without political sensitivity for Ramaswamy. Before announcing his 2024 presidential campaign, his team paid a Wikipedia editor to remove references to the fellowship from his biography on the site, reported by Mediaite in May 2023. An editor who goes by the username “Jhofferman” disclosed being paid by Ramaswamy for contributions to the page. His campaign denied the edits were politically motivated, arguing the changes corrected “factual distortions.” TiffinOhio.net previously reported on the Wikipedia editing.

Ramaswamy is the son of Indian immigrants and was born in Cincinnati. He graduated from Harvard University in 2007 with a degree in biology and earned his law degree from Yale in 2013. He launched his campaign for the Republican nomination for Ohio governor in 2025 and has received endorsements from President Donald Trump and the Ohio Republican Party ahead of the May 5 primary.