My Meeting With Vivek

By Contributing Writer on March 1, 2026

March 1, 2026

By Brian Massie, A Watchman on the Wall

A huge thank you to Sarah Wolf for arranging a meeting with Ohio Governor Candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.

(Pictured Left to Right) Leonard Gilbert, Lake County Commissioner John Plecnik, Sarah Wolf, Vivek Ramaswamy, Sue Mazzarini, Brian Massie, Joe Gergley

We thank Mr. Ramaswamy for being such a gracious and cordial host. He was genuinely interested in hearing about the movement to abolish Ohio’s property taxes.

We explained that Leonard and I started the movement when we discovered that the ever-increasing property taxes were pricing seniors and those living on fixed incomes out of their homes. When repeated attempts to contact our local State Representatives and Senator were rebuffed, we tried contacting all state representatives and senators via email, but that also went nowhere.

We did finally get a meeting with Representative Brian Stewart, but when we discussed property taxes, we were told that was too big of a project for him.

We spoke before the House Ways and Means committee and received a lot of smiles and a thank you, but no action. We spoke before Representative Bill Roemer’s Committee to Review and Reform Property Taxes, but all they did was censor my speech by playing classical music over what I said. Attempts to get my message entered into the record were ignored.

I mentioned that I keep getting the same question “How are we going to replace the revenue when we abolish the property taxes.” However, no one asks how are you going to replace the $10.7 billion when you abolish the income tax? Ramaswamy was not very specific with his reply, and stated “the same way you replace it for the property tax”.

He said that there are several states thinking about eliminating the income tax.

At the end of the meeting, we asked if Mr. Ramaswamy would sign our petition. He said that he will need one – two weeks to think about it and would get back to us.

I was thinking that Mr. Ramaswamy will have to run this by his Lieutenant Governor pick, Rob McColley. Here is what Chat GPT writes about his position on the abolishment of property taxes.

McColley, who serves as Ohio Senate President, has repeatedly opposed the idea of eliminating property taxes without replacing that revenue with another funding source. He has said that the state cannot simply “pick up the tab” for ending property taxes because doing so would create a massive revenue shortfall and require very large increases in other taxes (such as sales or income taxes.

After having twenty four hours to think about the meeting, I have come to this conclusion:

The State of Ohio does not lead our nation in anything other than being in the top ten in collection of property taxes. We have been lacking real leadership for decades. We are being “led” by a bunch of socialists doing the bidding of special interests and forgetting the plight of hard working Ohio citizens. Doing something because the other states are doing it is the definition of being a follower.

Ohio government officials in leadership position do not fear the people of Ohio nor do they care about the people. They will only react when we dump one million signatures in their collective laps.

Please ramp up efforts to achieve our new goal of one million signatures.

Freedom and liberty for this and future generations are at stake.

Do not let the “warmth of collectivism” enter Ohio politics.

ANY TAX CAUSING A CITIZEN TO BECOME HOMELESS IS IMMORAL!