PHOENIX, Ariz. — President Donald Trump added another endorsement in next year’s Republican primary for Arizona governor, saying Monday that he was backing U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs in addition to his previously announced endorsement of housing developer Karrin Taylor Robson.

Trump’s endorsement of Robson late last year angered some of his biggest allies in the state, who are suspicious of her longstanding ties to the Republican business establishment and preferred a candidate with deep roots in Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement.

A former chair of the U.S. House’s hard-right Freedom Caucus and former state Senate president, Biggs has long been a close ally to Trump and supported his false claims about the 2020 presidential election being stolen. Biggs represents a deep red district including cities like Queen Creek and Gilbert, and has ties to the party’s grassroots.

Biggs has had no problem with defying party leadership — such as when he and seven other House Republicans helped oust Kevin McCarthy as House Speaker in 2023.

“When Andy Biggs decided to run for Governor, quite unexpectedly, I had a problem — Two fantastic candidates, two terrific people, two wonderful champions, and it is therefore my Great Honor TO GIVE MY COMPLETE AND TOTAL ENDORSEMENT TO BOTH,” Trump said Monday in a post on Truth Social.

In a failed 2022 race for governor, Robson was closely aligned with old guard Arizona conservatives. She campaigned with Republicans who had fallen from Trump’s good graces, including former Gov. Doug Ducey and former Vice President Mike Pence, while Trump campaigned for former television news anchor Kari Lake. Lake won the GOP primary and lost to current Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs.

This time around, Robson has been looking to eliminate daylight between herself and the president, eagerly embracing him and his policies while touting herself as the Trump-endorsed candidate.

In reaction to the dual endorsement, Robson expressed her gratitude to Trump for his support.

“I cannot wait to be in the Governor’s Office as a partner to his conservative, America First agenda,” she said in a statement. “Onward!”

Sean Noble, general consultant with Biggs’ campaign, said the campaign is “thrilled” for the endorsement but also expected it to be for both candidates given Trump’s earlier support of Robson.

“Given that Robson had leaned so heavily on the endorsement as her very premise for being in the race, it does call into question whether she should stay in the race,” he said.

Trump is no stranger to dual endorsements. Since 2017, he’s supported multiple candidates vying for the same post in six races, including Robson and Biggs, according to analysis by The Associated Press. In the 2022 U.S. Senate race in Missouri, he endorsed “Eric,” the first name of two GOP candidates vying for the nomination. A triple endorsement came in 2024 in the Missouri governor’s race when Trump backed Jay Ashcroft, Mike Kehoe and Bill Eigel.

The Democratic Governors Association called the dual endorsement as a “huge blow” to Robson. The winner of the GOP primary will face likely face Hobbs, who has no serious challenger for the Democratic nomination.

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Vivek Ramaswamy, the Cincinnati-born biotech entrepreneur who departed the Department of Government Efficiency initiative on President Donald Trump’s first day, was expected to launch his bid for Ohio governor Monday.

Ramaswamy, 39, is set to kick off his campaign in Cincinnati, joining the 2026 Republican primary just a month after presumed frontrunner and then-Lt. Gov. Jon Husted left the running to take a U.S. Senate appointment.

Ramaswamy sought the GOP nomination for president in 2024 before dropping out to back Trump, who later tapped him to co-chair the efficiency initiative with billionaire Elon Musk. A near-billionaire himself, Ramaswamy has promoted his ties to Trump as he lines up key endorsements and donors in the governor’s race, but the president has made no formal endorsement yet.

Ramaswamy joins a competitive GOP primary field to succeed Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, 78, a veteran center-right politician who is term-limited.

Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost announced a bid for the seat in January and Heather Hill, a Black entrepreneur from Appalachia, also is running. Dr. Amy Acton, the former state health director who helped lead Ohio through the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, is running as a Democrat.

They will compete in a former bellwether state that has tacked reliably red in recent years, having voted for Trump three times by more than 8 percentage points. Republicans also hold every statewide executive office, a majority on the Ohio Supreme Court and supermajorities in both legislative chambers.

Ramaswamy, who is Hindu, outlined the 10 core beliefs featured in his presidential campaign — led by “God is real” followed by “there are two genders” — in the 2024 book, “Truths: The Future of America First.” He first rose to political prominence with his 2021 book, “Woke Inc: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam,” a scorching critique of corporations that he said use social justice causes as a smokescreen for self-interested policies.

He seeks to buck the traditional route to Ohio’s governorship, which runs through extensive government service often stretching decades, and instead mount a Trump-style ascent into the job directly from the business world.

The formula has worked for Vice President JD Vance and U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno, two political newcomers who won Senate seats with the help of Trump’s endorsement in 2022 and 2024, respectively. But Ramaswamy will test it in a state government-level race for the first time in recent memory.

DeWine passed Ramaswamy over to appoint Husted to the Senate seat vacated by Vance, citing Husted’s decades of elective experience. The gubernatorial bid by Husted, a former Ohio House speaker and secretary of state, had locked down many key endorsements and wealthy donors, who are now largely free agents.

Yost joined the race as rumors circulated that Ramaswamy was planning a run. Since then, however, Ohio Treasurer Robert Sprague and Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose have endorsed Ramaswamy.

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Fresh off of his unexpected departure from President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, Vivek Ramaswamy has set his sights on becoming governor of his home state.

The 39-year-old biotech entrepreneur who made an unsuccessful bid for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination has lined up strategists with Ohio experience and plans to announce his run as soon as this week.

Attending a recent breakfast with more than 600 state GOP activists, Ramaswamy was mobbed by people seeking to have their photos taken with him and his wife, Apoorva. Ramaswamy, who travels with his own small security detail, was again swarmed the same evening during a black-tie inaugural ball in Washington sponsored by the Ohio Republican Party.

Ramaswamy will try to follow the paths of Vice President JD Vance and Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno — two political newcomers who won Senate seats with the help of Trump’s endorsement. His plans have complicated things for a deep bench of veteran Republican politicians, especially the ones who also aspire to succeed term-limited Gov. Mike DeWine. Attorney General Dave Yost announced his candidacy on Thursday.

So far, Ohio voters have continued to support candidates with government experience for state-level offices, while favoring business backgrounds in their presidential and Senate picks.

“At the federal legislative level, that’s a different yardstick and standard than for governor of Ohio,” said Republican consultant Terry Casey. “Historically, the governor’s a little closer to voters — clearing highways, running prisons — than senators and members of Congress.”

Ramaswamy stands to benefit from instant popularity among Trump’s most ardent backers and long ties to both Vance and Moreno. He attended Trump’s second inauguration and is a well-known booster of the president.

“The question is can you bypass the 20 years’ worth of political history that used to be required to run for governor,” said Ryan Stubenrauch, a Republican strategist and former senior policy adviser to DeWine.

Ramaswamy is the son of Indian immigrants and a native of Cincinnati. He earned Harvard and Yale degrees before joining a hedge fund firm and leading its pharmaceutical investments. Ramaswamy launched his own venture in 2014, Roivant, specializing in buying discount patents for drugs stuck in development and resurrecting them. His portfolio is now measured in the hundreds of millions of dollars, enough to dwarf the $15 million he loaned his presidential campaign.

He was raised in a Hindu-practicing home. With evangelical Christians holding sway in the Republican Party, Ramaswamy says his faith shares core principles with Christianity and he traces his abortion-rights opposition to his time at St. Xavier High School in his hometown.

Ramaswamy has drawn criticism both from establishment Republicans and the party’s populist pro-Trump wing. His opposition to providing weapons to Ukraine in the war with Russia bothered some Republicans. But when he urged Trump, notably in an X post that went viral, to bring in more foreign tech workers, it angered former Trump adviser Steve Bannon and other hard-line supporters of restricted immigration.

When Ramaswamy arrived in Springfield, Ohio, last year to hold a town hall in the wake of false claims made by Trump and Vance that Haitian migrants there were eating people’s pets, the venue couldn’t hold all the people who showed up.

That popularity does not always translate to those who know Ramaswamy well. Some inside and outside the Trump universe say his style can be abrasive and exhausting.

Ramaswamy has long considered running for governor, according to those with knowledge of his plans.

After Trump appointed him to DOGE, Ramaswamy pulled himself out of consideration for the Senate seat that came open with Vance’s election as vice president. But Ramaswamy later discussed the vacancy with Trump, according to two people familiar with his plans who were not authorized to publicly discuss the private conversations and spoke on condition of anonymity, and then went to DeWine to ask for the appointment. The governor opted for Lt. Gov. Jon Husted, citing his extensive government experience.

A spokesperson for DOGE said Ramaswamy would not participate in the cost-cutting initiative due to his plans to run for office. That leaves Musk, the world’s richest person, as its sole leader.

Ramaswamy has ties to Republican strategists from his campaign for the White House race, notably Ben Yoho, CEO of the Columbus-based Strategy Group.

By appointing Husted to the Senate, DeWine eliminated the leading contender to follow him as governor. Bot no longer is it a given that the wealthy donors and key endorsers that Husted had locked up over the past six years would naturally shift to another experienced Republican — Yost or Treasurer Robert Sprague, for example.

Yost, 68, is a former county prosecutor elected four times statewide — twice as auditor, twice as attorney general. Sprague, 51, has been twice elected statewide after spending years in the Ohio House and county government. Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a former state senator whose job running elections makes him among the state’s highest profile politician, has yet to announce his plans.

“This new dynamic and competition adds a layer of complexity for me,” said Ken Blackwell, a Trump loyalist who served two terms as Ohio secretary of state and whose potential endorsement would be coveted. Blackwell is a long-time Yost supporter who lives in Cincinnati and is a former mayor.

Yost, in announcing his campaign, did not mention Ramaswamy, but seemed to draw a contrast with a potential rival who has played on the national stage.

“This is my heart, my home,” he said in a statement. “I work for the people of Ohio, and I love my bosses.”

But Ramaswamy isn’t a total stranger to state government either.

Like Moreno and Vance, his entry point was an invitation to the board of InnovateOhio, an office overseeing technology-related improvements that DeWine set up in 2018 and assigned to Husted.

“It’s pretty cool,” Husted said at a news conference announcing his Senate appointment. “We have a vice president from Ohio who’s, like, my friend. I mean, seriously, InnovateOhio board? We had Bernie Moreno, JD Vance, Vivek Ramaswamy and me. We did all right. We got a good crew there.”