Vivek Ramaswamy could withdraw from the Department of Government Efficiency as he is all set to formally announce by the last week in January his bid for the OPhion governor, a Politico report said citing a person close to the matter. On Saturday, Ramaswamy showed up at an all-hands meeting at the SpaceX headquarters in Washington where Elon Musk was not present. As of now, Elon Musk is focused on the big picture things of DOGE while Ramaswamy is focused on deregulation. The rest of the staff will focus on implementation.
Steve Davis, Musk’s right-hand man at SpaceX, functions as his DOGE lieutenant, while Brad Smith, a healthcare entrepreneur and Rhodes Scholar, is Ramaswamy’s main point of contact.
So far, DOGE has been secretive about its meetings; they conduct their business over Signal, the encrypted messaging app and the physical meetings take place at SpaceX’s Washington offices.
The Ohio governor election is scheduled for November 2026 by the time DOGE is expected to wrap up its work as DOGE’s mandate is time-bound and is for a year. DOGE has been tasked to find $2 trillion in spending cuts. DOGE is supposed to submit its recommendations by July 4, 2026.
Ohio had an empty senate seat for which Vivek Ramaswamy was being considered initially but then Ohio Gov Mike DeWine passed over Ramaswamy to replace JD Vance in the Senate picking Jon Husted instead. This reportedly accelerated Ramaswamy’s decision to contest for the governor election.
Privately, some in Trump’s world see Ramaswamy’s nascent gubernatorial campaign as a way to clear a path for Musk to do his own work at the agency without him, the Politico report said.
“Elon basically runs the show,” said an informal adviser to Trump. This person added, “Time is their biggest enemy. We’ll see.”
Musk has already dialed back expectations. “I think we’ll try for $2 trillion [in savings], I think that’s like the best-case outcome,” Musk recently told Stagwell CEO Mark Penn, the former adviser to Bill Clinton. “But I do think that you kind of have to have some overage. If you try for two trillion, you have a good shot at getting one.”
