By now, you are likely familiar with the sickening attack ad launched by Vivek Ramaswamy, the MAGA Republican vying to be governor of Ohio. The fallout from platforming opponent Amy Acton’s estranged and neglectful mother has been fierce, even causing an internal rift among GOP leaders just two weeks before the midterm elections.
But before he entered the race for Ohio’s top office, Ramaswamy ran for president of the United States in 2024. That ill-fated bid is where he intersects with prohibitionists who are trying to close dispensaries. Specifically, he has a history with the same signature-collecting firm whose canvassers lied to Mass voters. It’s not a stretch. Here is our reporting, word for word, from January 2026 …
Between September and November 2025, the Coalition for a Healthy Massachusetts paid the Missouri-based GroundGame Political Solutions more than $1.4 million for its services, the lion’s share of the $1.55 million it received from SAM Action Inc., a Virginia-based anti-pot propaganda apparatus.
It’s not the first time that GroundGame has been linked to allegedly unscrupulous election practices.
In Michigan, the company reportedly sabotaged a ballot initiative by buying out a contract to collect signatures for a referendum its client didn’t really support and then not doing the job. While in our neighboring Ocean State, reports of “an unusually high number of signatures” for 2024 Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy led back to the Missouri company.
As the Rhode Island Current reported in 2024: “The vendor, a Missouri-based company called GroundGame Political Solutions LLC, launched an internal investigation of its staffers, which found one person who was intentionally writing down dead people’s names on signature forms. That person, who was not identified, was fired … and the company has notified Warwick Police.”
None of those past problems seemingly mattered to the obscure Massachusetts Ballot Law Commission, which finally issued its ruling on an objection to the way in which prohibitionists cleared the first signature hurdle. In short, the body rejected the complaint filed by the pro-legalization Committee to Protect Cannabis Regulation, effectively greenlighting the ballot measure, officially (and ridiculously) dubbed an Act to Restore a Sensible Marijuana Policy.
Meanwhile, a survey commissioned by the Committee to Protect Cannabis Regulation found that of more than 2,300 people who signed the petition, more than half said they wouldn’t have lent their name to the effort if they actually knew the intent of the measure—to shut down adult-use dispensaries.
A spokesperson for the repeal side lied to the Boston Globe: “We never intended or encouraged or in any way made signature gatherers feel like they should lie about what they were getting signed. … You’ve got crybabies who are making millions of dollars off of this marijuana business who are complaining that they’re not being treated fairly. And in fact, they are.”
And an update … in June, the Coalition for a Healthy Massachusetts fired a canvasser who was caught on film doing what many of its gatherers were reported doing statewide. The prohibitionists told Marijuana Moment: “The identified canvasser was immediately terminated, in coordination with our vendor, upon being made aware of the alleged conduct. … The conduct apparent in the video would be wholly unacceptable and does not reflect how this campaign operates. We demand honesty, transparency and professionalism from everyone associated with our effort.”
