Billionaire Elon Musk doesn’t like to share the spotlight and now, he doesn’t have to. The tycoon last year joined forces with Vivek Ramaswamy to run the Department of Government Efficiency, but on Inauguration Day the former GOP presidential candidate suddenly decided to bail. He’s reportedly announcing a run for governor of Ohio next week.

“It was my honor to help support the creation of DOGE. I’m confident that Elon & team will succeed in streamlining government,” Mr. Ramaswamy wrote in a social media post.

Despite the reports of his gubernatorial ambitions, multiple reports say Mr. Ramaswamy was driven out of DOGE by Mr. Musk. He “just burned through the bridges and he finally burned Elon,” a Republican strategist close to Trump advisers told Politico. “Everyone wants him out of Mar-a-Lago, out of D.C.”

Mr. Ramaswamy, who’s from Ohio, was in the mix as a possible pick to replace JD Vance in the Senate, but Governor DeWine passed him over. Whether Mr. Ramaswamy wanted the job is unclear. Yet political observers say the governorship would be a better position from which to launch a repeat run for his ultimate goal, the presidency.

Regardless of his Ohio plans, Mr. Ramaswamy had been increasingly on the outs at Mar-a-lago. While Mr. Musk ignited controversy on Monday over what critics claim was a Nazi salute, he reportedly became annoyed with a controversy involving Mr. Ramaswamy. The biotech millionaire, whose parents came from India, penned a post on X in late December in which he supported H-1B visas, which allow American employers to hire foreign laborers for specialized occupations, such as in the tech industry. 

Mr. Ramaswamy blasted American culture, saying that tech companies are forced to hire foreign laborers because of the current mindset in America. “Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long,” he wrote, calling for a return to “hard work over laziness.”

“The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over ‘native’ Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy & wrong explanation). A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture. Tough questions demand tough answers & if we’re really serious about fixing the problem, we have to confront the TRUTH,” he wrote.

Mr. Ramaswamy’s comments put him at odds with immigration hardliners among Trump’s base who don’t support H-1B visas or the idea of giving foreigners jobs they think should go to Americans. The whole mess made things ugly between Mr. Ramaswamy and Mr. Musk, Politico reported. “A cheeky meme portraying Musk erasing Ramaswamy from history was privately shared by junior staff in House Speaker Mike Johnson’s office, a person familiar with the meme said. It depicted Musk as Josef Stalin and Ramaswamy as the chief of the Soviet secret police who was later executed and removed from photos,” the website wrote.

While his opinion jibes with that of President Trump and Mr. Musk, Mr. Ramaswamy’s open declaration that Americans are mediocre “irked some Republicans in Trump’s circle,” a source told Politico. “They wanted him out before the tweet — but kicked him to the curb when that came out,” a source said.

Mr. Musk and Mr. Ramaswamy wrote in a Wall Street Journal opinion article in November that DOGE plans to trim at least $500 billion in annual federal costs by targeting “expenditures that are unauthorized by Congress or being used in ways that Congress never intended.”

On Monday, Mr. Trump signed an executive order launching DOGE within the White House’s governmentwide information technology and design shop. The department is now an official part of the Executive Office of the President, even though when he first announced it he said it would be advisory and not be part of the federal government.

Only the new venture hit a roadblock hours after being created as three lawsuits were filed against it. 

One lawsuit was led by the left-wing consumer watchdog group Public Citizen, another lawsuit was led by the American Public Health Association, and another by the National Security Counselors on behalf of two plaintiffs who say they represent the interests of federal employees. Other groups, such as a union representing thousands of federal employees, joined the lawsuits as well. 

The lawsuits allege that DOGE violates the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which lays out various requirements for advisory boards, such as the inclusion of a charter, balanced membership, and a federal officer to initiate meetings.

“While FACA permits the use of advisory committees, it imposes various guardrails to prevent them from turning into vehicles for advancing private interests in the federal decision-making process and secretly influencing federal officials’ exercise of policymaking discretion,” one lawsuit says. 

Mr. Ramaswamy is not a sure bet to win the Ohio governorship, though an endorsement from Trump would help. Two other heavyweights, the state attorney general and state treasurer, are also seeking the Republican nomination in the Republican-majority state.