Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy surged in the latest national survey of 2024 Republican presidential primary candidates. A new poll conducted by Echelon Insights between June 26 and June 29 showed his support at 10% among likely voters, catapulting the newcomer into third place behind former President Donald Trump, at 49%, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, at 16%. The survey puts Ramaswamy ahead of his nearest rivals including former Vice President Mike Pence (5%), former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (5%), Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) (4%), and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (2%).
This result, of course, could turn out to be an outlier. The RealClearPolitics polling average shows Ramaswamy’s support at just 2.4%, putting him behind Trump (52.4%), DeSantis (21.5%), Pence (5.7%), Haley (3.6%), Scott (3.5%), and on par with Christie (2.4%).
The polls included in the RCP average were taken between June 5-26 and they show Ramaswamy’s support increasing throughout the month. The most recent, a Fox News poll of registered voters conducted between June 23-26, showed Ramaswamy at 5%.
On the other hand, Ramaswamy, 37, who was largely unknown in political circles before declaring his candidacy in late February, is an extremely impressive individual whose name recognition is most definitely growing. He is smart, extraordinarily driven, and uncommonly articulate. He is running an aggressive media campaign and suddenly appears to be everywhere.
Ramaswamy, a first-generation American, is quite the accomplished individual. According to his campaign website, he was “a nationally ranked tennis player and the valedictorian of his high school, St. Xavier. He went on to graduate summa cum laude in Biology from Harvard and received his J.D. from Yale Law School, while working at a hedge fund. He then started a biotech company, Roivant Sciences, where he oversaw the development of five drugs that went on to become FDA-approved.”
In 2016, he earned a spot on Forbes Magazine’s list of America’s richest entrepreneurs under 40. His net worth at the time was estimated at $600 million.
In an in-depth December profile titled “The C.E.O. of Anti-Woke, Inc.,” The New Yorker’s Sheelah Kolhatkar wrote: “By mocking corporate virtue-signaling on climate change and racial justice, the biotech founder Vivek Ramaswamy is becoming a right-wing star.”
According to Kolhatkar, Ramaswamy sees wokeism as “an insidious secular creed” and considers environmental, social, and corporate governance investing to be “the gravest danger that American democracy faces today.” Speaking to a group in Dublin, Ohio, last December, he argued that ESG investing allows corporations to “do through the back door what our government couldn’t directly get done through the front door.” He is right.
I was impressed with the anti-woke Ramaswamy from the moment I first heard him speak back in February. He told Breitbart News he hoped his candidacy would “spark a revival of national identity.”
He is the co-founder of Strive Asset Management, a company that competes with Black Rock, State Street, and Vanguard, asset managers that firmly adhere to ESG principles.
Ramaswamy told Breitbart “It’s [ESG investing] beyond the axis of partisanship, and that is the whole point.”
He claimed that these companies “pretended to be nonpartisan for years, but what they did was they aggregated $20 trillion worth of money of everyday citizens’ capitol. … [T]hey used it to vote for one-sided progressive policies in corporate America’s board rooms.”
Ramaswamy added he believes, “You fight fire with water and say that ‘You know that we’re going to advance no political agendas’ and, in fact, mandate that companies get out of politics altogether. So that’s what Strive’s all about.”
He enumerates 10 fundamental “truths” on his website that all conservatives can rally behind:
- God is real.
- There are two genders.
- Human flourishing requires fossil fuels.
- Reverse racism is racism.
- An open border is no border.
- Parents determine the education of their children.
- The nuclear family is the greatest form of governance known to mankind.
- Capitalism lifts people up from poverty.
- There are three branches of the U.S. government, not four.
- The U.S. constitution is the strongest guarantor of freedoms in history.
It’s impossible to draw any conclusions based on the results of one poll. I’m merely pointing out that Ramaswamy appears to be gaining some traction in the Republican primary field. With his strong advocacy of conservative principles, his exceptional communication skills, his towering intellect, and his clear sense of purpose, I have no doubt he will distinguish himself in the debates and beyond.
His future looks bright and he is one to watch.
Ramaswamy’s wife, Apporva, is a throat surgeon and an Assistant Professor at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. The couple lives in Columbus, Ohio and has two sons.
A previous version of this article appeared in The Washington Examiner.
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Vivek recently wiped the floor with Charlamagne and his two hostile and racist cohosts on The Breakfast Club podcast. On that podcast, he was a giant among mental midgets. He’ll do well in the primaries. Trump will do well to consider either Vivek or DeSantis as his running mate.
I wholeheartedly agree!