Vivek Ramaswamy, the soft-spoken Republican who would rule by decree

Written by Jonathan Weisman

Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican wunderkind running for his party’s presidential nomination, wants potential supporters to know that he believes in the rule of law and the separation of powers in the Constitution, even though his applications of such principles may seem selective. .

After an intense study of the Constitution, Ramaswamy said he believes the awesome powers of the presidency would allow him to abolish the Department of Education “on Day 1,” part of an assault on “administrative status” that his 2024 rival Donald Trump , fell short during days 1 to 1,461 of his presidency. It doesn’t matter that the Constitution vests the power of the purse in Congress, and a later law makes it illegal for the president not to spend that money.

Vivek Ramaswamy, right, a wealthy businessman and Republican hopeful for president in 2024, speaks during a campaign appearance at LindaÕs Breakfast Place in Seabrook, NH, on May 4, 2023. (John Tully/The New York Times)

Ramaswamy also wants to stamp out teachers’ unions, though he admits they are governed by contracts with state and local governments.

And he said he would unleash the military to stamp out the scourge of fentanyl crossing the southern border, without concern for the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which prohibits the use of the military to enforce civilian law.

In short, Ramaswamy, a lavishly wealthy 37-year-old businessman and author who presents himself as a new face of intellectual conservatism, promises to go further down the road to rule by decree than Trump would or could.

“I respect what Donald Trump did, I do, with the America First agenda, but I think he went as far as he was going to go,” Ramaswamy told a crowd of about 100 Tuesday night at Murphy’s Tap Room in Bedford, NY. hampshire. “I am in this race to take the America First agenda far further than Donald Trump ever did.”

The crowd at a Vivek Ramaswamy campaign stop in Windham, NH, on May 3, 2023. (John Tully/The New York Times)

Ramaswamy, a Cincinnati-born son of Indian immigrants, appears to be the longest of the long shots: he has never held elective office and has dwindling name recognition. But he’s playing in front of sizable crowds and exudes a confidence that can be contagious. He has already lent his well-appointed campaign more than $10 million and has said he will spend more than $100 million if necessary. Recent polls, both nationally and in New Hampshire, show him rising in the Republican field, though no more than 5%.

His open attacks on Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, whom he calls an “implementer” with no vision and without the courage to venture into the hostile territories of college campuses or NBC News, are intended to shed light on what he sees as an eventual showdown. with Trump. His most outspoken criticism of the former president is over Trump’s suggestion that he could skip the primary debates, depriving Ramaswamy of the stage he said he needs to entrap his rival.

Vivek Ramaswamy leaves LindaÕs Breakfast Place after a campaign appearance there, in Seabrook, NH, on May 4, 2023. (John Tully/The New York Times)

Ramaswamy sees a simple path to the White House: score respectably in the Iowa caucuses, win New Hampshire, jump to the nomination, and then a landslide that would surpass Ronald Reagan’s victory over Jimmy Carter in 1980.

“Even in his freshman year, he had a similar voice: confident, articulate, very self-assured,” said Anson Frericks, a high school friend of Ramaswamy and a business partner in the asset management firm they founded to provide investors financial options untethered to socially conscious corporations. “Trust is built with success. It’s a virtuous circle.”

And while his promises may be legally problematic, to many Republicans they ring right, or at least authoritative.

“He sounds like he knows what he’s talking about,” said Bob Willis, a self-described “Ultra-MAGA Trump person” who expected Ramaswamy to arrive in Keene, New Hampshire, on Wednesday.

Vivek Ramaswamy hands Walter Waligura the microphone for a question during a campaign appearance in Windham, NH, on May 3, 2023. (John Tully/The New York Times)

Trust is the gift of Ramaswamy. His father, an engineer and patent attorney at General Electric, is, the candidate said, much more liberal than his son. His mother is a doctor. He attributes his strict vegetarianism to his Indian roots.

A piano teacher began Ramaswamy’s political journey with lengthy asides about the ills of government and the mistakes of Hillary Rodham Clinton. At Harvard, he majored in biology and developed an unabashed libertarianism complete with a political rapper alter ego, “Da Vek.”

Between graduation and Yale Law School, he worked in finance, investing in pharmaceutical and biotech companies. Before getting his law degree, he was already worth about $15 million, he said in an interview, during which he worried about wealth inequality.

“I think it feeds a social hierarchy in our country that rejects the premise that we are all equal citizens,” he said.

Indeed, Ramaswamy’s promises have an overarching theme that the nation, especially his and younger generation, has lost its spiritual center, creating what the mathematician Blaise Pascal called “a God-shaped void in the heart.” That vacuum is being filled, Ramaswamy said, with “secular cults” (racial awakening, sexual and gender fluidity, and the “climate cult”), which can only be “diluted into oblivion” with the rediscovery of American ideals of patriotism. , meritocracy and sacrifice.

Ramaswamy may say things that test his credulity or undermine his seriousness. He boasts on the campaign trail about his recent stellar turn jousting with Don Lemon just before CNN fired Lemon. But his statement in that exchange that black Americans did not secure their civil rights until they secured their right to bear arms made little historical sense, since the civil rights movement was founded on nonviolence. In fact, the weaponization of the Black Panthers led to a deadly government crackdown.

Ramaswamy accepts the established science that burning fossil fuels is warming the planet, but his answer is to “drill, fracture, burn coal” and use more fossil fuels. Supposedly, that will trigger economic growth that will pay for mitigation efforts to protect everyone from climate change.
He also said he is the first presidential candidate to vow to end affirmative action based on race, ignoring that race was the centerpiece of Ben Carson’s 2016 presidential bid. Ramaswamy would end affirmative action via executive order, said.

I wouldn’t spend another dollar on help to Ukraine but would use military force to “annihilate” the Mexican drug cartels.

On Wednesday night in Windham, New Hampshire, Ramaswamy suggested that he would name Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Democratic vaccine skeptic who is challenging President Joe Biden, as his running mate. On Tuesday in Bedford, a woman with a black son-in-law and a mixed-race grandson asked him to clarify the meaning of “anti-awakening.”

Ramaswamy, the author of “Woke Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam,” responded, “I’ve never used that word to describe myself,” as attendees handed out stickers reading, “Stop Wokeism. Vote for Vivek.”
All of this can be somewhat disconcerting to the prominent people who worked with him. Ramaswamy’s real fortune comes from pharmaceutical investment and drug development firm Roivant Sciences, founded after the businessman had a “brilliant” idea, said Donald Berwick, a former administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services under President Barack Obama.

Pharmaceutical giants often abandon research efforts after concluding that even if successful, the drug might not be profitable. Roivant would then take those companies and bring them to market. Roivant’s advisory board eventually included Tom Daschle, a former Democratic senator and Senate Majority Leader; Berwick; and Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of health and human services in the Obama administration.

Part of the appeal, Daschle said, was Ramaswamy’s commitment to bringing affordable prescription drugs to market.
“I just assumed that because he was so interested in doing everything possible to reduce costs, social responsibility and corporate responsibility were part of his thinking,” Daschle said.

Then, after the murder of George Floyd in 2020, Ramaswamy began publicly criticizing corporations for speaking out on social issues like Black Lives Matter, voting rights, and “ESG”: environmental, social and governance investment. Op-ed columns in The Wall Street Journal were followed by appearances on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show, now cancelled.

“I was pretty surprised,” said Berwick, who resigned from Roivant on January 12, 2021. Within days, Daschle and Sebelius resigned. Ramaswamy soon followed, to write three books, help start the asset management company with Frericks, and run for president.

At this very early stage in the campaign, Ramaswamy is open about the limits of his appeal. The evangelical Christians who dominate the Republican caucuses in Iowa will have to be brought back to their Hindu faith. His “war with Mexico” may go well in South Carolina, but it faces resistance among more libertarian voters in New Hampshire, he said.

And the New Hampshire cynics don’t know how seriously to take it. Victoria Gulla, 50, of Spofford, New Hampshire, questioned whether he was part of a backroom deal with Trump to help remove DeSantis in exchange for a position in the next Trump administration, in the way that she believes Chris Christie, formerly New Jersey. governor, helped unseat Sen. Marco Rubio in New Hampshire in 2016.

In a statement Friday afternoon, Trump fueled such speculation, saying he was “pleased to see Vivek Ramaswamy doing so well” in a recent poll and “seems to be on track to catch up with Ron DeSanctimonious.”

That $100 million in self-financing could keep Ramaswamy in the race for a long time, and some voters were clearly won over by Ramaswamy’s near-messianic call for spiritual and social renewal.

Gregg Dumont, 45, from Manchester, broke down in tears in Windham as he praised the candidate for daring to save his children from moral decay and what he called the “racism” of identity politics.

Dumont, who wore a T-shirt depicting Trump in jail as a political prisoner, said Ramaswamy had his vote over the man on his T-shirt: “All politics with an upgrade and no personality,” he said. “I’m sick of narcissism.”