A first-generation American, Vivek Ramaswamy is quite the accomplished person. 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," according to his campaign website.
Ramaswamy is also surging 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 Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), 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%).
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This result, of course, could turn out to be an outlier. The RealClearPolitics polling average showed Ramaswamy’s support at just 2.4%, putting him behind Trump (52.4%), DeSantis (21.5%), Pence (5.7%), Haley (3.6%), and Scott (3.5%) and on par with Christie (2.4%). The polls included in the RealClearPolitics average were taken between June 5-26, and they showed 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 impressive person whose name recognition is growing. He is smart, driven, and uncommonly articulate. He is running an aggressive media campaign and suddenly appears to be everywhere.
He's also wealthy. In 2016, he earned a spot on Forbes’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." 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," Kolhatkar said. Speaking to a group in Dublin, Ohio, last December, Ramaswamy argued that environmental, social, and corporate governance investing allows corporations to "do through the back door what our government couldn’t directly get done through the front door." He is right.
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I was impressed with the anti-woke Ramaswamy from the moment I first heard him speak back in February. He enumerates 10 fundamental "truths" on his website that many 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. Still, Ramaswamy appears to be gaining some traction. When the debates come around, if he makes the cut, he'll certainly be one to watch.
Elizabeth Stauffer is a contributor to the Washington Examiner, Power Line, the Western Journal, and AFNN and is a past contributor to RedState, Newsmax, and Bongino.com . Her articles have appeared on many sites, including RealClearPolitics, MSN, and the Federalist. Follow Elizabeth on Twitter or LinkedIn .
