Ramaswamy drops out of Republican primary as extremist message fails to capture voters

(CN) — Entrepreneur and Cincinnati, Ohio, native Vivek Ramaswamy ended his lackluster presidential campaign Monday night, following poor results in the Iowa caucuses and amid dismal polling numbers that stagnated in recent weeks.

The Harvard graduate and founder of Roivant Sciences expressed disappointment in a statement made at his campaign watch party. He endorsed Donald Trump.

"I will stick to the truth tonight," he said. "The first hard truth — and this was hard for me, I've got to admit this — but we've looked at it every which way. And I think it is true that we did not achieve the surprise that we wanted to deliver tonight. There's no path for me to be the next president, absent things that we don't want to see happen in this country.

"Tomorrow, I'm going to appear with Donald Trump at a rally in New Hampshire to lay out what I see, and what we see, for the future of the country," he added.

Ramaswamy finished a distant fourth in the Iowa caucuses, behind Trump, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, receiving just 8,449 votes, or 7.7% of the total.

Often outspoken and sometimes conspiratorial, Ramaswamy based his campaign on a platform he called "America First 2.0," which consisted of 25 policy points, including a commitment to revive the "American national identity."

He was increasingly unafraid to connect himself with fringe elements of the far right. Earlier in the month, he accepted an endorsement from former Iowa Representative Steve King, a Republican who was lambasted by members of his own party for racist rhetoric before he lost his seat in 2020.

Also earlier this month, Ramaswamy denied the United States has a problem with white nationalists and claimed there is no problem with racism at a campaign event in King's home state.

"Was there a point in our prior national history where there have been vicious forms of anti-Black or anti-brown discrimination in this country, after the Civil War and otherwise? Yes. But you're looking in the rearview mirror," he told supporters.

Ramaswamy was born to Indian immigrant parents in southern Ohio. He graduated from Harvard University with a bachelor's degree in biology, and eventually obtained his law degree from Yale Law School.

He founded Roivant Sciences in 2014 and incorporated the biotech firm in Bermuda, a tax haven, with nearly $100 million in startup capital.

Notably, Ramaswamy sold more than $33 million worth of Roivant stock in the first week of 2024 to boost his campaign capital, but the efforts clearly failed. He had sold $32 million worth of the company's stock in February 2023 as a way to kickstart his campaign, which was primarily self-funded.

According to aggregated poll data on the FiveThirtyEight website, Ramaswamy's highest position in the primary polls came in late August 2023, when he sat in third place, with just over 11% support.

Since then, however, his numbers declined steadily. Even before the caucuses, he sat behind Trump, DeSantis and Haley, with less than 5% support, according to FiveThirtyEight.

Indicative of his slide in popularity, Ramaswamy stopped all television ad buys in late December 2023, although his campaign said the decision was intentional and made "to be nimble and hypertargeted" to voters.

He participated in four Republican primary debates and, at times, espoused highly controversial opinions, including that the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol was an "inside job."

The statement came as Ramaswamy spouted off a laundry list of conspiracy theories popular among far-right circles of the Republican Party, but clearly the comments made little impact on the electorate at large.

"Why am I the only person on this stage, at least, who can say that Jan. 6 now does look like it was an inside job?" he asked the audience at the Dec. 6, 2023, debate in Alabama. "That the government lied to us for 20 years about Saudi Arabia's involvement in 9/11? That the great replacement theory is not some grand right-wing conspiracy theory, but a basic statement of the Democratic Party's platform? That the 2020 election was indeed stolen by Big Tech?"

The Ohio native made a final push to boost his popularity before the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 15. He visited each of the state's 99 counties at least twice in the run-up, but the writing was on the wall even before the first major electoral event of the calendar year.

Haley's surge in the polls in the early weeks of 2024, coupled with Trump's stranglehold on pole position in the primary, prevented Ramaswamy from gaining any ground and doomed his bid for the Republican nomination.

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