RYE, N.H. (CN) — The main reason for Vivek Ramaswamy’s unlikely rise to third place in the Republican presidential contest was on clear display late Sunday when he spoke at a rally in the New Hampshire seacoast village of Rye — his policies are perfectly in sync with Trump supporters but his personality doesn’t offend people.
“He’s Trump without the drama,” said Sharon Verrette of Swanzey, N.H., who drove two hours to see Ramaswamy speak. “He’s professional, he’s presidential, and he doesn’t attack people on social media.”
“I love Trump, but he’s over the top, and he turns people off,” said Nancy Brown. Her husband Albert added that Trump is too old: “How can we complain about the fact that Biden is 80 when Trump isn’t far behind?”
A woman from nearby Stratham said she voted for Trump before, but “I can’t handle another four years. There’s just too much drama.”
Anita Dahlstrom also complained about “drama,” which seems to be a common term among Trump supporters for everything from the former president’s social media battles to his impeachments and criminal indictments.
“Besides, Trump can’t win,” Dahlstrom’s husband Bob added. “The people who hate him really hate him, and they won’t change.”
Ramaswamy, a 38-year-old Indian-American biotech entrepreneur, is now in third place according to polling averages tracked by both RealClearPolitics and FiveThirtyEight, running ahead of four governors, a U.S. senator and a former vice president. And one recent poll by a Republican firm had him in second place, a percentage point ahead of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
The same poll showed that only 24% of Republicans are firmly in the Trump camp, while 29% are never-Trumpers and 38% say they like Trump but are open to other candidates. And Ramaswamy, a mostly self-funded political neophyte, is making headway among that 38%.
Ramaswamy was born to immigrant Brahmins from Kerala, India, who settled in Ohio. He graduated from Harvard University (where he performed as a rapper under the stage name Da Vek) and Yale Law School. He made his fortune — estimated at $600 million to $1 billion — by starting a biotech company; at one point one of the company’s subsidiaries attained a market value of nearly $3 billion despite having only eight employees, including Ramaswamy’s mother and brother.
The candidate has embraced a number of eyebrow-raising policies, including abolishing the FBI, the IRS and the Education Department; firing most of the federal workforce, and imposing eight-year limits on the remainder; using the military against Mexican drug cartels; raising the voting age to 25 except for soldiers, first responders and those who pass a civics test; and ending military aid to Ukraine.
At a Rye garden center, these populist policies found a receptive audience — as did the free beer and hot dogs, despite the fact that Ramaswamy is a vegetarian and the traditions of his caste generally prohibit consumption of meat and alcohol. He seemed genuinely surprised by the audience’s cheers for his attitude toward Ukraine.
The contrasts between his image and Trump’s were striking: While both are wealthy businessmen, Ramaswamy is less than half Trump’s age and steadfastly refuses to criticize his competitors for the nomination. The 5-foot-7-inch candidate was self-deprecating as he stood on a beer cooler to address the crowd, which numbered about 300. (“If he were Trump, he’d claim it was 5,000,” one attendee quipped.)
Although he’s a Hindu, Ramaswamy wasn’t shy about using Judeo-Christian imagery; he spoke between two tablet-like posters that proclaimed 10 “truths,” the first of which was “God is real.” While Trump rallies can have the pugilistic atmosphere of a big playoff game, Ramaswamy’s talk seemed more like a tent revival. The audience frequently gave spontaneous amen-like responses to his mentions of a society where people are “starved for purpose and meaning” and have “a God-sized hole in their soul."
As he listed the federal agencies he planned to take a hatchet to, including the FBI, the IRS and the CDC, one woman in the back yelled, “What about the NIH?” Ramaswamy laughed and said, “If it’s got three letters, we’re probably going to run a freight train through it.”
It was DeSantis, not Ramaswamy, who was widely touted by pundits early on as the candidate who represented Trump without the drama. But while the Rye crowd generally praised DeSantis as a good Florida governor, they had little nice to say about him as a presidential candidate.
“DeSantis also has drama,” said Beverly Bennardo, who criticized the governor’s imbroglio with the Disney company even though she herself is boycotting Disney products. “He has rough edges, and he hasn’t managed his campaign well — so how would he manage the country?”
“He hasn’t clearly explained what he’d do,” complained the woman from Stratham. Dan Flynn meanwhile described DeSantis as “arrogant, like he thinks he deserves it.”
Ramaswamy is “a very intelligent young man” who “has more on the ball” than DeSantis, said Pam Nyhan, a retired nurse. “I’d trust him more if we got into a war.”
Dante Scala, a political science professor at the University of New Hampshire, said in an interview that DeSantis comes across “as a Coke Zero version of Trump: policies you like but less filling and without anything that’s bad for you. Vivek is pure unadulterated Trumpism, like soda with cane sugar. He’s done a better job of presenting himself as Trump 2.0.
“DeSantis can be paint-by-numbers — I’ll make American more like Florida,” Scala added. “Ramaswamy has big themes centering on national renewal. Voters like to be 'for' something, and Vivek comes across as positive and upbeat and optimistic and cheerful about being very conservative. So many others have a dark vision about how bad off the country is, but he makes people feel good.”
One problem for Ramaswamy is that he may be making only old people feel good. While Politico claims that his support is higher among young Republicans with college degrees, the crowd in Rye was almost uniformly gray-haired, white and working-class, and several people who had been to other Ramaswamy events said the same was true there as well — an irony for a millennial candidate of color who recently rapped Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” at the Iowa State Fair.
Ramaswamy also faces the challenge of persuading voters who like Trump to back him instead when Trump is still polling well against President Biden. Both Flynn and Nyhan said they’re planning to vote for Trump but they’re shopping for an understudy — someone they can back just in case Trump has to drop out, for legal or other reasons.
And at least in New Hampshire, primary voters can be fickle and “they like to date around before they marry,” Scala pointed out. DeSantis and other establishment candidates can be very cautious and tie themselves up in knots, but “Vivek has low expectations and he’ll just let it fly. So he’s a fun date.”
Subscribe to Closing Arguments
Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.
