US

Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy ploughs defiant path in wintry Iowa

Entrepreneur campaigns in Des Moines for the US presidential nomination amid heavy snow and stagnant polling

Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy walks from his campaign bus on a campaign stop in Iowa. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Keith Duggan's face
Keith Duggan in Des Moines, Iowa
Wed Jan 10 2024 - 08:26

On Tuesday, as a snowstorm settled across the Midwest, the people vanished from Des Moines.

By lunchtime, the footpaths were lost beneath a lush white blanket and the usually thriving historic East Quarter was forlorn and empty. Many of the cafes and shop fronts had closed for the day.

Signs of life were scarce: a lone customer in a nail salon chatting; a camera crew dismantling their equipment for the day; heavy-duty SUV drivers ploughing through the slush; and doughty sons and daughters of the Midwest clearing their car bonnets and driveways with industrial sized shovels.

Oh, and Vivek Ramaswamy.

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Irrespective of how next Monday night goes for the brashest of the Republican candidates, nobody can ever fault the self-styled Republican outsider’s campaign for lacking a sense of the intrepid. By now, he has ventured to corners of the Hawkeye State that many natives have yet to visit.

And while the Transport Authority issued travel warnings and advised motorists to stay off several inter-states, Ramaswamy posted a video in which he was standing outside, a bank of snow behind him and a heavy drift falling as he held his young child in his arms and delivered an upbeat message.

“I’m not going to let a bit of snow get in our way. My favourite part about being here in Iowa is meeting voters who actually care about this country and will come out no matter what. So, I’m the only one on the campaign trail doing multiple events today. We are not going to let anything stop us. Meet voters here in Des Moines, meet voters in the surrounding cities. You know what: you can’t brave a little bit of snow, I don’t think you are ready to lead this country.

“I want everybody to be safe today; drive slowly, drive safely. That is what we are going to be doing but we are going to have some tough conversations about the future of our country. And if we’re not willing to talk openly we are not going to have a country left. And we are doing it for these kids and their generation. That is why we are doing this, and we are guided by our sense of purpose. Nothing is going to stop us.”

Except, perhaps, the votes.

“I stand for revolution,” he told a crowd in Rochester, New Hampshire, last summer. At that point, Ramaswamy’s eclectic persona was attracting positive voter attention. He was not the stereotypical candidate: a self-made entrepreneurial millionaire running an entirely self-funded campaign revolving around his anti-woke agenda and his contempt for the staleness of the prevailing political scene.

US Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who made his name as a pharmaceutical entrepreneur, speaks at campaign stops in Iowa. Video: Getty

He was brash, he could riff an Eminem rap at the drop of a hat and literally spelled out his principles on a banner that accompanied him on his indefatigable tours of Iowa and New Hampshire. “God is real” is his first declaration. “There are two genders” is his next. “An open border is no border.”

Ramaswamy promised to end the cushy Capitol Hill bureaucratic class with mass layoffs. And, in striking contrast to the leading contenders for this election, he has youth on his side. In some ways, Ramaswamy seemed like something new, even if the entire concoction is another version of Marlon Brando’s immortal reply to what he was rebelling against – “Whaddya got?”

He surged from nowhere to 8 per cent in national Republican polls in August but that has since fallen by half and for all his wooing of Iowa, he remains stuck on 7 per cent. The ultimate purpose – laying the runway for a 2028 bid, nudging his way into the sightlines of a vice-presidential role in the event of a Donald Trump win – remains conjecture.

But his energy has not faded. As darkness fell on the bitterest Tuesday Iowa has experienced in years, Ramaswamy spoke with his customary zeal to those who braved the night to show up at Smoky Row in Oskaloosa, promising to drain the swamp and reduce the $34 trillion debt. The listening was concentrated. The applause was understated but sincere. It was obvious that those who had shown up were searching through the rhetoric for a message that would resonate. Ramaswamy is a fluent and nimble communicator and has a warm, easy way when it comes to impromptu meet-and-greets.

“I’m not the guy who is going to walk in here and tell you it is morning in America,” he said at one stage.

“I love Ronald Reagan, but I don’t think Ronald Reagan would tell you that if he was here today. It’s not morning in America but it can be. I’m not going to tell you as a young person right now that the American dream is alive and well. It is on life support. That’s where we are. But it can be. If you all do your part in about a week, next Monday. That is what I am asking you for.

“If you all do your part, I promise you, my family and I, we will do ours to make sure that our best days are actually still ahead of us. To make sure that we will look our kids in the eye and mean it when we tell them that you get ahead in this country with your own commitment, your own hard work and dedication and that you are free to speak your minds with every step of the way. That is the American dream.”

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US presidential elections