Vivek Ramaswamy brings his message of 'truth' to voters in Hampton

HAMPTON — Vivek Ramaswamy, vying to become the youngest person ever elected president of the United States, assured New Hampshire voters Friday night he’s not running for the nation’s highest office as a “Republican In Name Only.”

The 38-year-old former biotech executive and author addressed voters at the scenic Victoria Inn as part of a Labor Day weekend campaign swing through the Granite State. Ramaswamy, polling nationally in third place among Republican 2024 candidates, spent the evening calling for a U.S. military-secured southern border to slow drug trafficking, mass federal job layoffs, economic independence from China and support for parents’ rights.

“I do think we face a choice in this primary. Do you want incremental reform, or do you want revolution?" Ramaswamy asked the crowd, which shouted back "revolution."

"I stand on the side of revolution,” he said. “I stand on the side of the American revolution. I stand on the side of a revival of those 1776 ideals that set this whole ballgame into motion.”

Facing questions from voters, Ramaswamy — the founder of Roivant Sciences with a net worth of several hundred million dollars — was asked to prove he wouldn’t become a "RINO" (Republican In Name Only) and turn his back on conservatives should he be elected.

Ramaswamy shares his back story

Making his case in front of a banner with the word “Truth,” Ramaswamy admitted he didn’t vote in either the 2008 or 2012 elections, and in 2004 he cast a vote for a Libertarian candidate. He told the crowd that his views evolved as he became a business leader and felt pressured to embrace and speak in favor of the Black Lives Matter movement and other "woke" ideas he did not support.

He said he stepped down from his role as Roivant Sciences’ chief executive officer so that he could speak his own truth.

The truth, he added, is fundamental to his campaign, and it’s what the American people deserve.

“If people want somebody who is a creature of the Republican Party that bubbled up to the top and became the next guy in line, that's not me. But if you want an independent-minded patriot who speaks the truth instead of a super PAC puppet, I think I’m going to be your guy in this election.”

Voters in attendance were given campaign pamphlets naming Ramaswamy’s “10 Truths,” as follows: “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 U.S. government, not four; and the U.S. Constitution is the strongest guarantor of freedoms in history.”

Ramaswamy appeals to voter looking for outsider

Hampton resident Shauna Norris, her husband and their 8-year-old daughter watched Ramaswamy, her preferred candidate, from the back of the crowd.

Norris has been searching for a non-establishment politician running for president the last few election cycles.

“Our last guy was an outsider,” she said, referencing former president Donald Trump. “But we’re looking for somebody that’s more balanced, I would say. New ideas that are not mired in the bureaucracy that traditional political candidates have.”

Ramaswamy compared the nation’s current identity to an adolescent searching for meaning in life. While Democrats continue “feeding” citizens the topics of race, gender, sexuality and climate, he wants Americans to talk more about “the value of the individual, the family, the nation (and) God.”

“I am genuinely worried that that the American Dream will not exist for my two sons and their generation, unless we all step up to do something about it,” he said. “Because the truth is (that) we’re in the middle of a national identity crisis right now.

“Faith, patriotism, hard work, family — these things have disappeared,” he continued. “Only to be replaced by new secular religions (like) ‘woke-ism,’ transgenderism, ‘climate-ism,’ ‘COVID-ism,’ globalism, depression, anxiety, fentanyl, suicide. Do you think it’s an accident, a coincidence, that we see the rise of these same poisons at the same time in our national history? It is not. These are symptoms of a deeper void.”

Voters Gonzalo Cervantes and Vijendor Reddyl, both graduate students in Massachusetts, traveled north to catch Ramaswamy’s campaign stop and meet-and-greet.

“I thought it was the right time to see him and understand what his intentions are for the U.S.,” Reddyl said.

For Cervantes, Ramaswamy’s ideas and speeches have shown a spark that no other politicians, Democrats and Republicans alike, are matching.

“Besides Vivek, all of the other ones are the usual politicians trying to do the same thing and saying the same things. It doesn’t seem different. I believe that not only the U.S., but the world needs someone different in the White House,” he said.

Ramaswamy has made gains in polling

A mid-August poll from Emerson College shows that former President Donald Trump at 49% still leads the pack of presdential contenders by a wide margin amongst Republican primary voters in New Hampshire. Ramaswamy was in seventh place at 3% at that time, but jumped to third place at 9% in Emerson College's Aug. 23 national poll after the Republican debate in Milwaukee.

Ramaswamy received jabs over his inexperience in foreign affairs and plaudits for his vitality and strong conservative positions in the debate.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Vivek Ramaswamy shares his 'truth' with voters in Hampton, NH