A young, energetic entrepreneur named Vivek Ramaswamy is mulling a run for president of the United States, hoping his candidacy sparks a “revival of national identity” if he enters the fray and would reportedly seek to follow former President Donald J. Trump’s 2016 blueprint as a political outsider.
Ramaswamy, 37, was raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, as a first-generation American. After immigrating to the United States from India, his father embarked on a career at General Electric as an engineer and patent lawyer while his mother worked as a geriatric physiatrist, Politico reported. Ramaswamy graduated as valedictorian from St. Xavier High School, a Jesuit school, before attaining a biology degree from Harvard University and a subsequent law degree from Yale University.
From there, he founded multiple healthcare and technology companies, including Roivant Sciences in 2014, where, according to the New Yorker, he made hundreds of millions of dollars. He also became a world-class fundraiser, as the company pulled in more than a billion dollars in investments, which as of 2017 was “one of the largest ever fundings in the life sciences sector,” the Times of India reported at the time. He “led the largest biotech IPOs of 2015 and 2016,” his website states, and his companies developed multiple U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved drugs, as Politico noted.
The meteoric climb to wealth and fame in the business industry landed Ramaswamy on Forbes’ America’s Richest Entrepreneurs Under 40 list in 2016. At only 31, he had an estimated net worth of $600 million. In recent years, Ramaswamy emerged as a leading conservative voice in the culture wars that have made their way into corporate America. He published the hit New York Times best-seller Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam in 2021, which delves into the consequences of “stakeholder capitalism” and woke corporatism, arguing it strips Americans of both their wealth and their identity. He followed the smash-hit up with the release of Nation of Victims in September and has been a regular commentator on Fox News Network.
Last year, Ramaswamy, aptly dubbed the “C.E.O of Anti-Woke, Inc.” by the New Yorker’s Sheelah Kohlatkar, helped launch Strive Asset Management to compete with the likes of BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard, and firms that embraced Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) investing.
“It’s beyond the axis of partisanship, and that is the whole point,” Ramaswamy said of Strive Asset Management while speaking with Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest in January.
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He told Marlow that Blackrock, State Street, and Vanguard “pretended to be nonpartisan for years, but what they did, was they aggregated $20 trillion worth of money of everyday citizens’ capitol… and they used it to vote for one-sided progressive policies in corporate America’s board rooms,” said Ramaswamy. Ramaswamy noted he is of the mindset that “you fight fire with water and say that ‘You know what we’re going to advance no political agendas and in fact mandate that companies get out of politics altogether, so that’s what Strive’s all about.”
Now, the ever-ambitious 37-year-old is “seriously considering” running for president of the United States and is making his presence known in early Republican-voting states. Politico reported Monday that Ramaswamy was in Iowa last week and spoke before a group of agriculture industry leaders, and he is set to appear in New Hampshire next week. Following the release of former Gov. Nikki Haley’s (R-SC) campaign video announcement on Tuesday, Ramaswamy joined Fox News and further teased his candidacy.
“So I’m seriously considering it. I’ve been very transparent about that. In fact, I expect to make a decision in the relative near term,” Ramaswamy told Fox News host Steve Doocy. He then emphasized that race should be about the “what and the why” rather than the “who.”
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Ramaswamy said:
I just see an opportunity right now in America to answer the question of actually what it means to be an American today. You ask most people my age that question, you get a blank stare in response, and to me, I think we have a chance to revive the ideals that this nation was founded on and to use that to dilute the woke agenda to irrelevance. That’s what I’ve been talking about in my books and other work over the last few years, but I’m really looking at how I can take that to the next level and hopefully spawn a revival of national identity in this country that we’re missing.
Doocy followed up, asking Ramaswamy what he thought of Haley’s candidacy. The entrepreneur said he encourages a large primary field, asserting the more people jockeying for the nomination, “the better it’s going to be.” Haley shared a similar sentiment with Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle during an interview following her first campaign event on Wednesday, indicating that she welcomes a crowded field.
“I got in because it doesn’t matter who else gets in. I’m not going to wait because I know my mission,” Haley said in the interview conducted on her campaign stage after her launch speech and event. “My mission is to make sure we go defeat this socialism and get rid of the defeatism we’re seeing in this country.”
Along with Haley, former president Donald Trump remains the other candidate currently in the primary field, and numerous polls show him as the clear-cut frontrunner. According to Politico’s Daniel Lippman, Ramaswamy sees Trump’s 2016 victory as a blueprint to the nomination.
“Ramaswamy has a theory for how this will all go. He wants to pull off what Donald Trump did in 2016: enter the race with an entrepreneurial spirit, unorthodox ideas, and few expectations, and end up developing a major following that will carry him,” Lippman wrote.
The 37-year-old entrepreneur is not alone in mulling a run for president. Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) is “taking steps to run for president,” the Wall Street Journal reported, while Gov. Chris Sununu (R-NH) last week established the Live Free or Die committee, “marking a significant step toward laying the foundation for a White House bid in 2024,” as Breitbart News’s Jordan Dixon-Hamilton noted. Former Vice President Mike Pence is considering entering the fray and appeared in Iowa this week. Additionally, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Boyle last month during a Sirius XM Breitbart News Saturday appearance that he expects to make a decision on his potential candidacy in the coming months.
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