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SCREEN CAPTURE Vivek Ramaswamy is the second Republican Indian American runing for President in 2024. |
A second Indian American millionaire has come out of nowhere to announce his candidacy for US President.
The meteoric political ascendency of South Asian Americans is on full display in preparation for the 2024 campaign for US President as tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, 37, threw his hat in the ring for the Republican nomination for President.
He launched his Presidential bid a week after former South Carolina Governor and Donald Trump's Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley announced her campaign for the GOP nomination. Donald Trump is the only other major candidate who has announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination.
Unlike Haley, however, Ramaswamy has no political resume to lean on, which may be a good thing or a bad thing considering state of the Republican Party being torn asunder by MAGA Republicans and what can be called the right-of-center moderates, a self-cancelling designation.
Not much is known about Ramaswamy's policies but his oped in the Repert Murdoc-owned Wall Street Journal indicates he is on the far right political spectrum
“To put America first, we need to rediscover what America is. That’s why I am running for president,” Ramaswamy wrote in his opinion article. “I am launching not only a political campaign but a cultural movement to create a new American Dream—one that is not only about money but about the unapologetic pursuit of excellence.”
“We embrace secular religions like climatism, Covidism and gender ideology to satisfy our need for meaning, yet we can’t answer what it means to be an American,” Ramaswamy wrote in his oped.
“The Republican Party’s top priority should be to fill this void with an inspiring national identity that dilutes the woke agenda to irrelevance,” he continued.
In his article he also hopes to win over some of Trump's base. He's in favor of eliminating affirmative action, stronger border control and repealing civil service protection for federal employees.
On Twitter, he wrote: "As President, I will end federally mandated affirmative action. I will repeal Lyndon Johnson’s Executive Order 11246 which mandates race-based quotas. Every Republican since Johnson had the opportunity to do it. I’ll do it on Day 1 without apology."
He also dived right into the culture wars the GOP is trying to make their major appeal to conservative. In a video reelased at the same time he was being interviewed by Fox News, Ramaswamy announced his presidential ambitions taking aim at the “woke left” as well as “new secular religions like COVID-ism, climate-ism and gender ideology.”
Ramaswamy also thinks climate change can be solved by relying more on oil and nuclear power even though most scientists, including climatologists, the way to slow climate change is to reduce society's reliance on fossil fuel.
In 2014, Ramaswamy founded the biotech company Roivant Sciences. The company went on to give birth to over 20 subsidiaries with varying levels of success, including six approved products to date. Notable offshoots are immunology-focused Immunovant, whose prized asset batoclimab is currently in three potentially registrational studies, and dermatology-focused Dermavant, whose Vtama cream is the first and only steroid-free, FDA-approved medication in its class for adults with plaque psoriasis, according to Fierce Biotech.
Roivant confirmed to media that its CEO, Ramaswamy had “stepped down from the company’s board of directors to focus on his U.S. presidential campaign.”
Vivek Ramaswamy has declined to disclose his exact net worth in light of his presidential bid, but previous estimates from Forbes reports put Ramaswamy’s net worth at $600 million. The biotech entrepreneur did not dispute that his net worth has been over half a billion dollars, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Ramaswamy was born in Cincinnati to Indian parents. In high school he was class valedictorian, a nationally ranked junior tennis player and an accomplished pianist.
He graduated from Harvard College in 2007, summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a major in biology. Later he entered Yale Law School.
While at Harvard, a precis of his senior thesis, on the ethical questions raised by creating human-animal chimeras was published in the Boston Globe and The New York Times. He was chairman of the Harvard Political Union and served as one of three undergraduates chosen for an advisory board for the selection of the current president of Harvard. During his senior year, Vivek co-founded StudentBusinesses.com, a technology startup company which connected entrepreneurs with professional resources via the internet, and he led the company to its acquisition in 2009.
He is the author of two books that further explains his ultra-conservative views, "Woke, Inc." and "Nation of Victims."
Although there are only 4.5 million Indian Americans , or 1.35% of the US population, according to the 2020 US Census, they are the second largest ethnic group under the AANHPI umbrella after Chinese Americans and just ahead of Filipino Americans.
The political emergence of Indian Americans has been noticed by both major political parties. However, of the dozens of AANHPI communities, Indian Americans heavily favor the Democratic Party the most, which makes the two Indian American candidates running for the Republican presidential nomination noteworthy. There are five Indian Americans in Congress, all Democrats, and despite the relatively small number of Indian Americans, they have surged politically in state and local elections.
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