Vivek Ramaswamy says he approaches critics with open arms.
In that spirit, the presidential hopeful invited me on his campaign trail in New Hampshire to discuss my May op-ed in The Post that criticized his proposal to raise the minimum voting age.
“I believe in engagement, not disengagement,” Ramaswamy told me on Friday as we chatted in a hotel lobby during his break between a roundtable with local homebuilders and a tennis match.
Ramaswamy’s proposal would require anyone under 25 to enlist in national service or pass a civics test in order to vote— something I argued was “more punitive than restorative” and would risk alienating young voters like me.
“My motivation is not to blame members of a generation and whip them into submission,” he clarified. “I don’t think that works.”
Ramaswamy’s stated goal is to help reverse declining youth patriotism and reinvigorate civic duty — especially after two-thirds of teens recently said they’d rather give up their right to vote than their TikTok accounts.
“Human beings only value something that we have a stake in creating,” he explained. “The Founding Fathers came up with the land ownership voting requirement, because we don’t value something that we simply inherit.”
He believes that, if implemented, his proposal would actually increase voter participation among 18- to 25-year-olds.
I agree Gen Z has a patriotism problem, but I still disagree that this is a solution.
Regardless, changing the voting age would require a constitutional amendment with two-thirds of congress buy-in — an uphill battle that makes the proposal more of a conversation starter than an actionable policy.
It’s not the only part of his platform that skeptics have called far-fetched.
Among Ramaswamy’s more hard-line proposals are shutting down “toxic” government agencies including the Department of Education, the FBI, the IRS “and more.”
The 37-year-old, who grew up in Cincinnati, laments a degradation of values — namely “the loss of faith, the recession of the family, the recession of hard work, the loss of the pursuit of excellence and the demise of meritocracy” — especially among young Americans.
“When those things disappear, we latch onto other forms of superficial purpose and identity, like wokeism and transgenderism and the climate cult,” he said. “But the right has actually been very poor at filling a vacuum of purpose and meaning and identity.”
In addition to promoting “buy-in” through civic voting duties, the presidential hopeful told me he would draw upon his expertise as a biotech entrepreneur, the founder of an asset management firm and the so-called “CEO of anti-woke” to stimulate the economy.
That, he says, will promote national pride by proxy.
“A big part of my policy vision is unshackling ourselves from the straitjacket that we sometimes wear, from the climate cult to our anti-work culture,” he told The Post. “You make it easier for young people to be proud of a country when they’re participating in the economic growth of that country. That’s a virtuous cycle.”
Ramaswamy and I were joined by campaign senior advisor Tricia McLaughlin, 29, who told me their strategy in New Hampshire is winning primary voters through relentless exposure.
“The Republican primary voters know who he is,” the Trump administration alumna told me. “He might not be their first choice yet, but … he’s in the business of selling and converting people.”
The Ramaswamy team faces an uphill battle.
Since announcing his run in February, the candidate’s polling numbers have hovered below 4%, coming in just below Mike Pence and Nikky Haley.
He’s still well behind frontrunners DeSantis (21%) and Trump (54%).?But Ramaswamy pointed out his numbers are roughly where Trump’s were at this point in the 2016 cycle.
The campaign’s challenge now is to convert the former president’s supporters, who he nodded to in dubbing his campaign platform America First 2.0.
“On the right it’s like, ‘Oh, are you the establishment or are you in the Trump camp?’ It’s almost like we’re tribal within tribes,” McLaughlin said.
On Friday evening, Ramaswamy courted primary voters at a boat cruise dinner hosted by the Belknap County GOP in nearby Laconia. He worked the room for three hours, shaking hands and embracing many MAGA-hat wearing attendees.
One of them was 75-year-old Laconia native Charles Bradley, who had already seen Ramaswamy at another campaign event and described him as “absolutely amazing.”
“He is a down-the-line conservative,” Bradley told me. “He grew up in America, he made himself a billionaire, and he has two young kids. He’s almost like John Kennedy, to tell you the truth.”
Still, Bradley said he would “hands down” vote for Ramaswamy in the primaries only if Trump were not in the picture.
“I think Ramaswamy is eminently qualified, and I think he should be vice president of the United States,” Bradley said. “I hope that Donald Trump picks him.”
Other voters seemed more amenable.
Lewis Marcotte, 73 of Campton, said he “loved what Trump did for the country” but is keeping an open mind: “There are a lot of new candidates this year, so I won’t make my decision until the primary comes.”
Although he’d seen Ramaswamy on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show, Marcotte said he hadn’t been on his radar until that evening.
“I didn’t know him all that well, but I’m willing to learn about him, and my mind might change,” he told me. “He’s got some really good ideas.”
At 37 years old, Ramaswamy is the youngest contender so far in the primary election and decades away from from Trump, 76, and Biden, 80. As he worked the room in a dressed-down blazer and black T-shirt, that seemed to resonate with younger voters.
New Hampshire native Quinn Hutchins, 22, described Ramaswamy as a “very appealing candidate” and is encouraged to see someone in his 30s throw his hat into the ring.
“I think it sets a good precedent for the party,” Hutchins, who plans to enlist in the Army, said. “It’s a good way to lead into the new age of the Republican Party.”
Ramaswamy also told me that, despite his voting age proposal that would potentially alienate young voters, reaching them is central to his mission.
“I have a special responsibility to reach the next generation of Americans and to take some of the seemingly otherwise old-school values — faith, family, patriotism, hard work — and present them not as a regression but as a progression.
“A lot of the traditional Republicans are accustomed to running from something. I think it’s my responsibility in this race to make sure we’re running to something,” Ramaswamy said.
Although his time over the past several months has been spent in primary country courting Trump supporters, Ramaswamy is bullish on his prospects with independent voters in the general election.
He has recently broken with the majority of Republicans by criticizing Elon Musk for his connections to China and supporting transgender military service — and even sparring with DeSantis over alleged hate speech laws in Florida.
And, although doesn’t “think that the two-party system is particularly desirable,” Ramaswamy sees working within an established party as the most feasible route to success.
“I don’t think the real dividing line in our country is between Republicans and Democrats. I think it’s mostly artificial,” he said. “But I’m using the Republican party as a vehicle to advance my vision of a nationalistic agenda that revives the essence of American identity.”
Still, some of his platform points — like ending affirmative action and using the military to “annihilate” Mexican drug cartels — would likely prove a hard sell with Independents and Democrats.
But Ramaswamy said that if we can rejigger the country’s dividing lines between “those of us who are pro-American and believe in what this country was founded on” and “those of us who are fundamentally anti-American and wish to apologize for a nation founded on these ideals,” then he can pull off a win.
His pitch to independent voters: “The question is, are you pro-American? We can still disagree about the corporate tax rate. We can disagree on the details. But if you agree with the basic rules of the road, then, great, we’re on the same team.”
