Investor Vivek Ramaswamy’s 2024 bid for the Republican presidential nomination is testing whether his criticism of “woke” culture is a sleeping giant issue among primary voters or more of a snoozer.
Ramaswamy on Feb. 21 announced his bid for the 2024 GOP nomination, joining a race that already features former President Donald Trump and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley.
‘CEO’ OF ANTI-WOKE INC.’ VIVEK RAMASWAMY EXPLORING 2024 BID: REPORT
Ramaswamy, 37, is a multimillionaire entrepreneur with successful ventures in biotech and other realms. Ramaswamy’s main campaign trail calling card is his criticism of “woke” ideology, particularly in the investing sector.
The alumnus of Harvard University and Yale Law School is the author of Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam. Ramaswamy describes wokeism as a “secular religion” reflecting “a deeper need for human purpose at a moment when the time-tested satisfiers of that purpose — including family, faith, and national identity — have receded.”
Wokeism, Ramaswamy added in his book, sadly “calls on human beings to see each other as the products of their genetically inherited attributes — race, sex, sexual orientation.”
Ramaswamy is a staunch critic of “ESG investing,” or investment strategies that consider environmental, social, and governance factors. Whether that emphasis is enough to earn the first-time candidate the GOP nod is very much an open question. Trump still dominates much of the party apparatus, and in addition to Haley, several more GOP rivals to the ex-president are expected to emerge. That includes former Vice President Mike Pence, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and several more.
Criticism of ESG investing has become an increasingly popular issue for Republican candidates heading into the 2024 cycle. Take West Virginia Treasurer Riley Moore, who is running for the open eastern and northern West Virginia panhandle 2nd Congressional District. Moore has made battling ESG a top priority.
A Granite State grind for Biden?
President Joe Biden’s efforts to rejigger the 2024 Democratic primary campaign calendar are meant to prevent a serious intraparty rival from emerging. But it could have the opposite effect, with spurned New Hampshire Democrats keeping an open mind about an alternative.
The Democratic National Committee on Feb. 4 approved a dramatic shake-up of the party’s nominating calendar. The new schedule, pushed by President Joe Biden and his political advisers, elevates South Carolina to the first-place position in the primary calendar on Feb. 3. The move boots the Iowa caucuses out of the early state rotation for the first time in more than a half-century. And New Hampshire, which has long held the first-in-the-nation primary for both parties, won’t kick things off.
Under the new schedule, New Hampshire and Nevada would jointly host their primaries three days later on Feb. 6, followed by Georgia on Feb. 13 and Michigan on Feb. 27, two brand-new states added to the early window.
New Hampshire Democrats aren’t happy about the turn of events, but the Biden team has been able to keep their complaints at a low volume. Now it has another headache, with Democratic primary challenger Marianne Williamson set to jump into the presidential fray on March 4.
The Los Angeles-based self-help author and former 2020 presidential candidate said she’s exploring the possibility of running for the Democratic presidential nomination and is set to make an announcement that day in Washington, D.C.
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Williamson herself isn’t much of a threat to Biden. In the crowded 2020 Democratic primary field, Williamson made it to a couple of debate stages but failed to pick up traction, dropping out on Jan. 10.
But she could become a stalking horse for a higher-profile Democratic challenger to Biden — one who could harness local anger about New Hampshire’s banishment from the first primary spot.
