Vivek Ramaswamy’s Rise in 2024 Field Brings Scrutiny Beyond Anti-Woke Record

livemint.com:

There is a wealthy businessman running for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination who has in the past given campaign contributions to Democrats and has a record of statements that don’t always sound like a conservative. His name isn’t Donald Trump. Vivek Ramaswamy, a 37-year-old biotech company founder, has moved into third or fourth place in some state and national polls, and he says his opponents are starting to take notice.

“The knives are coming out," Ramaswamy said in an online video posted before The Wall Street Journal interviewed him for this story. “The opposition research machines are churning." As the most prominent nonpolitician in the GOP field, Ramaswamy has a record that is less known than most of his rivals and will inevitably get more scrutiny if he keeps rising in the polls. His self-funding of his campaign could keep him in the race longer than some others.

Ramaswamy has focused heavily on his opposition to business efforts to advance political, social and environmental causes. The son of Indian immigrants is selling himself as an outsider, government skeptic and a next-generation version of Trump. Late last week, he declined to say if he would have certified the election results as former Vice President Mike Pence did in the early morning hours of Jan.

7, 2021, even though Ramaswamy said on Feb. 6, 2021, that “Joe Biden is our legally elected President." He also has said he would pardon Trump if the former president is convicted for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Those stances echo the views of many Republican voters, but a detailed look at Ramaswamy’s record of political commentary, dating back to his Harvard University years when he was an occasional rapper, shows some past