FIRST ON FOX — Vivek Ramaswamy has said repeatedly in recent weeks that his long-running campaign for the Republican presidential nomination will be lifted by small dollar, grassroots donations.
Now the first candidate is highlighting new fundraising numbers to prove his point, praising that “we’re just destroying GOP standards.”
Ramaswamy’s team reports that in the month since the campaign launched, they’ve received donations from more than 10,000 individual donors, nearly a third of which were new or new political digital donors.
And according to the fundraising numbers, first shared with Fox News on Tuesday, donations came in from all 50 states, with an average contribution of $45.39.
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Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy speaks at a donor conference hosted by the conservative group the Club for Growth, on March 4, 2023 in Palm Beach, Florida (Fox News) (Fox news)
“New donors to the party are off the charts for us,” Ramaswamy stressed. “I was told it should be in the low single digits in terms of the percentage of first-time donors to the GOP.”
“This is just organic… I think there’s something unique going on,” Ramaswamy emphasized in an interview with Fox News Digital. “This kind of takes a sledgehammer to the roof of expectations of what we should do in the first month, which is great.”
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Ramaswamy, a multi-millionaire healthcare and technology entrepreneur, conservative commentator and culture wars crusader, announced his candidacy during a live interview on Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Feb. 21. campaign stops in New Hampshire and Iowa, which lead up to the GOP presidential nomination calendar. He has also campaigned in South Carolina, which hosts the third game in the Republican primary schedule, and has plans to return repeatedly to all three early voting states.
Ramaswamy, who is worth more than half a billion dollars, says the first leg of a seven-figure ad campaign in Iowa and New Hampshire is underway. And he says that thanks to the new fundraising stats, “we feel confident that we can get the throttle going when it comes to making investments… especially in the early states.”
Republican presidential nominee Vivek Ramaswamy answers questions at a town hall-style campaign event on February 22, 2023 in Manchester, New Hampshire (Fox news)
But he stressed that “base activation will be key in Iowa and New Hampshire. Yes, I invested heavily in the campaign myself, but what is already taking this to the next level is indeed base activation and I think we’re seeing that both in the response that we’re getting on the ground, but also in terms of the fundraising data to back it up.
Ramaswamy, a 37-year-old son of immigrants from India and the author of “Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam,” has made “resurfacing the missing national unity” a central part of his month-long presidential campaign made.
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He calls for bureaucratic reform; termination of affirmative action; closing the Ministry of Education; dismantling what he describes as “this climate religion;” and using the military to “actually protect our border, actually use it to solve the fentanyl crisis by treating the cartels south of the border like the terrorists they are.”
Campaign CEO Ben Yoho argued that “Vivek is doing what other Republican candidates even seem afraid to say.” And he stressed that “the momentum we’re seeing in digital fundraising shows that the grassroots behind an outsider’s candidate is throwing.”
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Grassroots fundraising breadth and polling are two crucial metrics used to gauge a candidate’s popularity and strength. And both will likely be used this summer by the Republican National Committee to determine which GOP contenders will make it to the debate in the presidential primary confrontations.
Paul Steinhauser is a political reporter from New Hampshire.
