Vivek Ramaswamy pitches raising the voting age to 25

Vivek Ramaswamy started an event on a swing through Iowa this week with a promise: “We’re not going to be angry tonight.”

“Tonight we're going to start a little curious,” he said.

The 37-year-old biotech entrepreneur from Ohio is making a long-shot, largely self-funded campaign for the Republican nomination for president.

And he’s doing it, in part, by lobbing hard-line conservative policies — including his suggestion in Dallas County on Thursday to institute “duty-based voting” for young adults between the ages of 18 and 24.

Ramaswamy’s proposal, which would require a constitutional amendment, would raise the voting age from 18 to 25, unless a person is in the military, a first responder or can pass the U.S. citizenship test.

It’s the latest of a number of proposals — dismantling the Department of Education, stationing the U.S. military at the southern border and using military force on Mexican drug cartels, and reversing affirmative action policies — that are part of his promise to take former President Donald Trump’s “America First” agenda “far further” by exerting presidential powers in ways Trump never did.

Eliminating the Department of Education would have sweeping implications on the administration of federal education grants, student loans and how students’ civil rights protections are enforced.

The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 prohibits the use of the military for civil law enforcement, unless expressly authorized by law. And any constitutional amendment would require buy-in from two-thirds of the states or of Congress.

Diverging from Trump, Ramaswamy packages his agenda as a message of unity and a cohesive national identity rather than addressing grievances.

“And I think we can do that if we’re doing it based on ‘first principles’ and moral authority, not just vengeance and grievance,” Ramaswamy said of pushing forward an “America First” platform that emphasizes American exceptionalism.

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Campaigning across Iowa, Ramaswamy said he believes the country is in the middle of a national identity crisis.

It’s caused, he said, by turning away from the founding values of the country, where success by merit and adherence to the rule of law — values that wooed immigrants like his parents to Ohio — have disappeared to be replaced by “wokeness” and “cults” of “racial victimhood,” “radical gender ideology” and “climate culture.”

“Faith, patriotism, hard work, family — these things have disappeared,” he said, adding he wants to “fill that void with a vision of American national identity that runs so deep that it dilutes this woke poison.”

Voting age amendment

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Speaking to a crowd gathered at Royal Flooring in Urbandale on Thursday, Ramaswamy pitched raising the voting age as a solution to what he sees as a “decline in national pride for the next generation.”

The requirements — that a person spend six months in the military or as a first responder, or otherwise pass the U.S. citizenship test — would instill a sense of duty in young people, Ramaswamy said.

“When I think about young Americans today, I see a deficit of national pride because I see a deficit of duty,” he said. “You don't value that country you inherited. You will only value a country you have a stake in building and knowing something about.”

Ramaswamy acknowledged the view may not be popular, but he said he believes he can convince voters.

“I don't believe in just giving people dopamine hits by telling them what they believe,” he said. “I believe in telling them what I believe, and if they don't agree with me, persuade them of it.”

George Pierson, a 20-year-old, Republican Iowa native who attends college in Washington, D.C., said the idea is “thought provoking,” and he likes the citizenship test portion, though he is not fully convinced. He said he worries about the effect the policy would have on getting young people, who already have low voter turnout, engaged in politics.

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“Part of me is thinking about the implications of that, of voter turnout and younger people getting engaged,” he said. “If younger people have to demonstrate civic proficiency and voter material, then should older people have to do the same thing as well?”

Iowa Democratic state Reps. Sami Scheetz, 27, of Cedar Rapids, and Adam Zabner, 23, of Iowa City — among the youngest members of the Iowa House — criticized the proposal as an attempt to disenfranchise young Iowans.

“We support voting rights for all adults, and we believe that our democracy is stronger when young people engage in the process,” the pair said in a statement.

“If Republicans are concerned about the political power of young Iowans, they should work to earn their support rather than working to strip their voices,” the statement said. “Republicans should work with us on issues that concern our generation like gun safety, protecting reproductive freedom and legalizing marijuana.”

Path to the nomination

Relatively unknown when he launched his campaign in February, Ramaswamy has been gaining the interest of Republican primary voters. Polls, both nationally and in New Hampshire, show him on the rise in the Republican field.

In one CBS poll released last week, the son of Indian immigrants and the GOP’s first millennial presidential candidate managed to tie former Vice President Mike Pence for third place among likely Republican voters, ahead of establishment figures such as former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, South Carolina U.S. Sen. Tim Scott and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson.

Trump, however, remains popular among Republican voters, despite his myriad legal troubles and GOP voters in Iowa who say they’re “keeping an open mind” and eyeing an alternative — someone without the constant turmoil, who is less controversial and has a compelling back story and an upbeat message that can inspire the next generation.

“You’re aware that your biggest obstacle is going to be defeating Donald Trump for the nomination,” 19-year-old University of Iowa student Kyle Clare asked Ramaswamy during a Q&A in Iowa City.

Clare pointedly asked whether Ramaswamy is truly running to win the nomination rather than “looking for some other gain.”

“And why should someone who is voting for Donald Trump choose you instead?” he asked.

Ramaswamy said while he and Trump “have a relationship of mutual respect, I am running this race to win.”

He pitched himself as a more energetic, but less divisive, version of Trump.

“I’ve got fresh legs. I’m the outsider in this race,” Ramaswamy said to a group of about 60 gathered in a rooftop ballroom at Courtyard by Marriott in Iowa City for the Johnson County Republican Central Committee dinner.

“I think you get to be the outsider once. (Trump) was the outsider in 2015,” he said.

Clare, the UI student, said he appreciates seeing “younger people in politics.” And while Ramaswamy could become “an important part of the future of the Republican Party,” Clare doesn’t foresee supporting him in Iowa’s first-in-the-nation Republican presidential caucus.

“I lean more toward (Ron) DeSantis as this moment,” he said. “Vivek, he could do great things, but I think (executive) experience matters. … It’s two things for me, electability and experience. He’s unproven. That’s my thing.”

Eric Rosenthal of Cedar Rapids, a former Linn County Republican Party chairman, said there’s a large chunk of Iowa evangelical voters like himself open to a White House hopeful other than Trump.

Rosenthal supported Texas U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, who won the 2016 Iowa GOP caucuses.

Asked whether Trump’s recent legal battles — including being found liable this week by a New York jury for sexually abusing and defaming an advice columnist nearly three decades ago — will cause him trouble with Iowa’s influential evangelical voters, Rosenthal said that remains to be seen.

“For a lot of evangelical voters, they want a personal story that aligns with their values,” he said. “And that’s a big deal. To say it doesn’t matter, that’s ridiculous. These things matter.”

That, he said, gives candidates like Ramaswamy and Tim Scott an opening with Iowa GOP voters.

Ramaswamy plans to take that opening and run with it. His path to the nomination, he said, starts with finishing among the top three candidates in Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses, then winning first or second in New Hampshire, the first primary state.

“The race is turned upside down,” he said. “I think it’s wide-open for us after that.”

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