Vivek Ramaswamy’s finish at 1% in the 2024 Republican nomination straw poll at CPAC recently came as a surprise to many supporters of the conservative crusader, mainly because of his fidelity to conservative values and his role in the culture wars.
What comes as a shock is the corruption scandal reported by the multi-millionaire entrepreneur himself; he claims that a political consultant tied to CPAC offered his campaign a chance to get tickets and bring supporters in for voting – but only if they paid an insane amount of money.
Fox News Reports, according to the straw poll conducted last weekend at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), recently announced Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy received only 1% support.
However, Ramaswamy, the multi-millionaire entrepreneur, best-selling author and conservative commentator who is a leading crusader in the culture wars, alleged that a political consultant linked to CPAC offered his campaign the opportunity to get tickets to the conference and bring in a bunch of supporters who would vote in the straw poll for a fee that would be upwards of $100,000.
Vivek stated during an interview with Stuart Varney that “I’m new to this as an outsider. One of the things you see as an outsider is how corrupt the system is. You know something funny about this. I’ve attended CPAC before. I didn’t know it works this way. A consultant calls my campaign shortly after I declare and says ‘hey, we can get you up to number two on there if you pay a few hundred thousand dollars. I was shocked. You know, there’s a lot of people who are making money not only off of me, but off of every presidential campaign”
Asked if he would consider paying the fee, Ramaswamy replied, “absolutely not. That is fake.”
Because Ramaswamy’s campaign declined the offer, he did not provide any more details about the potential deal, and the consultant’s name was shared under the condition that the person’s identity be kept confidential. Politico, which broke the story first, and Fox News have confirmed that the person Ramaswamy’s campaign says made the offer does have ties to CPAC.
CPAC released a statement on the matter saying “Washington DC is riddled with unscrupulous consultants who make false claims including this one. CPAC attendance was so strong that we had to close ticket sales on Friday due to concerns over capacity, And anybody with a rudimentary understanding of politics knows how a straw poll work: it takes organization and/or popularity for a candidate to do well. One thing is enduringly true about presidential politics, it takes both to get to the Oval Office,”
In Vivek’s video announcement of running for President he touched on may topics that very much align with an America First agenda.
The news of someone allegedly offering to boost Vivek Ramaswamy’s CPAC straw poll standing for a fee is absolutely outrageous. This corruption is the furthest thing from the values Old School conservatives cherish and fight for, and it is simply unacceptable and cannot be tolerated. The extent to which this scandal goes should not be underestimated, and if there is indeed any truth to these claims made by Ramaswamy’s campaign then we will definitely see some very hard questions being asked in the coming days. If true, it would be further proof that fake polls and even fake news have become intertwined with real-life political corruption – something conservatives must guard against at all costs.
Let’s continue this conversation, in the comments below.
