5 things to watch at CNN’s town hall with Vivek Ramaswamy

By Eric Bradner and Aaron Pellish, CNN

(CNN) — Biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy is set to field questions from Iowa voters Wednesday night at a CNN town hall, less than five weeks before the state’s January 15 caucuses kick off the 2024 Republican presidential nominating contest.

Ramaswamy, who has dominated GOP primary debates with attacks on several rivals but has yet to see that strategy pay off in the polls, is seeking to climb into contention to become the party’s top alternative to former President Donald Trump, the current front-runner in the primary.

Ramaswamy will take the stage at 9 p.m. ET from Grand View University in Des Moines, Iowa, for the town hall moderated by CNN’s Abby Phillip.

The town hall will stream live on CNN Max and for pay TV subscribers via CNN.com, CNN connected TV and mobile apps. It will also be available on demand beginning Thursday to pay TV subscribers via CNN.com, CNN apps and Cable Operator Platforms.

Here are five things to watch:

Differences with Haley

Among the most memorable exchanges at the four Republican presidential primary debates so far this year have been those between Ramaswamy and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.

On and off stage, their clashes have taken personal turns. Ramaswamy on Saturday told a crowd in Cherokee, Iowa, that Haley and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie were “intellectual frauds.” He also accused Haley, whom he has criticized for serving on Boeing’s board, of personally benefitting from “selling off our foreign policy.”

His attacks on Haley come at a key moment for her campaign. Haley in recent weeks has risen in polls, challenging Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ status as the second-place contender in Iowa and emerging as the party’s top-polling alternative to Trump in GOP primary surveys in New Hampshire and South Carolina, her home state. Even if Ramaswamy doesn’t climb in the polls himself, his criticism has the potential to shape the GOP race.

No one to brawl with

To date, Ramaswamy might be best known to voters for his sharp-elbowed, stage-dominating debate performances. He has relished picking fights with rivals such as Haley, Christie, former Vice President Mike Pence and others.

“I’ll show up with the same sharp elbows I’m gonna bring to our federal government,” he said Tuesday while campaigning in Osage, Iowa. “We can’t have a leader of this country who’s going to be railroaded, who’s going to wave in whatever direction the wind blows on a given day.”

Wednesday night will offer a clear view in front of a national audience of what Ramaswamy is like when there’s no one to brawl with.

If he is going to jump out of the single digits in national and early-state polls of likely Republican primary voters — and with less than five weeks until the Iowa caucuses, Ramaswamy is running out of time to do so — he’ll need to create memorable moments of his own, outside of the context of playing the foil in debates.

‘Double Grassley’

Ramaswamy has focused on Iowa throughout his campaign. But his decision to relocate staff from his campaign headquarters in Ohio to the early-nominating state and the announcement of his campaign’s first major ad buy last month signaled the first push in an all-out effort to gain ground on his Republican rivals in the Hawkeye State.

Part of that strategy includes ramping up the intensity of his already jam-packed visits to Iowa. Earlier this month, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis completed his goal of visiting all 99 Iowa counties – a feat dubbed the “Full Grassley” after Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, who visits all counties in the state every year. Shortly after, Ramaswamy announced his intention to have visited every Iowa county twice before the caucuses on January 15.

Ramaswamy pledged earlier this month to host more than 200 events in the state before the caucuses, a massive undertaking that speaks to how critical success in Iowa is to Ramaswamy’s potential path to the nomination.

He’s also made a concerted effort to address what he sees as core issues for Iowa voters, recently highlighting at several campaign events a relatively low-profile local issue centered around energy companies using eminent domain to build carbon capture pipelines. He even mentioned the issue in his closing remarks at the Republican primary debate in Alabama earlier this month.

His alliance with local farmers opposed to ceding their land to energy companies gives Ramaswamy, who graduated from Yale Law School, an opportunity to demonstrate his legal background and his small-government ideology while giving voice to an issue with significant support among Iowa grassroots conservatives.

Conspiracy theories

At the Alabama debate, Ramaswamy gave the clearest voice yet to a portion of the Republican electorate that has embraced a series of wild conspiracy theories.

Among them: that the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol “looks like it was an inside job”; and that Democrats have adopted the racist so-called Great Replacement theory as a “basic statement” of their party’s platform.

“I do think we have a government that’s consistently lied to its people,” he told CNN’s Dana Bash shortly after the debate ended.

“I would have said a lot of this is crazy talk. But if you actually get into the details, I think it is startling how much the government has systematically lied,” Ramaswamy said.

Over the weekend, he embraced another fringe theory, telling a crowd in Sioux Center, Iowa, that the plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was an inside job.

“The government has not trusted the people with the truth and that’s why people don’t trust the government back. And so, I think that’s sowing a rapid crisis of mistrust in this country,” he said.

Also over the weekend, he participated in a “Spaces” event on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. Ramaswamy argued for Jones’ right to free speech despite disagreeing with comments he’s made previously, including the right-wing personality’s advancement of the conspiracy theory that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a hoax.

Ramaswamy’s embrace of conspiracy theories could win him support from a share of the GOP base — many of the same pro-Trump voters who have parroted the former president’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen. But it could also alienate the broader general electorate. It’s likely to be a topic he addresses Wednesday night.

Questions of faith

Ramaswamy could also use Wednesday’s town hall to address his religion in a bid to assuage Iowa’s substantial evangelical Christian constituency that he shares their values. Voters at campaign events regularly ask Ramaswamy, who is Hindu, about his faith, which he recently called “an elephant in the room” at a campaign event in Ida Grove, Iowa.

He often cites his education at a Catholic high school in Cincinnati to substantiate his connection to Christian values while pointing to shared principles between Hinduism and Christianity.

“When I read the Ten Commandments for the first time, scriptures class, St. Xavier High School … it didn’t feel like I was reading those values for the first time,” he said last month in Ida Grove, Iowa.

“And that’s when it hit me: Those values don’t belong to Hindus. Those values don’t belong to Christians,” he said. “Those values belong to God, actually, and those are the values that this nation was absolutely founded on.”

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