NEWS CHRONICLE PHOTO BY ROBERT MAHARRY — Biotech entrepreneur and Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy addresses a crowd gathered at the Designer Inn and Suites in Toledo last Thursday.

Just over a month after holding an event at the adjacent building to the east, La Terraza Mexican Grill, Ohio businessman and Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy returned to Toledo and hosted a town hall meeting at the Designer Inn and Suites last Thursday afternoon with about 50 people in attendance — including a sizable group of students from Duke University who were in Iowa following the caucuses for a class project.

In the aftermath of the shooting at Perry High School earlier that day (Ramaswamy was actually in Perry as part of a previously scheduled event at the time it occurred), the tragedy loomed large over the discussion, and upon arriving after a pair of campaign surrogates — one led the room in prayer, while the other provided instructions on how to caucus — warmed up the audience, the candidate called for placing three armed security guards in every school district in America to protect students and staff members. Flanked by his wife Apoorva and their two sons, Karthik and Arjun, Ramaswamy, who had spoken in Marshalltown the day before, described the “difficult” morning he experienced in Perry and asked everyone in attendance to pray for the community.

“I think we owe it to our kids. The U.S. Department of Education spends $80 billion of our taxpayer money per year on toxic agendas that don’t advance protecting our children at all,” Ramaswamy said. “If there’s one point that I make at every stop today, let it be that we let something like that never happen again by putting three armed security guards in every school across this country, and I don’t think that’s too much to ask.”

From there, he launched into a familiar stump speech and took members of his own party to task for growing “lazy” in defining what they stand for and who they are as Republicans. Wrong as he feels it is, the left, he said, provides a clear agenda focused on “race, gender, sexuality and climate,” and Republicans, in his view, should create a government accountable to the people and the people elected to run the government should actually run the government.

He reiterated his frequent criticisms of “The Deep State” and three-letter federal agencies and promised mass firings if elected in November as part of an effort to “drain the swamp,” a slogan best known for its association with former President Donald Trump. Ramaswamy also called for deploying the military to protect the country’s borders rather than sending the defense budget to places like Iraq, Afghanistan and Ukraine and declaring “economic independence” from China.

Ramaswamy promoted his “radical ideals” of allowing Americans to speak their minds freely and settling disputes at the ballot box and lamented that the concept of E. Pluribus Unum — from many, one — had been lost in America.

“Here’s how we’re gonna get it back. It’s gonna be by all of us, not just me, all of us starting to speak our minds in the open again. Say in public what you will say in private at the dinner table. Say it with a spine. Say it with conviction,” he said. “Say it with respect, but part of respect is that you respect your neighbor enough to tell them what you actually think. And the more we’re willing to do that, we will break down the boundaries — the fake boundaries that I think much of the mainstream media and the artificial social media and everything else has created between us — break down those boundaries (and) start speaking openly again. You may not agree with everything I say, but I will tell you what I believe 100 percent of the time, and I think that’s the best we can expect of our politicians.”

Ramaswamy then opened the floor up to questions for the final 25 minutes of the event, with the first one coming from a young woman from Marshalltown who had attended his town hall there the day before. She said she generally agreed with his plan to secure the borders but struggled with the idea of mass deportation and tearing nuclear families apart as she felt “America’s failed policies” had allowed and even incentivized immigrants to enter the country illegally.

He responded that he would “never break apart families” but did not think a leader could expect citizens of a country to follow the rules if the federal government doesn’t enforce them. Ramaswamy, the son of legal immigrants from India, also shared his experience visiting the southern border in Texas and called for a reset of the system by returning everyone currently in the U.S. illegally to their country of origin.

“Think about America as a championship team. We want the best and brightest in this country. That’s not the system we have right now. It’s often far too difficult for the people who could be the best and brightest to make contributions to actually end up here,” he said. “Elon Musk is an immigrant to this country, made massive contributions in America that embody American exceptionalism. We couldn’t have that without a legal immigration system that works.”

Another questioner from Texas who was in Des Moines on business and drove up for the event, describing himself as a “pretty decided” Nikki Haley supporter, asked Ramaswamy how he could win him over. In his response, Ramaswamy contrasted his position on foreign policy and foreign aid with Haley’s, calling her a stronger proponent of military aid for Ukraine than current President Joe Biden and someone who believes in allowing politicians to profit off of their public service. Additionally, he criticized Haley over her calls to essentially ban anonymous posting on the Internet and require anyone who does post to submit a government issued ID tied to their profile, and he took both Haley and fellow candidate Ron DeSantis to task for their attempts to disband pro-Palestinian student groups on college campuses.

“What I say is it’s offensive and these students are lost and they’re wrong and it’s our job to lead them, but if you believe censorship is the right answer, I would say go with Nikki Haley,” Ramaswamy said. “If you believe that free speech and open debate is the way to actually arrive at truth and that’s what our founding fathers believed when they set this country into motion, nobody’s a free speech absolutist in this race like I am. I believe free speech is the way for this country. And so that’s a choice to make, and I would say that’s a legitimate difference of opinion.”

Paul Hermanson of Marshalltown predicted that if he were to be elected, it would be “Vivek vs. Goliath” on the day he entered office and wondered how he would take on the establishment. Ramaswamy said his outsider perspective would be crucial in achieving his goals and lamented that Trump had been “duped” when he wasn’t able to fire civil service employees. In his case, however, the candidate said he would initiate mass layoffs as a means of “striking the swamp” and compared himself to new Argentinian President Javier Milei.

“I’m bringing Javier Milei ratcheted up. We’re gonna make him look like a moderate,” Ramaswamy said to a round of applause.

A man from Harlan who said he had experienced homelessness asked him how he would make housing more affordable, and Ramaswamy responded that the key was reducing regulations on land use and construction. The final question of the day came from a 12-year-old nonwhite boy who wanted to know what one of Ramaswamy’s 10 truths included in a pamphlet distributed to attendees — “Reverse racism is racism” — meant.

While acknowledging America’s “imperfect” history in denying people of certain races educational, housing and professional opportunities, Ramaswamy felt the country had moved past those mistakes and gotten about as close as possible to achieving Martin Luther King Jr.’s goal of a society where individuals are judged not by the color of their skin, but the content of their character.

Now, he said, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives and Affirmative Action have created systems that discriminate against people of certain races, albeit different ones, and he promised to end them if elected.

“It is anti-American. It is anti-meritocratic, and we are done with it,” Ramaswamy said. “We’ll look our young people in the eye and say ‘You know what? You do get ahead in this country not on the color of your skin but on the content of your character and your contributions. That’s what it means to be an American.”

Ramaswamy’s wife Apoorva then briefly spoke about the couple’s journey that led him to run for president and the country they want to create for their sons.