Vivek Ramaswamy's 2024 Strategy Includes Paying His Supporters

Vivek Ramaswamy may lack the same fundraising prowess as fellow GOP presidential candidates Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis. But the pharmaceutical entrepreneur has a plan to infuse some extra dollars into his campaign: paying anyone who helps spread the word and finds donors.

On Monday, Ramaswamy announced the launch of "Vivek's Kitchen Cabinet Team," a supporter-led fundraising initiative he said is intended to help counter an "oligopoly" of industry captains and well-connected millionaires who typically dictate who appears on television the most and holds the most events.

Often, the people who group those donors together—called "bundlers"—hold on to a sizable commission of the funds they raise, Ramaswamy said, with the bundlers' take rising as high as 10 percent of what they bring in.

But it also makes the candidate beholden to a small group of interested parties, a trend that Ramaswamy—who seeded his campaign with $10 million from his personal fortune—said he hopes to depart from.

"That doesn't make any sense, to belong to a small group of people," he said.

Newsweek has reached out to the Ramaswamy campaign for comment.

Ramaswamy's new program is, at its heart, the same type of small-dollar donation scheme popularized by Barack Obama's 2008 campaign for president, emphasizing grassroots fundraising as a barometer of grassroots enthusiasm for a candidate's campaign. DeSantis, for example, has received criticism from some observers for his reliance on large donors early in his campaign, while his opponents have raised questions about the legality of his major transfers of funds from a PAC previously intended for his gubernatorial campaigns.

The Ramaswamy campaign says each participant in the program will be given a unique donation link, which they would then post online to solicit donations directly to the campaign. All donations are recorded and documented by campaign staff, while each citizen bundler's unique link would be used to track the donations they bring in.

Giving his supporters a cut of the money they raise, however, is a new concept, one the campaign says has not yet been tested by any presidential candidate.

The campaign says on its website it will perform verification checks on its donors in order to remain in compliance with Federal Elections Commission regulations. However, when contacted by Newsweek, the FEC did not confirm or deny whether the campaign had reached out to it to verify the legality of the program.

A spokesperson for the commission told Newsweek the campaign had not publicly requested an advisory opinion on the legality of the program.

However, the FEC spokesperson did say that payments for day-to-day expenses—staff salaries, rent for office space, travel, advertising, telephones, office supplies, interest payments on loans and fundraising—are all considered permissible operating expenditures for a campaign.