As a political innovator, Ramaswamy is certainly blazing new trails. The question is, where will they lead us?
Some have accused Donald Trump of launching the political phase of his career in pursuit of no grander ambition than enriching himself. Well, say what you will about Trump, but at no point did he envision transforming his political campaigns into a multilevel marketing scheme. That innovation is Vivek Ramaswamy’s alone.
The Ramaswamy campaign’s new “Kitchen Cabinet Team” is an inventive fundraising scheme that encourages users to contribute to his campaign and solicit donations from others by promising them each up to a 10 percent commission on the contributions they raise.
The candidate himself insists his strategy represents an attack on the “disgusting” status quo, in which a “small oligopoly of political fundraisers” make “ungodly” sums as professional fundraisers. And according to the campaign, their approach comports with Federal Election Commission guidelines by drafting individual supporters into the campaign as independent contractors to serve basically as fundraising “bundlers” (although an FEC spokesperson told Newsweek the campaign had not yet requested an advisory opinion on the scheme’s legality).
The Ramaswamy campaign also promotes this opportunity as a twist on the gig economy. But unlike the gig economy, in which individuals monetize something they already own, like a car or a piece of property, Ramaswamy’s scheme monetizes relationships. To join up involves start-up cash. It requires a captive, expanding audience to maximize individual returns. And it is predicated on the appeal of the all-consuming personality at the barycenter of this system. There’s a word for that sort of thing.
“I want to help you do it — build the skills needed to help you sell effectively,” Ramaswamy tells his supporters. “And believe me, if you can sell a politician’s vision, you can sell anything in this country. We’re going to help you be successful.” And now is the time to get in on the ground floor of this amazing opportunity. “The first wave of people who do it are likely to be the most successful,” the candidate adds. Operators are standing by.
There’s no reason to believe the campaign hasn’t done its due diligence here, and multilevel marketing is neither illegal nor illegitimate. Ramaswamy’s is a clever way to attract small-dollar donors to his campaign, and he’s going to need as many as he can get. His is at least as competent a strategy to secure the ever-increasing number of small-dollar contributors needed to qualify for Republican National Committee–sanctioned debate stages as his competitors (unless you are in desperate need of a $1 American flag via North Dakota governor Doug Burgum’s campaign). But “democratizing” the professional fundraising space could be ethically fraught.
The practice of bundling campaign contributions is common and, generally speaking, legal. Bundlers help campaigns attract as much funding as possible within the legal limits on contributions to both primary and general-election campaigns by leveraging their networks to drive large amounts of revenue to campaigns. And as long as the “true source” of those contributions is individual donors, this new practice should comport with the law. What’s more, bundlers are sometimes rewarded financially or with other favors, such as special access to the candidate or the opportunity to purchase unique campaign swag. But the larger the bundler pool, the more opportunity for contributions to roll in from sources the campaign will ultimately have to answer for (or even return).
Moreover, if Ramaswamy’s innovation catches on, what’s to stop the political landscape from descending into a bidding war between competing campaigns over the rewards their small-dollar donors can expect — outcompeting their opponents not in the arena of ideas but in relative levels of remuneration?
It may be quaint to raise that objection, hypothetical though it may be. Perhaps the unalterable trajectory of American political life is toward the total commodification of politics, finally abandoning even the pretense that any philosophical or even practical ideal is at stake in our quadrennial presidential contests. As a political innovator, Vivek Ramaswamy is certainly blazing new trails. The question is, where will they lead us?