Aboard GOP lake cruise, Ramaswamy and Johnson pursue momentum

LAKE WINNIPESAUKEE — Mingling with a crowd of more than 300 party members, two presidential hopefuls sought to distinguish their candidacy aboard Belknap County GOP’s First in the Nation cruise on the M/S Mount Washington Friday night.

For candidates and entrepreneurs Vivek Ramaswamy and Perry Johnson, it was a chance to build momentum among a captive audience of influential party voices. For the party, it marked the return of a dormant tradition dating back to the mid-2000s and, as event organizer and local party Chair Gregg Hough said, allowed members to “just have a good time.” 

Headlining the event, Ramaswamy debuted a new pillar of his foreign policy plan: a deal with Russia to sever its ties with China in exchange for major concessions to end the war in Ukraine.

“Here's the deal that I'm going to do with Vladimir Putin,” Ramaswamy said. “We will freeze the current lines of control — that means he gets the Donbas region, it means he gets the Crimea — and we will make a permanent commitment to tell Ukraine that ‘You will not be admitted to NATO. Not now, not ever.’ Those are big concessions to Russia. But we have a big ask in return: that you will exit your treaty with China.”

As part of a plan to “declare independence from China,” Ramaswamy also said he would “ban most U.S. businesses from doing business in China until the [Chinese Communist Party] either falls or reforms its behaviors.”

His remarks opened with a diagnosis of the nation as poisoned by “wokeism, transgenderism and climatism,” and a reminder to the audience that he is the only millennial ever to seek the GOP nomination, points that earned him enthusiastic applause.

Johnson brandished his financial and business background to position the economy — specifically, a balancing of the national budget and cuts to discretionary spending — as the center of his campaign.

“I've been bringing quality and efficiency to companies over the last 35 years and I want to bring quality and efficiency to government,” Johnson said. 

Both candidates pledged to abolish the federal Department of Education. 

Echoing comments from attendees, NHGOP Chair Chris Ager emphasized the importance to primary voters in the upcoming election of the belief that a candidate will be elected.

“You got to be able to win. I think that's number one,” Ager said in an interview. At the same time, he emphasized, there’s ample time for candidates other than the current frontrunners to convince voters that they are electable. “I think that this race is going to be a lot closer in January. ... You never know what can happen.” 

In a point also made by Ager, Ramaswamy emphasized to The Daily Sun that many eventual nominees, including former President Donald Trump, were polling in the single digits at this point in their own primaries. Ramaswamy felt that his appeal to younger voters and willingness to speak outside of “party orthodoxies” made him “the only candidate who can win in a landslide election.”

Events similar to the cruise — intimate yet casual, like diner stops that last longer — are the ideal format for lower-polling candidates to initiate a snowball effect of momentum, Ager continued. 

After a two-year hiatus, Ager said he was grateful to have the cruise back on the NHGOP calendar, both because it preserved a favorite tradition and because it posed “a great excuse to come up to the lakes.”

Event attendees were party members and officials at the state and local levels. In addition to Ager, Vice Chair Ryan Terrell, Senate President Jeb Bradley, House Speaker Sherman Packard and Majority Leader Jason Osborne notably attended the event, with radio personality David Webb as the night’s master of ceremonies.

Hough, elected chair of the Belknap County Republican Committee in January, celebrated the revival of the cruise.

The cruise symbolized part of the new leadership’s effort to refocus on supporting all candidates, he said, and being a welcoming presence.

“You know, I see folks here that may or may not have been overly thrilled when we took over, but they're here. Right? That's the whole point,” Hough said.

“Over the last couple of years of politics, especially in this area, we just needed to breathe and have a nice time ... It’s a feel-good event.”