Busted: Vivek Ramaswamy campaign took money from a notorious Islamophobe
A prominent Washington state business owner with a history of discrimination against Muslims and unmarried people has donated to billionaire Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s 2024 campaign.
Peter Zieve, CEO and founder of aerospace company Electroimpact, gave $250 to Ramaswamy’s Vivek 2024 campaign committee on May 28, according to Federal Election Commission records reviewed by Raw Story.
“It's no one's business. I don't discuss my donations,” Zieve said before hanging up when reached by Raw Story.
The presidential campaign of Ramaswamy, who is running third behind former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in most recent national polls, did not respond to Raw Story’s requests for comment as to whether the campaign would keep the donation.
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Zieve’s company was required to pay $485,000 in 2017 as part of a consent decree with the Washington state attorney general’s office after a yearlong investigation found Electroimpact violated state law with discrimination based on religion and marital status, Seattle Times reported. The funds were to benefit victims of the company's discrimination, and the consent decree barred Zieve from most hiring decisions and required the company to train its employees about discrimination laws, update its nondiscrimination and harassment policies and diversify its workforce.
Zieve reportedly expressed hatred of Muslims in emails to employees, used photographs to screen out potential employees who appeared as if they might be Muslim and organized efforts to stop the construction of a mosque, the Seattle Times reported. He replied to jokes about killing Muslims with a smiley face, too, USA Today reported.
“I can send you two Iraq refugees immediately,” Zieve wrote to an employee requesting more engineers, the Seattle Times reported. “They will be a bit sleepy since they are up all night making bombs.”
Zieve also gave financial incentives to workers who married and had children, which had a “sort of eugenics aspect,” Marsha Chien, assistant attorney general, told the Seattle Times.
In an email cited in the complaint, Zieve said, “I note that 381,000 terrorist savages have gotten into Europe so far this year and if we don’t make more babies the light will go out on civilization,” the Seattle Times reported.
Electroimpact denied wrongdoing, but Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson called the company's behavior “shocking,” the Seattle Times wrote.
“Employees in businesses in our state should not be subject to the type of atmosphere that this gentleman created and fostered,” Ferguson said in an interview with the Seattle Times.
In 2020, Zieve launched a direct mail campaign called "Preserve Mukilteo," proclaiming that low-income housing in the small Washington state city “could bring in crime and drugs” and “crush the value of your home,” HeraldNet in Everett, Wash., reported.
Ramaswamy, a 38-year-old biotech entrepreneur, has risen from political obscurity this year to become an unexpected star in the Republican presidential field, fueled by his uncompromising conservative views on social issues and non-stop media appearances. It's also made him a target of his rivals — and even prominent right-wing media personalities such as Fox News' Sean Hannity.
Ramaswamy’s campaign raised nearly $19.2 million between January 1 and June 30, according to the FEC. Ramaswamy has self-funded nearly $1 million of his campaign throughout the election cycle through June 30, according to the campaign’s July FEC quarterly report.
“I’m an ardent defender of religious liberty,” Ramaswamy, who practices Hinduism, said in an interview with The Associated Press. “I will be an even more vocal and unapologetic defender of it precisely because no one is going to accuse me of being a Christian nationalist.”
At the first Republican presidential debate in Milwaukee on Aug. 23, Ramaswamy called out the other Republican presidential candidates during a question about climate change, saying, “I'm the only person on this stage who isn't bought and paid for.”
A big-money player
Presidential campaigns of competitive candidates may receive tens of thousands of individual campaign contributions each month, making it difficult to vet the histories of every donor, particularly if the donor isn’t already known to the campaign.
But “an ethical campaign is one in which the candidates would not accept funds from someone with a known pattern of bias or prejudice or discrimination against any type of individual or group,” said John P. Pelissero, senior scholar at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University.
Pelissero said campaigns should have research staffers who process donors’ information, such as their employers and occupations, affiliations with political action committees and their history of donations to other organizations and candidates. Additionally, campaign staff “should know” easily accessible publicly available information about a donor’s behavior, Pelissero said.
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“He's new to this political realm, but maybe he is less concerned than other candidates are about taking money from those who have discriminated,” Pelissero said.
This year, Zieve — himself a former candidate for the Mukilteo, Wash. City Council — also donated $1,000 to the campaign for Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY). He gave her campaign an additional $11,400 between 2020 and 2022, according to federal records.
A former spokesperson for the Claudia for Congress team, Sean Kennedy, told Raw Story he no longer worked with the campaign and directed inquiries to Tenney’s congressional office, which he said likely wouldn’t respond. Tenney’s congressional office did not respond to Raw Story’s request for comment.
Since 2004, Zieve has made hundreds of donations to Republicans in the four- to six-figure range, including contributions in past election cycles to Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) and the Republican National Committee.
His money isn't universally welcomed, however. In 2018, for example, now-Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS) returned a donation from Zieve after Popular Information drew attention to it.
According to FEC records reviewed by Raw Story, during Trump's first two runs for president, Zieve gave generously to Trump-related political entities, including $13,800 directly to Trump's presidential campaign and $1 million to the Rebuilding America Now PAC, a super PAC that supported Trump in 2016, according to the PAC’s website.
Zieve has not contributed money to a Trump-linked political committee during the 2024 election cycle, according to federal records.