Bio-tech entrepreneur and Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy was approached by a political consultant with ties to CPAC who revealed a strategy to buy his way into the conference's high-profile straw poll for presidential candidates, Politico reported Monday.
"They were like, if you pay — I think it was upward of $100,000 — we can get tickets and bus a bunch of people in for the straw poll,” a senior campaign official for Ramaswamy told Politico. “I was taken aback because I’ve never been to CPAC before... I think if any of them knew it was an artificial poll, they’d be pretty pissed about that.”
The campaign declined the offer, so officials learned no other details about the pay-to-play tactics, they told Politico.
A CPAC spokesperson did not deny the account and even seemed to indicate that, in fact, that's the way the poll works at CPAC.
“A straw poll is a vote that those in attendance get to participate in. If a presidential contender is organized and popular, they can do well,” the spokesperson said.
Trump dominated the CPAC straw poll. He was the choice of 62% of the 2,028 attendees who participated, compared with 20% for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, 5% for businessman candidate Perry Johnson, 3% for Haley and everyone else at 1% or less.
Ramaswamy, an anti-woke disciple, first mentioned that his campaign was contacted about influencing the straw poll on Fox Business News, but he offered more details to Politico. He said he decided to speak out about the call as part of his campaign's effort to expose corruption, according to Politico.
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