Vivek Ramaswamy’s Campaign Halts ‘Idiotic’ TV Ad Spending Ahead of Iowa Caucuses, New Hampshire Primary

Republican presidential candidate businessman Vivek Ramaswamy arrives for a campaign event at the AmericInn in Webster City, Iowa, on Dec. 19, 2023. Scott Olson/Getty Images

Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign has stopped spending money on “idiotic” television advertisements with just weeks to go until the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, according to a campaign representative.

Mr. Ramaswamy’s campaign spokesperson confirmed to NBC News that the biotech entrepreneur had stopped purchasing standard broadcast TV ads—which typically make up the majority of political advertising spending in the United States—and does not have any booked for the immediate or distant future.

Instead, his campaign is focusing on a different strategy with less than a month to go before the Jan. 15 Iowa caucuses and the Jan. 23 New Hampshire primary, the spokesperson said.

“We are focused on bringing out the voters we’ve identified—best way to reach them is using addressable advertising, mail, text, live calls, and doors to communicate with our voters on Vivek’s vision for America, making their plan to caucus and turning them out,” Tricia McLaughlin, Mr. Ramaswamy’s campaign’s press secretary told the broadcast television network.

“As you know, this isn’t what most campaigns look like. We have intentionally structured this way so that we have the ability to be nimble and hyper-targeted in our ad spending,” Ms. McLaughlin added.

Separately, Mr. Ramaswamy wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that presidential TV ad spending is “idiotic,” comes with a low return on investment, and is a “trick that political consultants use to bamboozle candidates who suffer from low IQ.”

“We’re doing it differently. Spending $$ in a way that follows data…apparently a crazy idea in US politics,” the GOP presidential candidate wrote.

“Big surprise coming on Jan 15,” he concluded.

$12 Million Plans

As recently as November, Mr. Ramaswamy’s campaign said it planned to spend more than $12 million on ads, including broadcast, cable, radio, digital, and direct mail, in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Since that announcement, the campaign has spent $2.2 million on TV, digital, and radio ads, NBC News reported, citing figures from the political ad-tracking firm AdImpact.

As recently as the first whole week of December, his campaign spent more than $200,000 on TV ads before slashing such spending down to just $6,000, according to NBC News.

Despite the slow-down in TV ad spending, Mr. Ramaswamy appears to remain hopeful going into the Iowa caucus, telling Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures” on Dec. 24 that he is “actually confident we’re going to overdeliver massively at the Iowa caucus.”

“Many of the people supporting us are first-time caucus-goers, some of them young people, some of them America-first patriots or libertarians who haven’t thought of themselves as traditional Republicans who are coming out in droves,” he said. “I think we’re going to have a major surprise on January 15.”

A week earlier, he also told NBC News during a campaign event in Windham, New Hampshire, that he believes “if the election was held amongst the subset of people who go to events, I think we’d probably win Iowa, New Hampshire right now.”

Trails Trump in Polls

Yet while the 38-year-old remains optimistic about the upcoming Iowa caucus, multiple polls show former President Donald Trump still maintains a significant lead over all of his rivals.

According to the RealClearPolitics average of Republican Primary poll, President Trump maintains a dominating lead, at 62.5 percent followed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at 11.3 percent and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley at 11 percent.

Mr. Ramaswamy, meanwhile, trails behind in fourth place with just 4 percent, according to the poll.

He also recently placed fourth in the latest Emerson College poll in Iowa, which shows President Trump leading the way with 50 percent support among Republican caucus voters.

The decision by Mr. Ramaswamy’s campaign to pull TV ad spending ahead of the first contests in January also comes amid speculation that he may drop out of the competition and endorse President Trump.

However, the entrepreneur appeared to put an end to that speculation this week, telling Fox News that he is “not a plan B person” and does not intend to be President Trump’s running mate for 2024.

“I respect Trump and his accomplishments for this country,” he said. “Unlike a lot of the other candidates, I’m not sitting here Monday morning quarterbacking some decision he made.”

“But I believe we are the right people to take our America-first agenda to the next level,” he said. “I think it’s going to take somebody with fresh legs. Somebody from the next generation, if I may say it, to lead the next generation.”

Frank Fang contributed to this report.