Who is Vivek Ramaswamy? A look at the GOP presidential candidate’s first visit to Philadelphia.

Before the live interview started, a woman in the audience shouted out: “Tell us how to pronounce your name!”

“It’s Vivek, like cake,” GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy told her at the Centre Theater in Norristown.

For Ramaswamy, a 37-year-old biotech entrepreneur, the next few months are all about introducing himself.

Ramaswamy, a self-described nationalist, brought his campaign to the Philadelphia region Tuesday for the first time, visiting the center of the opioid crisis, McPherson Square in Kensington, and then sitting for an hour-long Sirius XM interview with Michael Smerconish in Norristown before finishing the day at a discussion about fentanyl at the Union League in Center City.

Pennsylvania hasn’t played a major role recently in nominating presidential candidates because of the state’s late primary. But it’s still a popular place for candidates to visit, given its impact in the general election and reflection of the country’s electorate.

“Even in the primary, we’re looking beyond traditional Republican-Democrat lines,” Ramaswamy said in an interview with The Inquirer following the Sirius XM production.

“The real division in the country is those of us who are pro-American, who stand for the values of this country, the ideals we were founded on, and who refuse to apologize for those ideals, and those in the country who wish to apologize for a nation founded on those principles.”

Wearing all black and a white “truth” hat, Ramaswamy said he brings “fresh legs” to the field as the first millennial to run as a Republican candidate for president. He’s also a political outsider who has vowed to tackle so-called woke culture, restore “civic unity,” and end what he considers an over-use of administrative and regulatory rules in Washington.

Here are some other things to know from his first swing through:

Ramaswamy grew up in Ohio with parents who emigrated from India. His campaign is based in Columbus. He has degrees from Yale and Harvard and launched a successful career in biotech. He’s written several books, including Woke, Inc., a critique of businesses that have sought to be more socially aware.

Ramaswamy argued Tuesday that “woke capitalism” makes companies worse off, noting the backlash after Anheuser-Busch sent specialized cans of Bud Light to a trans influencer. He also blasted ESG, or environmental, social and governance, and DEI initiatives, though the company he founded participates in both. Ramaswamy said he stepped down as CEO of his multibillion dollar company following George Floyd’s murder.

“That led to a series of controversies where, over the next seven months, I had to make a choice,” he said. “Was I going to be free to speak my mind as a citizen? Or was I going to speak through the filter of corporate self-interest saying what other CEOs were supposed to say?”

Ramaswamy also opposes affirmative action, which he called a “failed experiment,” and said he didn’t think Juneteenth should be a national holiday.

“Let’s be done looking in the rearview mirror at retrospective grievances,” he said.

Ramaswamy’s grassroots campaign has been likened in style to Andrew Yang’s failed 2019 Democratic campaign. Though politically different, they’re both tech-savvy, social-media-adept, young outsiders with one-word slogans (Yang’s was “math,” Ramaswamy’s is “truth”).

Ramaswamy has been a staunch defender of Donald Trump’s and promised to pardon the former president if he is convicted on any of the charges he faces. Ramaswamy flew down to Miami to speak outside the federal courthouse in Trump’s defense earlier this month. He’s called on all the primary candidates to pledge to pardon Trump if they are elected and Trump is convicted.

“Trump made a bad judgment,” Ramaswamy told Smerconish. “The reality of this country is we empower U.S. presidents to make God-awful judgments,” he said.

» READ MORE: Some Pa. Trump supporters are tired and looking for alternatives

In a brief trip to Kensington on Tuesday morning, Ramaswamy visited with people struggling with addiction and brought some of the volunteers trying to help them at McPherson Square to the live radio interview in Norristown.

Susan Clifton, who provides food and wound-dressings to people in Kensington, said she was impressed by Ramaswamy. Initially, she said, some people yelled at him as he stepped out of an SUV with cameras but once he started chatting, the mood calmed.

“Republicans are pro-life, and you can’t just make it about abortion,” Clifton said. “It’s gotta be womb to tomb. You’ve got to look at these people. ... They are somebody’s mother or father or sister or brother. Addiction is something that, unless you’ve been there, you don’t know how to get out of.”

» READ MORE: Biden held his first big reelection rally in Philly. Here are four takeaways.

Politicians have long flocked to Kensington, the heart of the opioid crisis, to snap photos or politicize the crisis without offering concrete solutions.

Ramaswamy had some limited ideas of how to tackle the immense problem in Kensington. He told Smerconish he would end the distribution of clean syringes and clean drug paraphernalia, which he believes encourages drug use. He said that to curb the flow of drugs into the country, he’d station the military on the southern border, which Smerconish noted is constitutionally questionable.

At the Union League, Ramaswamy cast the fentanyl crisis in Philadelphia as an inevitable result of a country he described as lost “in an identity crisis” that he insisted grows from a lack of faith, hard work, patriotism, and family values.

”These things are symptoms of a deeper void of purpose and meaning in our country,” he said to a crowd of about 60 people.

Citing the international market that sends key components of fentanyl from China to Mexico for production and then smuggles it into America, Ramaswamy vowed to “seal the border” and reset what he called a “codependent” relationship with China.

He expanded on that to suggest the “self-harm” of illegal drug use is akin on a large scale to regulating carbon emissions in America industry if China does not adhere to the same standards.

The crowd included fans of Smerconish’s and some curious voters. Sean Nichols, a 63-year-old Independent from Seaville, N.J., said he thought Ramaswamy had “a lot of charisma.”

“I enjoyed seeing him speak. I dunno that I enjoyed all of his points of view, but I think it’s refreshing to have someone who’s not the old guard. I think more people in his age group should be involved.”

Chris Mack, a 45-year-old elementary school teacher who drove up from Maryland, said he felt split on Ramaswamy. Mack liked what Ramaswamy had to say about breaking ties with China but found his defense of Trump too extreme.

“Regardless, I think we need more people like him coming out whether you fully agree or not,” he said. “I’m now intrigued, I’ll put it that way.”

Nationally, Ramaswamy is polling about 2.5%. He faces an uphill climb, though grassroots candidates have surged before. One of Ramaswamy’s advisers, Kathy Barnette, was a third-place finisher in the 2022 GOP Senate primary in Pennsylvania despite a small, lesser-known grassroots campaign.

“I certainly was not the traditional kind of candidate” said Barnette, who is Ramaswamy’s national grassroots director. “Instead, it was the people who made me relevant. They wanted something different. Our people, our voters, are looking for something authentic.”