Beside Ramaswamy, a Doctor Who Listens More and Debates Less

Vivek Ramaswamy was holding court before a crowd at a New Hampshire fair, the second of five stops on a typically busy day of barnstorming, when he did something rare: He yielded the spotlight.

A nurse had asked Mr. Ramaswamy, the entrepreneur-turned-author-turned-presidential candidate, about nurse staffing shortages at hospitals. But before addressing the question himself, he turned to the doctor nodding emphatically at his side — his wife, Apoorva Tewari Ramaswamy — and handed her the microphone.

“Trust me, I’ve been in his ear. He’s heard that from me, too,” Dr. Ramaswamy said reassuringly, both to the nurse and to hundreds of others listening. “We need so many people who are actually interacting with other humans and seeing what is going on.”

New to the public eye, Dr. Ramaswamy, 34, holds many titles: Yale-educated surgeon, cancer researcher and professor, mother of two.

Yet since her husband, 38, transitioned from making frequent appearances on Fox News to stumping in early primary states, Dr. Ramaswamy has balanced weekdays making hospital rounds with weekends on the trail, adapting to an everywhere-all-the-time campaign that puts their family — including their sons Karthik, 3, and Arjun, 1 — front and center. (One of her husband’s “commandments” reads: “The nuclear family is the greatest form of governance known to mankind.”)