Deputy President William Samoei Ruto has hit the campaign trail hard. He has provocatively billed the next presidential election the “hustlers versus dynasties” duel, which broadcast journalist Joe Ageyo thinks is new to Kenya’s politics.

In a Citizen TV talk show, Ageyo suggested that Ruto might be doing politics differently, mobilizing and organizing his political base along the dominant social-economic cleavages, and not the usual ethnic-regional conundrum—often presented as transient ethnic kingpin coalitions during general elections.

Certainly, Ruto’s invocation of an existing socioeconomic cleavage between those in power and unemployed youth lends Kenya’s notoriously ethicized politics a class overtone. Has William Ruto, a wealthy, self-styled born-again Christian politician, whose long political journey that began earnestly as the organizing secretary of the surreptitious Youth for Kanu 92 (YK’92), undergone a Road-to-Damascus-like political conversion? Or is this vintage Ruto, grabbing any opportunity he can find to ruthlessly pursue his interests to achieve his lifelong dream of becoming president?