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Ryan lost vote, but won fame, acclaim in US
DIFFERENCT TAKES: • From Vindy columnist Bertram de Souza
• Valley has reason to worry about the Ryan-Pelosi clash, says Vindy editorial
By JORDAN UHL
WASHINGTON
It was election night. U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan of Howland, D-13th, bounced between Democrat watch parties in Summit, Trumbull and Mahoning counties.
The later into the evening it got, the more he noticed the looks on local Democrats faces becoming despondent. By the time he reached his final stop, the Mahoning County watch party, it became clear Hillary Clinton would lose, and the Democratic stake in the House of Representatives was about to be moved way back.
Democrats were left with only 194 representatives in the caucus after netting only six seats in an election that party leaders said would result in a pickup of 30 or more Democrats.
After Nancy Pelosi, a San Francisco Democrat, assumed the role of House speaker in 2007, Democrats grew from 233 to 256 seats in 2009, but have since been in a free-fall.
“If you take state and federal officials, we have the smallest numbers since Reconstruction. If that’s not a call for doing something differently, I don’t know what is.” Ryan said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
The message proffered by the Hillary Clinton campaign wasn’t focused enough on the economy, much to voters disdain. A March 2016 Gallup poll found more Americans listed the economy as the biggest national issue.
But the Democrats’ economic message didn’t resonate with and inspire blue-collar voters. Key counties in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio, which had voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, switched to Donald Trump in 2016 – including Portage and Trumbull.
Mahoning County tipped just slightly for Clinton, garnering 49 percent of the vote compared with Trump’s 46.
For Pelosi, this was enough to dismiss Ryan.
“He didn’t even carry his district for Hillary Clinton,” Pelosi told the Huffington Post.
In Ryan’s view, the status- quo complacency that turned many voters to Trump was not reflected in his results: He won his eighth term with about 68 percent of the vote.
“Moving forward, we have to win congressional seats in areas of the country that voted for Donald Trump, even in my district, where they voted for me and they voted for Donald Trump,” Ryan told The Hill.
The stage was set for a David vs. Goliath matchup.
LOOK TO KRYSTAL BALL
Her name couldn’t be more appropriate for a political prognosticator.
Krystal Ball, the former MSNBC host, wrote a column in the Huffington Post on Nov. 13 – four days before he officially announced – calling for Ryan’s run at minority leader.
“[He] grew up in Youngstown and now represents the area in Congress, speaks the language of disaffected blue-collar voters and is also the kind of young scrappy fighter who could go toe-to-toe with a President Trump,” Ball wrote.
It was then that Ryan’s press secretary, Michael Zetts, noticed an immediate uptick in people talking about his boss.
“People started calling saying he should do it,” Zetts said.
He started to entertain the idea, but it wasn’t that simple. Ryan had already signed onto a letter with several other members urging House Democrats to delay its leadership votes, which were originally scheduled for Nov. 17.
Ryan quietly withdrew from the original letter, to avoid any appearance of impropriety, and submitted his own.
WHO IS TIM RYAN?
In the Valley, he’s known as the area’s biggest cheerleader. But inside the Beltway – and throughout the country, for that matter – he’s another rank-and-file Democrat, who, even after he threw his hat in the ring, garnered multiple headlines featuring various iterations of, “Who Is Tim Ryan?”
Then, live on CNN, he promised a “Youngstown Street Fight” with Trump if he attempted to cut Planned Parenthood funding, make health care inaccessible to underprivileged people, privatize Medicare, or implement other policies that cater to the wealthy.
Endorsements from his colleagues followed. U.S. Rep. Kathleen Rice, a New York Democrat, was the first.
“Right now, Tim Ryan is the one person who’s starting those tough conversations that so many of us wanted our entire caucus to have,” she said. “He’s the one forcing us to ask the tough questions about our party’s future, and he’s the one providing real answers.”
Roughly a dozen House Democrats then splintered from Pelosi and publicly expressed support for Ryan.
“There are a lot of Americans who feel that the Democratic party doesn’t have their back, and Tim gave a voice to those people. That’s a really important message,” Rice said.
Before long, Ryan was thrust into the national spotlight. He went from being an occasional guest during the 10 p.m. hour on MSNBC to “Hardball with Chris Matthews” in primetime. The nation’s top pundits were talking him up on the Sunday morning political shows, and he had a one-on-one with Chuck Todd of NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
He had to make an appeal to the rest of the caucus and a standard “Dear Colleague letter” wouldn’t generate enough support. He had to be different.
DO THE ‘HUSTLE’
The presidential election was an unprecedented election that was won by a candidate with a populist approach. Ryan realized his appeal to his colleagues, too, would be unique.
It’s called “Hustle,” and it’s a text-message platform that Roddy Lindsay, its chief executive officer and co-founder, said he didn’t originally envision being used in politics, especially not by a sitting member of Congress.
Hustle’s first advocacy clients were focused on immigration reform and gun control. Then someone big discovered it.
The Bernie Sanders campaign started using it in 2015 and by early 2016, it was being used by more than 100 campaigns at the local, state, and federal levels.
With this, Ryan and his staff could enter every Democratic caucus member’s cellphone number and begin texting each one with customized templates. This allowed them to send updates on Ryan’s television appearances en masse while maintaining a personal touch. Then, if the member responded, Ryan could have a one-on-one conversation with them and address any questions or concerns.
At its peak, they were sending a couple of text messages a day. Throughout the process, not a single member unsubscribed.
“He [tapped] into a way of informing people of what’s going on and what his position is on certain issues,” Rice said. “What Tim did was use every technological advantage. I’ve never gotten a text from the leader.”
He knew he had to do more. So Ryan’s staff orchestrated an Ask Me Anything, “AMA” session on the popular forum website Reddit, where he was prodded about his stance on Medicare, the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Democrat’s strategy to win the House back in 2018.
It was a whirlwind of two weeks, which came right on the heels of a year-long presidential campaign, where he traveled the country campaigning for Clinton all the while simultaneously campaigning for his own re-election.
“We had a running joke in the office that it’s a ‘startup [company],’” Ryan joked to 21 WFMJ-TV’s Matt Stone shortly after the vote on Wednesday.
AND THEN DEFEAT
The final behind-closed-doors vote for House minority leader was 134-63. He wasn’t expected to win.
“Sixty-three votes is a lot of votes against the leadership. I’ve never heard of anything like this before on the Democratic side,” Chris Matthews exclaimed to Ryan on Wednesday evening’s episode of “Hardball.”
Nearly one-third of the Democratic caucus supported Ryan.
“There were a lot of people who agreed with what I said but for one reason or another could not support me and vote for me,” Ryan told Matthews.
But Ryan’s message is already resonating through the chamber and making an impact. On Thursday, the House Democrats enacted new rules that would now require a vote for six caucus leadership positions, instead of having leadership appoint them.
“That would not have happened had Tim not done this,” Rice said. “He’s not just going to fade into obscurity. He wants to keep this going for the betterment of the caucus — I applaud him for that. He is a total class act.”
Jordan Uhl is a Washington, D.C.-based writer and an MPA student at the University of Baltimore. He interned for Rep. Tim Ryan in 2013 and is a graduate of Youngstown State University.