43
Rep. Tim Ryan is seen as the underdog in his bid today to win the House minority leadership position
YOUNGSTOWN
U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan is clearly the underdog in his bid to defeat House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi today.
But it’s a position he has been in before.
“Tim Ryan has fooled me every time he’s run for office, and he’s fooled the political prognosticators,” said Bill Binning, the retired chairman of Youngstown State University’s political science department, now called the politics and international relations department. “I’m hesitant to speculate on how Ryan is going to do. He has very good political instincts, but this is a different kind of game.
“The leader is the one who raises a lot of dough, doles it out and gets candidates elected. He hasn’t done that before, but I’m hesitant to bet against him.”
Ryan of Howland, D-13th, was a 26-year-old political neophyte in 2000 when he beat the more established Marc Dann, who would later be elected attorney general, and Darlene St. George in the Democratic primary for a state Senate seat representing Trumbull County.
An even bigger upset occurred two years later when Ryan, then 28, won the Democratic primary for U.S. House in a field of six candidates that included eight-term incumbent Thomas Sawyer, who was seen as the clear-cut favorite.
Ryan won the general elections in those years and seven other terms in Congress, including earlier this month.
“It’s going to be a very steep uphill climb” for Ryan to beat Pelosi, said Paul Sracic, chairman of YSU’s politics and international relations department. “Nancy Pelosi raised $141 million in the last [election cycle] for Democrats. If history is a guide, the Democrats should do well in 2018. The mid-term rule almost always holds that the incumbent party loses seats in the following election so there would be considerable pressure to not” make a change.
“He’s the underdog in this fight,” said David B. Cohen, a University of Akron political science professor and fellow at its Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics. “But I don’t think he would run for the seat if he had zero chance. It’s a risk worth taking.”
If Ryan loses, Cohen said he can run for governor and “has a good shot of getting the nomination. If Pelosi wins, I don’t expect her to extend the olive branch. But there’s not a whole lot that can be done to him. The minority party has no power in the House.”
During a Tuesday appearance on CNN, Ryan said, “We’re within striking distance. I can tell you that for sure. There’s a lot of members still out there who haven’t committed or [who are] being very, very quiet. They can break either way.”
He added: “I feel really, really good about the campaign we’ve run. I think we’ve been very clear. I think we’ve been very respective of Leader Pelosi, but we do need change and I have not relented on that at all. We’ll see if my colleagues agree.”
Ryan sweating profusely during the interview leading him to later tweet: “Whipping votes for Democratic leader really works up a sweat.”
Ryan’s office has declined to disclose how many of the 194 House Democrats have committed to him. There are only 11 who have publicly backed him, but many of his supporters don’t want to say anything in public before the secret vote, said Michael Zetts, Ryan’s spokesman.
One potential key backer is U.S. Rep. Sean Moulton of Salem, Mass., a leader of the movement that delayed the speaker vote from Nov. 17 to today to give Ryan or another potential candidate the time to whip votes for a challenge to Pelosi.
“Having reviewed the strategy and vision of our candidates for Democratic leader, I am proud to announce my support for Tim Ryan of Ohio,” Moulton said Tuesday. “Tim represents a new generation of leaders who are ready to make real change, rather than renew the status quo, and the future of our party demands that kind of leadership now more than ever.”
Ryan is 43; Pelosi is 76.
Ryan has spent the past few weeks talking to House Democrats seeking their vote for leader, Zetts said.
“We’re expecting a close vote, but nothing will be in stone until” today, Zetts said.
Anything exceeding 50 votes would be very good for Ryan, Sracic said.
Ryan has been featured in numerous national publications and on many TV news programs touting his candidacy and raising his national profile. This is only the second time Pelosi has been challenged for House Democratic head since being elected to the position a decade ago as the first woman speaker of the House.
Ryan, who said he never had any ambition to be in leadership until Democrats failed in the Nov. 8 election, called Pelosi before his official Nov. 17 announcement that he would challenge her, but she never returned his phone call. Instead, Pelosi issued a statement saying she had the support of two-thirds of the caucus and would be re-elected.
“Win or lose, his main goal is to take back the Congress in 2018,” Zetts said of Ryan. The minority leader race is “a family discussion and sometimes egos get bruised. The fight is for the Democratic majority in the House in 2018.”
Democrats have lost more than 60 House seats since the 2010 election. Pelosi’s lone challenge for leader came in 2010 when then-U.S. Rep. Heath Schuler of North Carolina took her on, losing 150 to 43. Schuler, a former professional football quarterback, didn’t bother to run for re-election in 2012.
Ryan and his allies have complained that the party’s leadership focuses on the East and West Coasts, ignoring the Midwest.
Ryan criticized Pelosi’s proposed reforms if re-elected leader as an effort to “further consolidate her power over the caucus” when House Democrats “must continue our efforts to decentralize the power in caucus so every member is a part of the team and plays a role in shaping our future.”
“We’re losing and it’s not getting any better” for Democrats, said Mahoning County Democratic Chairman David Betras, a Ryan confidant. “I hate to quote Donald Trump, but ‘what do we have to lose?’ The coastal elite think we’re knuckle-draggers in the Midwest and we don’t matter. They think middle Americans are cavemen.”
When asked Tuesday by The Vindicator about Ryan’s leadership bid, U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, a Republican from the Cincinnati area, said, “I understand what he’s saying. The leadership on the Democratic side has some questions to answer,” and “there must be frustration on his side of the aisle.”
Pelosi received a sarcastic endorsement from the National Republican Congressional Committee, which hung a “Hire Pelosi” sign outside their Washington, D.C., headquarters Tuesday.
“Nancy Pelosi has been a true friend to the House Republicans, helping us achieve the largest majority since the 1920s,” said NRCC spokeswoman Katie Martin. “We sincerely hope House Democrats vote to elect Nancy Pelosi as minority leader, where we have no doubt she will lead them deeper into the political wilderness and ensure a Republican majority for years to come.”