Tim Ryan, a leading advocate in the U.S. House for America's working families, is considering entering the race for Ohio's Senate seat in 2010.
The Youngstown Vindicator reported today about the possible run for U.S. Senate by Ryan.
David Skolnick writes:
With U.S. Sen. George V. Voinovich’s decision to not seek re-election next year, U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan is looking at the seat.
“As a member of the House Appropriations Committee I am in a very good position to help create and expand important economic development in the state of Ohio,” said Ryan, of Niles, D-17th. “That said, if I can have a greater impact by being in the Senate, I will certainly consider it.”
Ryan, whose district includes portions of Mahoning and Trumbull counties, said he is “singularly focused on what’s best for my constituents in Northeast Ohio.”
Even when Voinovich was adamant that he was seeking re-election, Ryan was mulling a Senate run.
“I’m open to listening,” he said two months ago about running for the Senate. “I’ve followed my heart, and that’s gotten me to here.”
He acknowledged at the time that leaving the House to run for the Senate was a “big risk.”
Political experts contacted Monday after Voinovich announced his decision to not run in the 2010 election said a Ryan Senate candidacy would still be a risk.
“If you’re in the minority in the House and lose [a Senate bid] you go back home and do something else,” said Steven Brooks, associate director of the University of Akron’s Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics. “But if you’re on the fast track [like Ryan], it’s tough to give that up. There are many who consider him a rising star.”
Though Democrats have gained control of Congress during the past two elections and Barack Obama will be the first Democrat in the White House in eight years, a lot can change between now and the 2010 election, Brooks said.
“This is one of the most volatile political climates I’ve seen in a long time,” he said.
In 2006, top Senate Democrats lobbied Ryan to run for the Senate against incumbent Mike DeWine, a Republican. He declined, and Sherrod Brown, a Democrat, defeated DeWine.
Ryan’s best hope to win a Senate seat, presuming he decides to run, is to get the public support of Gov. Ted Strickland, a fellow Democrat, said Bill Binning, the former chairman of the Youngstown State University political science department.
During a presidential campaign stop in the Valley a few months ago, Strickland publicly touted Ryan as a future U.S. senator.
If Strickland pushed for Ryan to run for the Senate, the congressman would be the leading Democrat for the seat, Binning said.
Ryan would run for the Senate in 2010, the same year Strickland would seek re-election as governor.
But Binning said he doesn’t know if Ryan would run for the seat.
In his fourth two-year term in the House, Ryan has served on the powerful appropriations committee since 2007 and is “in good with Democratic leadership,” Binning said.
“It would be very dangerous for [Ryan] to give up that safe seat,” said Paul Sracic, YSU’s political science department chairman.
“He’s never been in a race like this, a statewide race,” Sracic said of Ryan. “He’s untested in a statewide race and he doesn’t have the name recognition of” Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner or Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher, two potential Democratic Senate candidates.
Brooks, Binning and Sracic agreed that although names are being considered for Senate candidates, it’s too early to determine a front-runner.
http://www.vindy.com/news/2009/jan/13/will-ryan-make-a-run-for-senate/
1 comments:
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