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Media outlets are fawning over Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, in what appears to be a last-ditch effort to aid his underdog campaign to defeat GOP rival JD Vance in the Ohio Senate race.
On Thursday, a pair of reports from Time and Politico offered glowing coverage of Ryan, who is trailing over three points behind Vance in the RealClearPolitics average of polls.
Time ran the headline, "Democrats Are Closely Watching Tim Ryan's Efforts to Woo Ohio's Trump Voters," saying he "drops in some Bobby Kennedy for good measure, but there are glimmers of Ronald Reagan’s optimism in there, too."
"Tim Ryan clutched his paper Starbucks cup in his left hand as he tossed the football a clean spiral to his 8-year-old son, Brady, with his right… And just as Ryan can sip his drink—first coffee, later Miller Lite—and toss the football at the same time, the former star quarterback similarly has found a way to two-track his messaging," Time reported. "He’s kept President Joe Biden at arm’s length while promoting parts of the White House’s agenda such as the Inflation Reduction Act. Ryan is pitching tax cuts and ditching anything nearing the Green New Deal. He wants more cops on the streets and fewer people in jail for marijuana. His campaign soundtrack is heavy on country, his standard speech heavy on faith and family."
Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) speaks at a campaign stop on November 3, 2022 in Findlay, Ohio. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Politico, on the other hand, ran a story titled, "Emasculating Vance Is Actually Part of Tim’s Effectiveness," suggesting Ryan is the Democrats' "best messenger on the economy" but "what voters like best are his fighting skills."
"In Washington, Ryan, the working class-obsessed congressman from the Mahoning Valley, has been held out by Democrats as a kind of prototype for messaging on the economy that could help the party recapture [W]hite, working-class voters lost to the Republican Party in the Trump era," Politico wrote. "It isn’t clear that anything he says about the economy is helping him in his campaign as much as his savaging of Vance. The real model that Ryan may be offering Democrats is how, in a red state, to tear a Trump-aligned Republican down."
Politico previously suggested Ryan can save the Democratic majority in the Senate "even if he loses," pointing to the $30+ million Republicans are spending in the Ohio race rather than other competitive contests.
Last week, The New York Times published a pair of pieces giving Ryan's campaign a boost of optimism.
"When Tim Ryan speaks to Democratic crowds in the closing days of the Ohio Senate race, his biggest applause line is about the other team. A Republican official in a ‘deep-red county,’ he recounts, his voice dropping to a stage whisper, told him, 'You have no idea how many Republicans are going to quietly vote for you,'" the Times wrote on Saturday. "The hoots and hollers that break out represent the high hopes of a party that has lost much of its appeal to working-class voters and that sees in Mr. Ryan — a congressman from the Mahoning Valley who has an anti-China, pro-manufacturing message and whose own father is a Republican — a chance to claw back blue-collar credibility."
COLUMBUS, OH - OCTOBER 19: U.S. Senate Democratic candidate Rep. Tim Ryan speaks to students during a campaign stop at Ohio State University on October 19, 2022 in Columbus, Ohio. Ryan is running against former President Donald Trump-endorsed Republican J.D. Vance in the November election. (Photo by Gaelen Morse/Getty Images)
Five days earlier, the Times ran a piece titled, "In Tim Ryan’s Ohio Senate Race, the D Is Often Silent," highlighting how he's "the kind of candidate who appears to put some thought into appearing to put no thought into appearances," calling his style "well-practiced campaign casual."
"Most political races are about authenticity on some level: who tries too hard, who doesn’t try hard enough, who can read the electorate without staring. Mr. Ryan, 49, has made Ohio perhaps the country’s unlikeliest Senate battleground by taking this premise to its logical extreme," the Times wrote. "He is the sort of Democrat many Democrats decided they needed after reading ‘Hillbilly Elegy’: plausible as a diner-goer, firm with a handshake, [W]hite and male."
The Times later continued, "That Mr. Ryan might well be running the best race of any Democratic Senate candidate this cycle can feel by turns immaterial and existential for his supporters, the campaign doubling now as a kind of referendum: If he falls short anyway, what does that say about his state? His party? The notion that the right messenger can sell in any political environment?"
On Friday, The New Yorker staff writer Benjamin Wallace-Wells posed the question, "Is Tim Ryan the Last of the Midwestern Union Democrats?" writing "In the race for Senate in Ohio, the Democratic congressman has countered the right-wing populist appeals of his opponent, J. D. Vance, with hawkish positions on trade, immigration, and China."
"For the Democratic Party, Ryan has supplied a rare point of optimism," Wallace-Wells claimed. "Ohio, once a bellwether, has become more straightforwardly Republican… but Ryan has polled very close to Vance throughout the cycle, and has recently pulled even with him in two major polls. Ryan, who is forty-nine and has represented the state in Congress for two decades, can vividly evoke a particular, increasingly anachronistic type of Democrat: he is skeptical of free trade, was pro-life for much of his career, and despite not being quite an immigration hawk is still somewhat hawkish for a Democrat."
He continued, "If you are optimistic about the possibilities of this kind of approach, then you might see Ryan and John Fetterman, the Pennsylvania Senate candidate who also evokes the Midwestern labor Democrat of yore, as signs of revival."
Rep. Tim Ryan, the Democratic Senate nominee in Ohio, speaks with voters at a tailgate party at The Ohio State University football game, on Oct. 1, 2022 in Columbus, Ohio (Tim Ryan Senate campaign )
Last Thursday, in a piece called "The Revenge of Tim ‘I Told You So’ Ryan," Rolling Stone asserted Ryan's "political prescriptions were once a source of irritation to his party" but since he remains competitive in the Ohio Senate race, "he’s having the last laugh."
"In national Democratic circles, it hasn’t been fashionable since Trump’s 2016 win to ‘get those guys back’ — at least not with Ryan’s vigor… believing that the emergence of a younger, more diverse electorate held greater promise for the party… But that shift in focus pushed former working-class Democratic strongholds like Ohio, where Trump twice won by 8 points, farther down on the party’s list of priorities. Ryan vehemently objected, and he has demanded his party rebuild the so-called 'Blue Wall' that Trump breached," Rolling Stone wrote.
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Rolling Stone added, "If Ryan wins, he proves a Democrat can win on the backs of voters his party has forsaken. If he loses, he likely demonstrates a willingness among those voters to return to the Democratic fold — so long as the party courts them as acutely as Ryan has. Neither outcome is likely to settle his party’s debate over winning tactics, but Ryan will have nevertheless proved his point, donning his fellow Democrats’ doubt as a badge of honor."
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