Tim Ryan: A conversation about his campaign for U.S. Senate

MANSFIELD -- Democrat Tim Ryan, a candidate for the U.S. Senate from Ohio, stopped for an interview with several members of Richland Source's news staff on Saturday afternoon.

The 25-minute meeting was conducted at Idea Works, the home of Richland Source in downtown Mansfield.

Below is the balance of that conversation, which has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Richland Source: You were present for this week's groundbreaking at the new Intel facility site outside Columbus. What’s your reaction to what’s going to happen down there and the impact it’s going to have?

Tim Ryan: It's amazing. I've been doing this a long time. I come from a town not much different than this. I was a little emotional. This is how you draw it up. This is dream-come-true stuff. I imagine manufacturing, next-generation manufacturing, supply chains that are going to affect the whole state, not needing a college degree, 7,000 union construction jobs – it checks every box. It’s good for defense, good for the country. I think it's gonna be that moment in time where we do bury that hatchet of the Rust Belt. We move forward into the next generation of things, in addition to a lot of the other stuff going on, but I think it's that project.

Richland Source: I'm trying to figure out the last time I saw a podium or a stage where you had so many Republicans and Democrats together. We got a Republican governor. You got a Democratic president. You got a Republican senator, you got Democratic senator. Is Intel a good example of what can happen when people work together rather than shouting at each other?

Tim Ryan: One thousand percent. When I first started, I was in the State Senate for just two years. We used to have these meetings with the Youngstown Chamber of Commerce, the head of the UAW union for the General Motors plant, you’d have the other building and construction trade unions there, we'd have the economic development people and then we'd have the local politicians there – state senator, whatever. And it was like, that’s how you do it.

There was nobody saying, ‘Who's Democrat, who's Republican?’ It’d be like, ‘Okay, how do we bring jobs here?’ Then if they come here and you guys want to unionize them, great. But how do we work together to get them here? And I felt like the Intel project and the CHIPS Act … was like the carrot hanging out here. It’s like ‘Are you guys are gonna screw this up?’ … A lot of people tried. But it was such a big project that it just focused everybody's mind.

I remember having a meeting in D.C. – (President and CEO) J.P. Nauseef with JobsOhio, (President and CEO) Kenny McDonald from the Columbus Partnership and their team. They were like ‘We need the CHIPS Act.' ... It was like, these guys are all a Republican administration, business group in Columbus, coming to see me because I was on the appropriations committee and they thought I could help move the ball … I hope it is the new model for how we move forward because we just can't afford the dumb fights, as I've been talking about.

Richland Source: What primary issue in this race is being oversimplified? Is there a lone issue for which there is no simple, easy answer and what do you think divides Ohioans most on that issue?

Tim Ryan: I don't know if it's like a political issue, more than a cultural issue, of people not having the attention span ... People are so busy and they're so challenged in so many ways with their lives today that there isn't the level of attention to the complexities of the issues. Everybody kind of just immediately reverts back to, ‘I saw this on social media.’ What’d you see? ‘I just saw a snippet about x, y or z ... about Biden, about the Democrats, about Trump, about whatever.’ It just takes away from the level of thoughtfulness that you need.

Like with the CHIPS Act, that took a long time and then we had to pare it down because the bigger bill wasn't going to pass. Or how do you do economic development and how do you work together in that regard? That environment, in some sense, punishes the compromise or the working together. So I don't know if it comes down to a particular issue.

I think people get this instinctively – I don't think they understand the extent of it – but it's with China. I try to talk about this a lot in my speeches. When you look at the comprehensive plan that China has, in the short, mid and long term, it's pretty scary. Like the military exercises recently with Russia. I think people get it, but it's very complicated because it goes into defense. It goes into all of our competition with them in the new economy, the new sectors of the economy – whether it's electric vehicles or artificial intelligence or wind or solar, whatever. It has a military component to it. It has a defense component to it. It has a defense technology component to it. They're way in front of us on hypersonics – so is Russia. It has a fentanyl component to it, I think, that we don't tie in necessarily. Because it comes from Mexico, so we think that's part of the problem, but it originates in China.

So the kind of scope, I don't think people understand. Like yeah, we're mad at China, jobs went to China. But the level of complexity and then the comprehensive response that we would need in order to beat it back – you can't be weak on defense. I tell my Democratic colleagues who are always going after defense, I say, ‘Look, I understand we gotta cut out waste, fraud and abuse, but do you have any idea the technologies that China has that are way ahead of us right now? It's scary. We should not be the party of not understanding that. But people don't get into the complexity – to jump back to the culture thing – even politicians.

Richland Source: The race itself between you and J.D. Vance is very different people, very different stances. Is there any part of his platform where you guys can find some common ground? When you look and say, there's merit in that particular issue?

Tim Ryan: Yeah. He talks about nuclear energy – I’m a big supporter. Natural gas – I'm a big supporter. I think those would be two areas. I actually think the natural gas piece can be one of the healing issues. I think you can tie climate to it. I think you can tie jobs to it. You can tie the unions to it. You can tie reducing energy costs here at home to it.

As Joe Manchin said, this is not a Green Deal, it's a red, white and blue deal. This thing that we're doing is really about American baseload energy and being able to power our industries. So I would say those are probably two.

I make this argument to young people too, about climate. We got a window. What's the beginning of the window look like? Obviously putting money into research and development around electric vehicles and batteries ... What we're doing up in our neck of the woods with electric trucks and cars and tractors and batteries at the Lordstown plant, that's really important.

But the bridge is natural gas. And natural gas creates jobs here. But what we're seeing in Europe and China now ... is they’re starting to come back online with coal. Coal is fine, as long as you’re not burning it. We could use coal in other ways for materials. But Europe, China's putting on a coal-fired power plant one a week. So I think we should build out a system here where we can move our natural gas from eastern Ohio, to Europe, to our allies, and then maybe eventually with China.

If it's cheaper, they'll start buying it. That would have like an 80-percent reduction in carbon. It would be a massive achievement for climate. But it's like ‘Oh, your natural gas. You must be a Republican, right?’ ... We’ve built power plants in my district, natural gas. Liquid natural gas, get it, move it, build the pipelines, get it out of here ... Why would I not be for that? We're playing this game on a 30 year horizon. We got to do things as quickly as possible. But that's the answer. Natural gas is the answer.

Richland Source: What's the question you think nobody is asking in this campaign? And how would you answer that question?

Tim Ryan: I would say if there’s something that people aren't talking about it, I think it could be the health of the nation. We talk about health care, but we don't talk about health ... Half the country has diabetes or prediabetes. We have a broken food system. I worry a lot about what we're feeding our kids. I think a lot of the sickness that we have comes from our food system.

I guess the thing we're not talking about is, how are all these different issues integrated? We have a siloed system – this is your agricultural system, this is your food system, this is your healthcare system, this is your education system. There's really no one saying, how does all this stuff integrate with each other? How does all this stuff interface with each other? I think it drives people nuts. I think it's one of the key problems that we have ... We need to move into an age of reform. This is just one example, but there's many. We feed our kids not great food in our schools – high sugar, highly processed.

We feed it to them for a long time. A lot of these kids are on the Medicaid program. These kids get diabetes, prediabetes, get sick on the Medicaid program. So we subsidize the food we feed them and then we subsidize the health care that they need. And the taxpayer is sitting there going, why are my taxes are so high? And it's part of this broken system ... We should teach our kids how to eat. I'm not a prude. I'm like an 80 percent guy. If you're doing it right 80 percent of the time – you gotta have a few beers every now and then.

A little ice cream, some chicken wings, we're not going to be dead. But how do we make sure that we are trying to get our population as healthy as possible? ... We talk a lot about health care, which is really disease care, which is really sick care. We wait until people get sick and then we spend a lot of money trying to get them healthy, when we should try to keep them healthy, which is a hell of a lot cheaper.

Richland Source: It's like preventative instead of reactive?

Tim Ryan: Totally. I mean, people think of prevention as screenings and that kind of thing, which absolutely is a part of it. But it's also like, we should just start asking ourselves, how do we teach kids how to eat healthy food and then cheat? As opposed to eat bad food and then every now and again eat a piece of fruit?

Richland Source: In a campaign ad that you released in May, you said, ‘You want culture wars? I'm not your guy.’ What would it be like if more people agreed with your stance on that?

Tim Ryan: I think a lot of people do agree with it. It's like the unnecessary attention to divisive issues ... There's always contrast. But people just go out of their way to throw gas on these fires that are burning as opposed to trying to figure out how to bring people together and talk about it. I think that's something that I’ve prided myself on.

The last two congresses, I’ve been in the top 10 percent of the most bipartisan people in the whole Congress. I try to get along with people. I try not to bring any more hate or anger to an already hyper angry situation with our politics.

I think it would look like the CHIPS bill. It would look like the Intel deal. It would look like what we've been able to do back in Youngstown. We have three different electric vehicles in our plan. We've got a battery plant across the street. We've got an energy incubator that is spinning out companies that are buying industrial policies. That was because over time, we worked with the business community. We had a Democrat working with the business community. We don't show up and be like, ‘Okay, what do we disagree on?’

I tease people all the time like, is anybody married here? Do you go to your spouse and say, ‘Let's talk about three things we hate about each other, disagree on all the time. I hate the fact that you root for the Steelers’ or whatever the case may be, you don't do that.

That's not how you make progress ... Now, you may have to figure out how to deal with those things and you deal with them in a constructive way. But just the unnecessary ... like J.D., defund the police. On its face, untrue. I brought back $500 million for the state funding police. So that’s just an unnecessary ... and it doesn't solve the problem because it perpetuates the problem we have between cops and Black community. Is this really a constructive conversation that we're having here?

I think we could make great advances, which is another reason I like to talk a lot about China because I think people recognizing that competition that we're in – and that's what it is. General Mattis did this whole new review of our national security and it was a pivot away from the War on Terror and a pivot away from the Middle East to China. They call it our strategic competitors -- I think having a conversation about what's really going on with China can sharpen our minds to those things that we have to do to out-compete them and those aren’t culture wars, if we're gonna win the big competition.

Richland Source: Before we move on, we also had a little bit of an internal debate about what culture wars actually means. I'm curious what does that mean to you, to be in a culture war?

Tim Ryan: I think it's the unnecessary provoking of issues that you know are going to be polarizing at a time when we need to come together. It doesn't mean you don't have opinions on it, but to unnecessarily focus on it.

I think where that has worked in the past few years, there's an exhausted majority of people in the country who don't want to keep doing that. We've bottomed out on this stuff. We're losing friends over this. We're not talking to family members over this and it's like, ‘Okay, maybe we've gone a little bit too far.’ We're breaking up Thanksgiving dinner here.

Richland Source: I realize that's a good idea for when you guys get elected and get to D.C., but how do we fix this in the campaigns? Because every campaign I see out there, whether it's you and Mr. Vance or whether it's somebody in California, somebody in Georgia, it's always, every campaign is attack -- demonstrate the difference, exploited the divisiveness. So how do we fix the campaign?

Tim Ryan: I think you keep it on issues that are really important. And I think people would say, ‘Well, of course we're talking about the issues that are really important.’ I don't have a great answer. I think you do have to talk to some extent about what you want to do, what your achievements are, what your record is, what your worldview is.

My hunch is that we're gonna win this thing because people recognize that I want us to try to get along with each other. The whole campaign is about – Stop the culture wars, let's talk to each other and stop being Democrats and Republicans. We're getting a great response on that. It's like I said, I think we've bottomed out.

Clearly we're being critical of J.D. and we're drawing the contrast and he said things that I think are important for people to know who are going into leadership positions in the Senate, on some of his extreme positions, but I think we're pointing that out, but we're also saying, that's part of the problem. He's not representing the majority of us. These are unnecessary. Stop the stupid fights. I put it in like three or four of my ads. Stop the stupid fights. Have real fights. Let's fight about tax rates. Let's fight about the size of government. Let's talk about reform.

I tell my Republican friends, you're gonna have an ally with me. I think these systems are absolutely broken and they're not working. Anybody I talk to who has to interface with the government – you can be a community group trying to get a grant, you can be a business trying to get a small business loan from the SBA – if you're interfacing with the government, you don't like it. There's no reason why in 2022 we can't have a modern government.

The government is not a business, but it can run efficiently like a business would have to. You want to order a book or something from Amazon, three days later, it shows up at your door. You want to get an unemployment check in the middle of a pandemic, it's like four months. It's insane. How does that even happen? What's the era of reform look like? And that's going to take both some conservative business people who understand that world, but also Democrats are going to make sure that it's done in a way that people are always being taken care of. There's room, that’s how we solve these problems. It's going to take both sides to do it.

Richland Source: Speaking of complex issues and broken systems, talk about student loans a little bit. You and President Biden disagree on student loan debt and how to deal with that. What has shaped your viewpoint on that and your approach?

Tim Ryan: I think everybody needs help right now. In the middle of high inflation and lots of pain, to just single out one group at this moment, I think sends the wrong message. It's like, if you go to college and you're hurting -- good. If you bought a truck and you're going into an apprenticeship and you're going to be a union construction worker -- whatever, you gotta pay your loan back, sorry.

I just think that's not where we want to be right now. I think you could take care of a good chunk of the problem by just renegotiating down the loans from 10 to 12 percent down to one or two percent. That would get you a long, long way to put money in people's pockets. The problem I really have with it is that it doesn't solve the problem of high cost college education.

So we’re spending $300 billion to do this and we're not fixing the cost. Our kid now is in his second year at the University of Cincinnati. College costs aren't going down. We didn't say, ‘Okay, we’re gonna bail us out. We're gonna do this ... and then we're going to cap how much a college could increase their tuition if they're getting federal loans, like you can only raise it the cost of living.'

There was none of that check. So we're gonna be back here in five or 10 years doing the same thing. We're paying my wife’s student loans off now, so we're not insensitive to the fact or don't know how crazy this is. But if we're gonna do it, you better solve the problem, the root cause of the problem. We didn’t do it. And I just think it was a big mistake.

Richland Source: President Obama talked about this years ago and like you mentioned, your wife is still paying on her college loans. Obviously, this is a generational problem. What’s been the roadblocks to working on it?

Tim Ryan: We've got to do something, but you can't do it in a vacuum. I think you would have broader support if you said ... ‘Okay, we're going to fix this problem, but we're going to work with others to cap the cost.’ That should be a bipartisan thing. I think a clear-headed Republican would say ‘Yeah, it's too high. Yeah, they're charging usury rates.

But I'm not going to sign off on this unless we fix the root cause of the problem, because we're going to be right back here.’ And I think anybody concerned as a fiscal-minded person, it makes a lot of sense. So I think you don't do it by executive order. Let's do it through legislation that's going to be able to address the root cause of the problem. But again, this all gets back to a broken political system and can we get things through?

Richland Source: What is it you'd want supporters of J.D. Vance, maybe the really hardcore J.D. Vance supporters, to understand about you?

Tim Ryan: I've had the guts to take on my own party. It's kind of funny now, it’s like, ‘Oh, Tim Ryan is trying to portray himself as a moderate or independent or whatever.’ It's like, guys where have you been? I've fought Obama on his trade agenda back in the day. Ran against Nancy Pelosi. Got in fights with Bernie Sanders. I’m opposing Biden on several things ... I ran against Nancy Pelosi, the most powerful Democrat in the world, had to get up in a room of 220 Democrats, members of Congress, and give a speech with her sitting in the front seat ... why we needed to change.

I just think if you're from Ohio, the way we grow up, it's like, you gotta give a guy some credit for that. That's pretty gutsy. This is not some game I'm playing. One, this is how I've been, but two, I think this is absolutely what's needed right now. I'm not gonna get elected and then want to punish half the state or country that didn't vote for me.

I fear that's what J.D. would want to do, but I have no interest in doing that. I'll be the first guy to call David Joyce or call Mike Carney and say ‘Okay, what do we do? What can we work on together?’ I'm already talking to those guys ... I will go out of my way to find stuff for us to work on. So they don't have to feel like they're not going to have a voice if they vote for J.D.