“I’ve watched the American dream slip through the fingers of many Americans,” Ryan wrote on his campaign website, which was unveiled as he appeared on “The View” on ABC. “It’s time for us to start building the America we deserve.”
Ryan, who represents a district in northeastern Ohio that includes Youngstown and part of Akron, is perhaps best known for his criticism of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and his accompanying argument that Democrats have stopped connecting with working-class voters, especially in the Midwest. He challenged Pelosi for the minority leader position in 2016.
His path to the nomination is steep, and not just because the field is so crowded. The last — and only — sitting House member to be elected president was James Garfield in 1880.
But Ryan believes there is an opening in the race for a Midwesterner who wants to focus on winning back the voters who flipped to President Donald Trump in 2016, turning states like Michigan and Wisconsin red for the first time in about three decades. It is the same role Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, is trying to play.
)
)
)
Of the 17 Democratic candidates, only three — Buttigieg, Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and, now, Ryan — are from the Midwest.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.