April 4, 2019 - U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) Announces Candidacy 

April 6, 2019 - Launch Rally in Youngstown, OH

• On April 4 U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) announced on "The View" and via video.

• On the afternoon of April 6 he held a launch rally on Federal Street in front of Youngstown Business Incubator in downtown Youngstown. After several local luminaries made quick introductory remarks, Ryan made a relatively brief announcement speech, pledging "first and foremost try to bring this country back together."



Tim Ryan for President Campaign Launch Rally
W Federal Street in Downtown Youngstown
241 W Federal St
Youngstown, OH 44503
Saturday, April 6, 2019 2:00pm–3:00pm EDT

U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH)
Launch Rally
Youngstown, OH
April 6, 2019

[DEMOCRACY IN ACTION Transcript  |  C-SPAN video]

- Pastor Vincent Peterson

- Rose Carter, executive director of ACTION Youngstown

- Akron Mayor Dan Horrigan

- Warren Mayor Doug Franklin

- U.S. Army Sgt. Herman Brewer (ret.), president of the National Assoc. of County Veteran Service Officers

- Youngstown Mayor Tito Brown

[Music – "Closer to Free" by the BoDeans (1993)]

First thank my family for allowing me to do this.

I'm Tim Ryan, and I'm running for president of the United States of America. I first want to say thank you to everyone that's here today for giving me this amazing opportunity, and I want to thank you for 45 and 3/4 years – I'm hanging on – of an amazing ride and the opportunity to represent you in the United States Congress.  [Aside: Someone liked that, yeah.  My mom; thanks mom.  No, I'm kidding].

You know at the end of the day, I'm a kid from Niles, Ohio. And the beautiful thing about Niles, Ohio or Struthers, Ohio or Youngstown, Ohio or Warren, Ohio is that you don't just get raised by your parents. You get raised by the community. And so, I'm here because of the coaches in Niles Little League, Mr. Leonard, who lived next door, who was the head coach, kicked me in the rear end when I needed it, kicked me in the rear end when I didn't need it, the coaches in the Little League; the teachers at Our Lady of Mount Carmel; the teachers at Kennedy High School.

It was a community effort to raise a kid. And I believe that that's what we need to get back to in the United States of America. Where it's okay for us to say, ‘I care about you, I love you, I'm gonna want to help you and I'm gonna do everything in my power to help you do what you have to do.

I think that's important for us today to acknowledge that. We stand here today on April 6, 2019, a divided country, as you know. And we've been divided for a long time. And that division has prevented us from being able to be the best that we could possibly be.

And we can go back to the stories of Black Monday in Youngstown, that many people in this audience remember much better than I do. And I do think of my father-in-law who lost his job that day, or days after that, years after that, because of what happened on Black Monday. And I can go back 20 years and remember my cousin, Donnie Guerra, calling me on the phone saying, ‘You're never gonna believe what I had to do today. It was my last day at Delphi. I had to unbolt the machine from the factory floor. I had to put it in a box and I had to ship it to China.’ Or we can go back just a few weeks ago and talk about what happened at Lordstown.

Things go up and things go down, but if we're not united we are not gonna be able to fix these structural problems that we have in the United States. And I'm running for president, to first and foremost try to bring this country back together. Because a divided country is a weak country, and we have politicians and leaders in America today that want to divide us. They want to put us in one box or the other.

You know you can't be for business and for labor, you can't be for border security and immigration reform, right, you can't be for cities and rural America, you can't be for the North and the South, you can't be for men and women. I'm tired of having to choose. I want us to come together as a country. I want us to seize the future of this country. We are a great country. And we can do it, we can do it, if we come together.

And I just want you to know this one thing: The competition that we are in to today is fierce, and we don't need a super star, and we don't need a savior. We need to come together and we need grit and determination and the ability for us to work together for a better future, not just for us, but for our kids. That's what this is all about.

And I will say that I will pledge to you every time I walk downstairs and into the Oval Office that you, and your needs, and your concerns, and your worries will be my worries. They'll be my worries. And I will work every single day – every single day – to make your life better. I'm gonna ask you to work hard every single day too to make your life better. But the problem today is so many people work hard and play by the rules and just still can't get ahead. They still can't get health care, they still can't get the job they need, they still can't move into the neighborhood or the school district that they want to be in. That's our problem. That's our concern together. And that's what this campaign is all about.

I will tell you that when we got married, and we have three kids and two dogs, so you can imagine how much energy is flyin' through the house at any one moment, especially first thing in the morning. But a few months back, a few years back now, something happened in the house where I actually got control of the TV remote. It hadn't happened in a while. We had Nickelodeon on or some kind of thing [inaud.]. And I got the remote. What do you do if you're an old quarterback from Youngstown, around Youngstown, Ohio? You start flippin' through the TV stations to try and find some sports.

So, I don't find sports but I find a sports documentary. And the documentary was on Jimmy Valvano. Remember Jimmy V? So, I'm half Italian, so this is my guy, right? So, I'm watchin' Jimmy V, and he's up there and he's giving a speech. And he said something that I'll never forget. He said, ‘God must have loved ordinary people because he made so many of them.' But he said, 'Every day, in so many different ways, ordinary people do extraordinary things.’'

'Ordinary people do extraordinary things.' And I will tell you that if there is one value that I will bring to the highest office in the land, when I wake up, it's gonna be: How today, can I use every ounce of power that this office has to help ordinary people do something extraordinary today in America. That's my pledge to you. That's my pledge to you.

Why do we want to fix the education system? So we can give an ordinary kid from a place like Niles, or Campbell or Struthers to do something extraordinary. Why do we want everyone to have health care in the United States? It's a value, it's a right, it's important, it's something that we should all be able to agree upon. But if you're not healthy, you cannot do anything extraordinary to contribute to what we need to contribute to in the United States of America. That's why everyone deserves health care in the United States of America.

And when you talk about reinvesting in communities like ours, which I have spent the last 19 years of my public life trying to do. Trying to make sure that communities like ours aren't forgotten. The flyover states are my states, the flyover states are your states, and the flyover states are gonna start governing in the United States of America again.

We have so much work to do. We have so much work to do. We have broken systems in our country that we've failed to fix because we're divided.

And I want you to know that our enemies come into our social media and they intentionally try to divide us. If there is an incident, I want everyone to listen to me here, if there is an incident in America that's controversial – about kneeling for the national anthem, or there's a school shooting, or there's an incident between a cop and a kid – you know who comes on to our social media? The Russians. Okay, I want you to hear this. The Russians.

They come in to our social media and they spin things to get us into these divided camps so that we're fighting with each other. That's what they want. And meanwhile we can't get our economy going. Meanwhile, we can't get a health care system that works. Meanwhile, we can't reform an old outdated government that needs reform. Or education, or anything else because we have not come together.

The most patriotic thing we could do today is to respect each other, is to respect each other. To care about each other, to respect each other, to listen to each other. That maybe somebody else has something to offer that you hadn't thought of. And I want to build a government in the United States that allows us to pull Democrats and Independents and Republicans together.

I will be sitting down with the business community in the United States and the workers and the labor unions in the United States. We all have to get better. We all have to get better if we're gonna solve these big problems. We all have to. And it's gonna take all of us. White, black, brown, gay, straight, North, South. We're all Americans in this great experiment in democracy, this great experiment in democracy. Each generation has the duty to grab the mantle and do something great with it.

There's an old saying that politicians and presidents, they don't have power – they hold power. They hold the power that the people of the United States give them. And I want to hold that power for four years. And I want to bring the experiences that I've had in this community, from the schools that I went to, to the coaches that I had, to the teachers that I had, to the family that I had. And just maybe, just maybe, the person that can help heal these wounds is a working-class kid from a working-class family from a working-class community, that will go work his rear end off for the American people.

Let me just say, in closing, to all of you. I thank you, I love you. And I don't say that gratuitously. I love you. I'm not standing here, I'm not standing here without you loving me and me loving you, and I have loved the opportunity that you have given me and I will tell you, I will go to work every single day and we're gonna get this country squared away. Okay?

We are not, we are not – and I want you to agree with this – we are not gonna let fear determine how we move into the future in the United States anymore. We're not gonna allow leaders to pit us against each other and while we're fightin' we can't get anything done and none of us move forward. Tell me you're gonna join together with me to do that. You guys are getting me excited now. I was a little nervous about this, but I'm pretty excited now. [Aside: She said, you think you're excited? I've been here since 9:30. Get this woman a sandwich...]

Someone's here I want to introduce. The champ is here. Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini, I saw him here. And I haven't made this announcement yet, but there's always a secretary that sits outside the White House, right outside the Oval Office. Pretty dangerous these days. So I've already hired Ray Mancini to sit right outside. We're going to DC Ray. Bring the gloves.

There's a great story, there's a great story about the champ Mohammed Ali that I want to end with. So, somebody went to see the Champ and bumped into him and he was walkin' down the street in Kentucky. And they bumped into the Champ and it was a little kid and he said, ‘Champ, champ, I saw one of your fights!’ And he says, ‘Oh, that's great. No kidding.’ He said, ‘My dad took me to watch you fight!’ He said, ‘No kidding.’ He said, ‘Yeah, you got knocked down!’ Champ looked at him and said, ‘It wasn't my fight.’ He said, ‘No, my dad – it was one of the great moments of my life. He took – he's my dad – we went, but you got knocked down. I think the third or fourth round, you got knocked down.’ He goes, ‘It wasn't my fight.’ Ali looked at this kid and he said, ‘I've never been knocked down. I'm either up, or I'm gettin' up, Okay?’

“The Mahoning Valley is either up, or we're gettin' up. Northeast Ohio is either up, or we're gettin' up. Ohio is either up, or we're gettin' up. And the United States of America, we're either up or we're gettin' up.

Help me do this. I need your help. I need your support. I need your love. I need your voice. Let's go take back the White House.

###

[17m33s]

Tim Ryan for America

Contact: Julia Krieger
Communications Director
April 7, 2019

ICYMI: Democratic Presidential Candidate Rep. Tim Ryan’s First Presidential Rally in Youngstown

Watch or Download Congressman Ryan’s Speech in Youngstown

YOUNGSTOWN, OH – On Saturday, Congressman Tim Ryan (D-OH) announced his candidacy for president of the United States to represent the working people of Steel Country. During his remarks, Ryan pledged to restore dignity, respect and unity in the United States and to fighting for the access to affordable health care, strong retirement security and education opportunities for every American. The following is an edited transcription of his remarks:

“I'm Tim Ryan, and I'm running for president of the United States of America. You know at the end of the day, I'm a kid from Niles, Ohio. And the beautiful thing about Ohio is that you don't just get raised by your parents. You get raised by the community. And so, I'm here because of the coaches in Niles Little League, the teachers at Our Lady of Mount Carmel, the teachers at Kennedy High School.

“It was a community effort to raise a kid. And I believe that that's what we need to get back to in the United States of America. Where it's OK for us to say, ‘I care about you, I love you, and I want to help you and I'm gonna do everything in my power to help you do what you have to do.’

“We stand here today on April 6, 2019, a divided country. And we've been divided for a long time. And that division has prevented us from being able to be the best that we could possibly be.

“And we can go back to the stories of Black Monday in Youngstown, that many people in this audience remember much better than I do. And I do think of my father-in-law who lost his job that day, or days after that, years after that, because of what happened on Black Monday. And I can go back 20 years and remember my cousin, Donnie Guerra, calling me on the phone saying, ‘You're never gonna believe what I had to do today. It was my last day at Delphi. I had to unbolt the machine from the factory floor. I had to put it in a box and I had to ship it to China.’ Or we can go back just a few weeks ago and talk about what happened at Lordstown.

“Things go up and things go down, but if we're not united we are not gonna be able to fix these structural problems that we have in the United States. And I'm running for president, to first and foremost try to bring this country back together. Because a divided country is a weak country, and we have politicians and leaders in America today that want to divide us. They want to put us in one box or the other.

“You can't be for business and for labor, you can't be for border security and immigration reform, you can't be for cities and rural America, you can't be for the North and the South, you can't be for men and women. I'm tired of having to choose. I want us to come together as a country. I want us to cease the future of this country. We are a great country. And we can do it, we can do it if we come together.

“And I just want you to know this one thing: The competition that we are in to today is fierce, and we don't need a super star, and we don't need a savior. We need to come together and we need grit and determination and the ability for us to work together for a better future, not just for us, but for our kids. That's what this is all about.

“And I will say that I will pledge to you every time I walk downstairs and into the Oval Office that you, and your needs, and your concerns, and your worries will be my worries. They'll be my worries. And I will work every single day – every single day – to make your life better. I'm gonna ask you to work hard every single day too to make your life better. But the problem today is so many people work hard and play by the rules and just still can't get ahead. They still can't get health care, they still can't get the job they need, they still can't move into the neighborhood or the school district that they want to be in. That's our problem. That's our concern together. And that's what this campaign is all about.

“We have three kids and two dogs, so you can imagine how much energy is flyin' through the house at any one moment, especially first thing in the morning. But a few years back now, something happened in the house where I actually got control of the TV remote. And what do you do if you're an old quarterback from around Youngstown, Ohio? You start flippin' through the TV stations to try and find some sports.

“So, I don't find sports but I find a sports documentary. And the documentary was on Jimmy Valvano. Remember Jimmy V? So, I'm half Italian, so this is my guy, right? So, I'm watchin' Jimmy V. And he said something that I'll never forget. He said, ‘Every day, in so many different ways, ordinary people do extraordinary things.’

“Ordinary people do extraordinary things. And I will tell you that if there is one value that I will bring to the highest office in the land, when I wake up, it's gonna be: How today, can I use every ounce of power that this office has to help ordinary people do something extraordinary today in America. That's my pledge to you.

“Why do we want to fix the education system? So we can give an ordinary kid from a place like Niles, or Campbell or Struthers to do something extraordinary. Why do we want everyone to have health care in the United States? It's a value, it's a right, it's important, it's something that we should all be able to agree upon. But if you're not healthy, you cannot do anything extraordinary to contribute to what we need to contribute to in the United States of America. That's why everyone deserves health care in the United States of America.

“And when you talk about reinvesting in communities like ours, which I have spent the last 19 years of my public life trying to do. Trying to make sure that communities like ours aren't forgotten. The fly over states are my states, the fly over states are your states, and the fly over states are gonna start governing in the United States of America again.

“We have so much work to do. We have so much work to do. We have broken systems in our country that we've failed to fix because we're divided.

“And I want you to know that our enemies come into our social media and they intentionally try to divide us. If there is an incident in America that's controversial – about kneeling for the national anthem, or there's a school shooting, or there's an incident between a cop and a kid – you know who comes on to our social media? The Russians.

“They come in to our social media and they spin things to get us into these divided camps so that we're fighting with each other. That's what they want. And meanwhile we can't get our economy going. Meanwhile, we can't get a health care system that works. Meanwhile, we can't reform an old outdated government that needs reform. Or education, or anything else because we have not come together.

“The most patriotic thing we could do today is to respect each other. To care about each other, to respect each other, to listen to each other. That maybe somebody else has something to offer that you hadn't thought of. And I want to build a government in the United States that allows us to pull Democrats and Independents and Republicans together.

“I will be sitting down with the business community in the United States and the workers and the labor unions in the United States. We all have to get better. We all have to get better if we're gonna solve these big problems. We all have to. And it's gonna take all of us. White, black, brown, gay, straight, North, South. We're all Americans in this great experiment in democracy. Each generation has the duty to grab the mantel and do something great with it.

“There's an old saying that politicians and presidents, they don't have power – they hold power. They hold the power that the people of the United States give them. And I want to hold that power for four years. And I want to bring the experiences that I've had in this community, from the schools that I went to, to the coaches that I had, to the teachers that I had, to the family that I had. And just maybe, just maybe, the person that can help heal these wounds is a working-class kid from a working-class family from a working-class community, that will go work his rear end off for the American people.

“Let me just say, in closing, to all of you. I thank you, I love you. And I don't say that gratuitously. I love you. I'm not standing here without you loving me and me loving you, and I have loved the opportunity that you have given me and I will tell you, I will go to work every single day and we're gonna get this country squared away. OK?

“We are not – and I want you to agree with this – we are not gonna let fear determine how we move into the future in the United States anymore. We're not gonna allow leaders to pit us against each other and while we're fightin' we can't get anything done and none of us move forward. Tell me you're gonna join together with me to do that.

“There's a great story about the champ Mohammed Ali that I want to end with. So, somebody went to see the Champ and bumped into him as he was walkin' down the street in Kentucky. It was a little kid and he said, ‘Champ, champ, I saw one of your fights!’ And he says, ‘Oh, that's great. No kidding.’ He said, ‘My dad took me to watch you fight!’ He said, ‘No kidding.’ He said, ‘Yeah, you got knocked down!’ Champ looked at him and said, ‘It wasn't my fight.’ He said, ‘No, my dad – it was one of the great moments of my life. He took – he's my dad – we went, but you got knocked down. I think the third or fourth round, you got knocked down.’ He goes, ‘It wasn't my fight.’ Ali looked at this kid and he said, ‘I've never been knocked down. I'm either up, or I'm gettin' up, OK?’

“The Mahoning Valley is either up, or we're gettin' up. Northeast Ohio is either up, or we're gettin' up. Ohio is either up, or we're gettin' up. And the United States of America, we're either up or we're gettin' up.

“Help me do this. I need your help. I need your support. I need your love. I need your voice. Let's go take back the White House.”


April 4, 2019 Video "Tim Ryan: I'm Running for President" (3m39s)


[Nat. sound]

Tim Ryan
: I grew up just outside of Youngstown, Ohio in a town called Niles.

[Music]

My entire family worked in factories primarily.

So I grew up around people who really made a lot of sacrifice in their own lives for their family, for their country, for their community.

Clip
Ryan
: What are you doing here, man, you laying brick?
Worker: Yeah.
Ryan: You guys in the union?
Worker: Yes, sir.
Ryan: Bricklayers?
See.

And to be in a position that I'm in, I feel it's my responsibility to be there for them.

A lot of people have been left behind. And you know, these are people who built the country.

They aren't asking for liberal solutions or conservative solutions; they're asking for real world solutions to their real world problems.

Wife: What I loved about him was people would come up to them left and right. And he would be completely engaged in conversation with them.

Clip
Ryan
: Yeah

Having three kids of our own and to watch my wife teach that has deepened my understanding of what it means to be a really good Congressman.

Clip
What do you love? What gets you excited to get up in the morning and how can we support you?

Man: What I thank God for is there's people like yourself, and finally stop and says, "Let's be part of the solution. Let's help."

We've never faced a challenge like this before. Never.

Clips from speech
Nothing's been fixed. All the promises of the last campaign have disappeared.
We've got to start acting like the United States of America again.
If you work hard, you play by the rules, you get up every morning and you go contribute you won't have to worry that the bills will get paid. And if your kid gets sick, you're going to have health care. I don't feel like this is asking too much.

This old system is broken. It's not working. Everybody knows that now. The systems aren't working. The politics aren't working. So you've got to come out of the soil with something new.

Clips from speech  We have an opportunity to fix this.
We got work to do.
And it starts in this election.
Politics divides us. We need to get to purpose.
We are a family in the United States of America. We've got to find some common ground so we can get to some higher ground.

There's a Quiet Revolution happening in the country.

We put our shoulder into it, it's gonna happen.

Voiceover: My name is Tim Ryan and I'm running for president of the United States.


Republican National Committee
April 4, 2019

“Tim Ryan is a Congressional backbencher who has no chance of becoming president. You can just add him to the long list of liberal candidates demanding government-run health care, and it underscores how radical and out-of-touch this Democratic field truly is.” – RNC Communications Director Michael Ahrens

1. NBC/WSJ, 1/23/19; The Atlantic, 3/15/19

2. Google, Accessed 4/3/19; The Plain Dealer, 2/19/19

3. Congress.gov, Accessed 4/3/19

4. Roll Call, 2/27/19

5. Real Clear Politics, Accessed 4/3/19