WARREN, Ohio — Rep. Tim Ryan is a Midwest everyman who has shown no hesitation taking on his party’s hierarchy. He ran against Nancy Pelosi for his party’s top House leadership role after the 2016 presidential election. Later, he ran for his party’s nomination for president. Now, he is terribly concerned about how the coronavirus is ripping apart the nation’s middle and working classes.
“We’re looking at 30% or 40% of small businesses are going to get wiped out,” he told me. “And the stock market had its best month since the Great Depression. I mean, there’s not a clearer, more apparent illustration of the economic problem we have in this country.”
By Thursday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had already clawed back more than 7,000 of the 11,000 points it lost in the initial panic back in late March, even as coronavirus-related jobless claims hit 40 million. In short, Wall Street’s optimism has risen even as unemployment rises. That doesn’t square with Ryan, who said he looks around at all of the small businesses and local governments in his northeast Ohio congressional district without relief and without hope.
“What happens if Warren and Trumbull County and Niles and Holland Township don’t get any relief from the federal government or state and local support?” he asked. “What happens to the school district if they don’t get any support from the state? It’s a recipe for a depression, and it’s just disheartening to see the difference turned into a political thing.”
For the most part, Ryan has stayed put in Warren, maintaining contact with his constituents virtually. “There are a lot of texts, phone calls, Zoom calls and that kind of thing,” he said.
You don’t have to be a politician, Ryan said, to get the stories of families experiencing both economic and health vulnerability and how to address both. “I think there’s just a lot of confusion,” he said. “I think people are scared because everybody has somebody that they know that is vulnerable to exposure to the virus — and then the economic piece. I mean, that’s where we’re hearing most of it now is: just businesses that just don’t know what they’re going to do. They don’t know how much longer they’re going to be able to hold on.”
Adding to that stress is the anxiety that many won’t be able to catch up when this passes. “Look: If you miss two or three house payments as a normal person, you’re going to spend the rest of your life trying to pull out of that hole,” Ryan said.
And the least measurable vulnerability, he added, is the loneliness. “I mean, we all know people who have passed, and the isolation that is coming out of those deaths, where they weren’t able to say goodbye, hadn’t talked to their spouse or whomever … in weeks because they were on a ventilator and isolated,” he said. “Having to live with that the rest of your life, you know? Not getting the proper goodbye. And that’s the case for a lot of people.”
Ryan said he has found that on social media, people are making the virus political. But in real life, people don’t appear to be sharing that sentiment.
“People really don’t want to talk about politics,” he said. “They are more looking for a consistent American message from the American government to the American people. They don’t want to feel like they have to pick red or blue in the middle of a global pandemic.”
Ryan said he has been less than thrilled with President Trump’s leadership amid the pandemic. The president, he said, missed his opportunity to lead. “I thought Trump could have united the country after he got in,” he said. “And then, most presidents would look at a situation like this and would say, ‘Okay, here’s my crisis. Every president gets one. I’m the commander in chief. Give me the ball: I’m going to take it from here.’ And it was just conflict all throughout.”
In contrast, Ryan had mostly kind words for some of the Republican governors — especially Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican. “I mean, he’s probably opening up a little bit faster than I would like, but he’s doing it in a really thoughtful way,” Ryan said. “I’ve been supportive of him throughout, and I still am — because it’s not a time for us to take shots at each other. It’s time for us to work together. Doing the right thing for your state is not a partisan thing. He’s a Republican. He’s a Republican governor of my state, and I’ve been with him the whole time, and supportive, and complimentary in a very public way.”
“I also think Larry Hogan in Maryland, a Republican — [I] think he’s doing a good job following the public health guidance. So when I say something negative about the president, it’s not a partisan thing because I’m supporting a lot of Republican governors who are doing what I think is the right thing to do.”
Going forward, Ryan said his concerns are focused on the small, the local, and the granular. “We have got to help the state and local governments,” he said. “I think we need more money into the PPP program to help small businesses. I mean, I don’t know if we’re ever going to be able to help all of them, but I think we need to spend more to help some of them because if not, they’re going to die.”
