The Ohio congressman challenging House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to lead Democrats in the House said Thursday that he’s ready for a fight.
Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, has announced his intention to run for minority leader, one of the first challenges to Pelosi’s leadership in years. On Fox News Thursday, Ryan said he’s not afraid of taking on Pelosi, and is ignoring her message that he should stand down.
“There’s all kinds of gamesmanship happening here, but I’m an Irish fella and I don’t mind a good fight,” Ryan said.
Pelosi’s leadership is being questioned in the wake of the Democrats failing to take the presidency, the Senate or the House at the ballot box last week. After being in charge of the House Democrats since 2004, Pelosi’s leadership stance might be in jeopardy.
Ryan said he wants to bring the party in a new direction.
“It’s time to look for a new way of doing it and I think there’s a lot of people interested in what the next version of the Democratic Party looks like,” he said.
Ryan is one of the possible choices to run the party that would appeal to the white working-class voters who broke heavily for Republicans in the 2016 election.
He said that could be part of his appeal, and his goal would be to talk more about jobs and the economy to grab those voters. He said Democrats talk too much about retraining people for new jobs when what they really want is to do their old jobs.
“We need to talk to the folks who take a shower after work, not just the ones who shower before,” he said.
