What’s ‘love’ got to do with it? Ad shows Ryan’s support for Pelosi, but omits bid to replace her

U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan faces a challenge running as a Democrat in Ohio, a state Donald Trump won in 2020 by 8 percentage points. Ryan’s strategy in the Senate race against Republican J.D. Vance is to portray himself as independent of party leaders.

A new ad from Vance calls this strategy "a tale of two Tims."

"TV Tim Ryan pretends he is with you," Vance says. The ad rolls a clip of Ryan saying in his own TV ad, "I don’t answer to any political party."

Vance continues: "But D.C. Tim votes with Biden, Pelosi 100%."

The ad pivots to a clip of MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow saying to Ryan, "You’ve said that you don’t like Nancy Pelosi, you love Nancy Pelosi."

Ryan responds: "Yeah, I do love her." 

The clip omits an important "but;" Ryan went on to say that despite his love, it was time for a new Democratic leader in the U.S. House — Ryan himself. The clip was from 2016, when Pelosi was vying to remain the House minority leader after Trump’s presidential win.

Although Ryan votes with Pelosi’s priorities most of the time, he has disagreed with her on some topics. 

"Tim Ryan doesn't sound like Nancy Pelosi, doesn't act like Nancy Pelosi, he's never lived a day in San Francisco, and he tried to dethrone her from leadership," said David Niven, political scientist and associate professor at the University of Cincinnati. "To say that one of the few Democrats to ever mount a challenge to Nancy Pelosi's leadership is somehow a Pelosi clone is just silly." 

Pelosi, a longtime House member from San Francisco, has led the lower chamber’s Democratic caucus as speaker or minority leader since 2003. Ryan supported Pelosi’s previous leadership bids from 2003 to 2015.

When Trump won the presidential election in 2016, Ryan announced his own bid for caucus leader.

In multiple interviews, Ryan said that he loved Pelosi, but it was time for a new leader who could attract Trump voters in red areas, including the Midwest and the South, to vote for Democrats. 

"Let me just say, I love Nancy Pelosi," Ryan said on CNN on Nov. 16, 2016. Ryan said she was a "terrific fundraiser" and wasn’t at fault for Democrats losing the election.

He made similar comments on MSNBC before, asking, "The question is, are we going to take the House back and can we take the House back?"

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Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said “if every member of Congress had to resign for doing what Matt Gaetz has been accused of, Democrats would have a supermajority.’"

In Ryan’s interview with Maddow on Nov. 17, 2016, the same one that plays in Vance’s ad, Maddow asked what Ryan would do differently as the Democrats’ leader.

Ryan replied, "Yes, I do love her. And this is tough, because this is a battle kind of within the family." 

Ryan said Democrats need a leader who can persuade Trump voters in red districts in the Midwest to re-enter the Democratic fold, and "I think I can do that." 

Two weeks later, Ryan lost, and Pelosi was re-elected by her colleagues as House Democratic leader by a 134-63 vote.

In November 2018, after Democrats took control of the House, Ryan signed a letter with 15 other House Democrats saying they wanted a new leader. Ryan declined to run but said he would support U.S. Rep. Marcia Fudge of Ohio if she ran. A month later, Ryan announced he would support Pelosi if she agreed to leave the speaker position by the end of the next Congress or the following one if she didn’t get support from two-thirds of House Democrats. (She cleared that two-thirds hurdle easily in 2019 and 2021.)

Ryan’s voting record does show alignment with the priorities of President Joe Biden and Pelosi.

FiveThirtyEight, a website that analyzes data, including lawmakers’ records, found that Ryan voted with Biden 100% during the current Congress. That is not unusual for House Democrats; Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., a member of the party’s progressive wing, voted with Biden about 94% of the time.

ProPublica, an investigative news outlet, analyzed major votes by lawmakers and found Ryan voted with Pelosi 100% in the current Congress and the previous Congress. 

One caveat: Pelosi rarely votes — a tradition among House speakers. That means the comparison between Ryan and Pelosi is based only on the votes in which they both participated. She voted fewer than 80 times during the 116th Congress (2019-21), making it much more likely that she and Ryan (or any Democrat) voted with her.

Ryan has disagreed with Democratic leaders on some issues.

He is one of dozens of co-sponsors of the Trust in Congress Act that would prevent lawmakers and immediate family members from trading stocks. Pelosi initially said the bill was unnecessary but later said the House could vote on it. The legislation’s sponsors say that Pelosi, whose husband trades individual stocks, has dragged her feet on bringing the bill to a vote.

Ryan has also criticized Biden’s plan to eliminate student debt, saying it "sends the wrong message to the millions of Ohioans without a degree working just as hard to make ends meet." 

Ryan’s campaign pointed to multiple votes on trade, agriculture, military or the budget on which he disagreed with Pelosi. Ryan voted for the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018, which passed during a government shutdown, funding the government for several weeks and raising spending limits for two years. Ryan also broke from Pelosi in opposing the USA Freedom Act of 2014, which sought to end the National Security Agency’s bulk phone records collection program. 

The Vance ad highlights Ryan’s "love" for Pelosi and his overlapping voting record with Pelosi and Biden. 

Ryan’s voting record in the current Congress does align with Biden’s agenda and Pelosi’s recent votes, though as House speaker she does not vote on every measure.

But the more glaring issue with the ad is that it snips out Ryan’s explanation of why he thought Pelosi should no longer lead the party. Vance’s ad does not account for Ryan’s notable decision to challenge Pelosi’s leadership after the 2016 election, leaving viewers without the full story. 

Vance’s statement is partially accurate but takes things out of context. We rate this statement Half True.

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