Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) backed Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) in Ohio in his run for the open U.S. Senate seat after Ryan pledged to keep distractions out of the Buckeye State and attacked Republican J.D. Vance for needing “out-of-state” help.
When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and former President Donald Trump visited Ohio to support Vance’s U.S. Senate campaign, Ryan attacked Vance multiple times, claiming that he himself did not need any outside support while the Republican did.
Ryan and his campaign have claimed numerous times not to need or want campaign surrogates:
- On May 4, Ryan said on Fox News that he wanted to “be the face and the voice of this campaign” and did not “want any distractions.” During the same appearance, he added, “I don’t need anybody to prop me up like J.D. Vance did, to drag him over the finish line.”
- On August 20, Izzi Levy, Ryan’s spokesperson, told the Vindicator that Vance is “leaning on out-of-state allies like Ron DeSantis and Mitch McConnell … Vance should stop bringing people into Ohio to do his dirty work.”
- On September 8, Ryanstated on WFMJ, “I’m not really asking anybody [to campaign for me]. Like, I just, I’m not one of those guys like, ‘Oh, I need someone to come in and help me.’” He added, “I know what I believe in, I know where I’m from; I know who I’m fighting for; I don’t need anybody else to gum that message up. I want people to look at me and ask me questions.”
- On September 17on WKBN, the Congressman claimed, “I get a kick out of the fact that [Vance] has the rescue squad coming to get him.” Blasting Vance’s endorsements by DeSantis, Trump, and Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Ryan continued, “You gotta bring in all the rescue squad; I’m here on my own.”
- On September 18, Ryan told the Vindicator that he’s “out here” and scrapping.” He added, “The fact is J.D. Vance can’t carry his own political message … He needs Ron DeSantis, he needs Donald Trump, and he needs everybody else to come in and make the case for him because he can’t make the case for himself.”
Now, utterly contradicting Ryan’s “do-it-yourself” narrative, Booker has stepped in to hit the campaign trail for Ryan. Booker, one of the most significant far-left senators, was recently pictured campaigning for Ryan, even though the congressman has been trying to cast himself as a moderate.
There was no local news coverage of Booker’s visit, but Ryan’s digital financing director Emily Creighton tweeted out multiple pictures of Booker with constituents wearing “Tim Ryan, U.S. Senate” t-shirts.
“#OHSEN: Absolutely packed house here in Cleveland Heights as @CoryBooker rallies folks to go knock doors for @TimRyan and the #WorkersFirstCampaign,” Creighton wrote on Twitter.
In addition to being a former rival of Ryan’s during their failed 2020 presidential campaigns, Booker is also the fifth most far-left member of the Senate, with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) leaning the furthest left.
During his failed presidential run, Booker supported accelerating the end of using fossil fuels, barring new fossil fuel leases, phasing out fracking, and instituting a carbon fee and progressive climate dividend. He’s also supported having 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2030 and putting a moratorium on drilling on our public lands.
Booker’s push for “carbon-free electricity by 2030” is mirrored in Ryan’s comment during his campaign that 2040 is not soon enough to ban gas-powered vehicles.
Additionally, Booker and Ryan both support a ban on so-called “assault weapons.”
In response to Ryan appearing to calling in Booker to campaign for him, Luke Schroeder, a spokesman for the Vance campaign, told Breitbart News, “Tim Ryan’s calling in his far-left reinforcements, but he’s trying to keep it a secret–just like he’s trying to hide his 100 percent voting record with Biden and Pelosi.”
“There’s two Tim Ryans: the fake Tim who pretends to be a moderate in his TV commercials, and the real Tim who’s just another rubber stamp for the far left in D.C.,” Schroeder added. “Make no mistake: Tim Ryan is no moderate, and if he ever got elected to the Senate, he’d vote in lockstep with Cory Booker and the rest of the radical D.C. Democrats.”
This is not the first hypocritical move Ryan has made this month.
Ryan also attacked Vance for skipping out on an Ohio football game that he, too, skipped, reportedly to be the officiant at a wedding where the bride was one of the congressman’s relatives. Additionally, Ryan posted multiple times on social media attacking Vance as a transplant to Ohio, even as his family famously has roots in Middletown, Ohio — where Vance’s best-selling memoir Hillbilly Elegy took place.
Additionally, during an appearance on MSNBC, Ryan called for voters to “kill and confront” the MAGA movement, even as more than 3.1 million Ohioans voted for Trump in the 2020 election and more than 2.8 million voted for him in the 2016 election.
“How do we fix all of these broken systems? Some of those answers will come from Republicans, not the extremists that we are dealing with every single day,” Ryan said on MSNBC. “We’ve got to kill and confront that movement, but working with normal mainstream Republicans, that’s going to be really, really important.”
A Marist poll released last week revealed that Vance slightly leads Ryan in the race. Of the 1,200 registered voters in Ohio, 46 percent said they would support Vance to fill retiring Republican Sen. Rob Portman’s seat. In comparison, 45 percent said they would support Ryan, the failed 2020 presidential candidate, and nine percent said they were undecided.
Ryan’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment from Breitbart News.
Jacob Bliss is a reporter for Breitbart News. Write to him at jbliss@breitbart.com or follow him on Twitter @JacobMBliss.