Dem rep Tim Ryan: ‘I have not ruled out’ bid for Speaker

Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) on Monday said he has “not closed the door” on running for Speaker of the House.

Ryan told MSNBC’s Hallie Jackson that Rep. Joseph Crowley’s (D-N.Y.) primary loss in June against up-and-coming star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez prompted him to consider running for Speaker.

“We’re going to have these conversations, I think, after the election,” he said.

“I have not closed the door on it. I had before Congressman Crowley lost his race… We’re going to have these conversations I think after the election.”

– Rep. @TimRyan tells @HallieJackson on running for Speaker of the House. pic.twitter.com/jNiwnOMH6D

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) August 6, 2018

Democrats are hoping to flip 23 seats in midterm elections in November to retake the House from Republicans. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has announced his retirement and said he will not seek reelection this year.

Ryan had said last month that Democrats needed to re-evaluate the future of the party’s leadership following Crowley’s primary.

As the No. 4 House Democrat, Crowley had been seen as a possible successor to Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who has served as Democratic leader in the House for more than a decade.

“The Crowley race changed a lot for a lot of us,” Ryan told Politico in an interview last month. “There was a lot of assumption that he was going to be moving forward in leadership, and so losing that election put everybody in a state of mind to reevaluate what was happening.”

Ryan also told Politico at the time that several colleagues had approached him about mounting a challenge to Pelosi, but he added that he “wouldn’t get in unless I thought I could win.”

Ryan, who has served in the House since 2003, ran for minority leader in 2016, garnering about a third of the caucus’s votes. He is among a number of Democrats who have called for new leadership in the party to replace Pelosi.

On the Republican side, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) have each announced their intentions to run for Speaker.