Monday, January 20, 2014YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- He first intrigued us when we saw him wave a “Ryan for Congress” sign as he stood in the rain on the corner of Route 224 and Market Street.
When he took his seat in 2003, the youngest member of the U.S. House of Representatives, we watched him find a mentor, follow the party line and its leader, move from the backbench to key committees and bring home the bacon.
Today we see Tim Ryan following another path as he moves into higher phases of his public and private lives. The region’s economic development pieces firmly in place, his local leadership and congressional seat all but entrenched, he is free to evolve as an innovative legislator. With so-far flawless political instincts, his profile is rising in presidential politics and on cable news shows. Ryan is an articulate champion of Democratic talking points, the middle class, manufacturing and Ohio’s 13th congressional district. But he’s also become a nontraditional policy wonk whose advocacy of mind-body government-funded education and health programs distinguishes him from his colleagues.
Most significantly, at age 40, Tim Ryan is a husband and soon will be a father.
“Everybody has a trajectory in their life and my focus for the longest time was my job,” he says. “Once I got in Congress, it was a huge responsibility and I wanted to do well – and you make sacrifices along the way to focus on that. Then you meet somebody you love and care about and something opens up. That’s what happened. Now I’m married with a couple of stepkids, a couple of rescue puppies and a new baby on the way.”
Ryan married Andrea Zetts, a fourth-grade teacher at Seaborn Elementary School in Mineral Ridge, in April during a private ceremony in New York. The congressman was briefly married at the start of his political career. Mrs. Ryan has two children, Isabella, 9, and Mason, 11, from her first marriage. The newlyweds are expecting their first child, a boy, in late June.
“The context of my work, I can see, is already changing,” Ryan says. “What kind of environment do I want my child to grow up in? What kind of schools do I want him to go to? What kind of pressures is he going to have to deal with? And is there anything I can do to prepare him for that world?” he asks.
“It’s exciting to be with a group of people who you care about more than anything else in the world. Then to have a profession that helps shape the external world these kids are growing up in is really exciting to me – and to have that balance that I’ve never really had in my life.”
Finding balance in his private life coincides with the congressman finding balance in his public life, a quest that began in 2008 when he attended a mindfulness retreat organized by Jon Kabot-Zinn, author of Coming to Our Senses. Earlier that year, Ryan met Andrea.
“I think things simultaneously started to develop,” Andrea says. “Having the kids incorporated in his life changed his perspective on mindfulness. Tim grew and learned about the social emotional learning perspective from a parental perspective as opposed to a political perspective.”
Readers of A Mindful Nation, Ryan’s book published in 2012, glimpsed the influence of his wife, then described as his “friend,” through stories he shared about Mason learning to read and Isabella studying Tae Kwon Do.
“I want to thank Andrea for giving me the space, support, and encouragement needed to write this. And to Mason and Bella for all the joy and laughs they gave me and the lessons they taught me. They are lovely young people and a major inspiration for this book,” Ryan wrote in his acknowledgements.
The book, subtitled “How a Simple Practice Can Help Us Reduce Stress, Improve Performance and Recapture the American Spirit,” is now available in a paperback that features a new front-cover endorsement by Bill Clinton. Ryan explains how meditative practices can clear the clutter in our lives, help reduce stress and be employed to improve public education and the nation’s health-care system.
At year-end, he estimates, about 15,000 copies had been sold.
Since its publication, Ryan has spoken to audiences here, across the country, online and to CBS News about how mindfulness is used by high-performing athletes, CEOs and the U.S. Marines to improve focus and concentration.
He launched the “Quiet Time Caucus” for lawmakers and their aides – weekly timeouts where they can meditate before the start of legislative business. He’s used his seniority to secure research funds for studying how military veterans who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder find relief through mind-body programs. And in the Youngstown and Warren public schools, he’s brought home federal dollars for social and emotional learning programs that incorporate mindfulness in the classroom.
“As a teacher, I use the priciples of SEL [social and emotion learning] in everything I do,” says the congressman’s wife, who practiced “quiet time years and years before I met him.”
Andrea Ryan has accompanied her husband to many of Kabot-Zinn’s retreats and says her favorite book is Kabot-Zinn’s Everyday Blessings.She’s currently reading books about applying the principles of mindfulness through pregnancy and childbirth. By the time their son is born, she hopes to complete the few remaining requirements to earn her master’s degree in public health with a focus on “health and food.”
“They are a great balance for each other,” says Eric Ryan, executive director of the Covelli Centre (no blood relation to the congressman), who introduced Andrea to the congressman and is married to her sister, April.
“I chuckle every time I go to their home in Howland because you have never met anybody who loves being domesticated more than Tim,” he says. “Every little thing he cherishes. Things somebody might take for granted, Tim enjoys every aspect of it.”
“When he comes home from Washington, he has a honey-do list,” Andrea says.
One of the ways he’s changed since we got married,” she shares when asked, “is that he trimmed the hedges this year, power-washed the house and garage, and planted a garden – all things that are part of the new Tim and his new life.”
“Well, you can’t describe it,” the congressman says of his new life. “The person you love the most having a baby is indescribable. I love my stepkids like they’re my own. Now to think we’re a family and we have a new member of the family coming.”
Ryan’s duties in Washington keep him away from home the weeks the House of Representatives is in session, and when he’s on Capitol Hill, the workday is typically 18 hours. When the family is together, “We’re home-bodies,” Andrea says. “Weekends revolve around making a pot of soup, watching “Modern Family,” and we play games – Chinese checkers and Monopoly.”
Still, there is political work to do.
“We can’t help but follow [politics] Sunday mornings, when ‘Meet the Press’ is on,” Andrea says. When Congress was considering whether to bomb Syria, “TVs were on all through the house. He was on the computers, and we saw him pacing.”
In the years ahead, Ryan is likely to be away from home even more, campaigning for whatever office he seeks – a future challenge to U.S. Sen. Rob Portman? – and serving as a surrogate for Hillary Clinton’s likely presidential campaign.
“I believe she can be a transformational figure,” he says. “I’m really excited about that. Of course I want to be around her to help shape what the next generation of policies will be.”
Ryan is the first and only member of Congress to publicly support the “Ready for Hillary” Super PAC, and he’s helped raise money for the political action committee.
In 2016, he foresees “a shift in politics almost like we had in 1964,” when Republicans nominated Barry Goldwater, an ultra-conservative as their standard bearer.
“I think that may happen again, and Hillary can win, not just with Democrats but with moderate Republicans and independents, and women from both political parties. She can build a coalition and, as a mother, say, ‘What are we feeding our kids today? What is our education policy?’ And I want to be a part of that.”
Next on Ryan’s legislative agenda is the rollout of initiatives related to federal food subsidies.
“Here’s a head-scratcher,” he says. “We take public tax dollars and we subsidize food, the production of food. Those subsidies primarily go to corn and soy and most of that ends up in high-fructose corn syrup or additives for mostly food that when we eat it in large amounts, it makes us sick.”
He cites the high cost of treating the diabetes epidemic in adults – and now in children.
“It makes no sense. … We subsidize the bad food that is giving most of our society diabetes and then we subsidize health care to take care of the people who have diabetes.
“We need to move to a system where if we’re going to provide subsidies for farmers, let’s get it out of Big Agriculture’s hands. Let’s get back to the small family farms, regional farming, urban farming, urban gardening. Get the fresh food close to where people are and make that affordable with the subsidies so the incentive is to eat healthy food.”
A herculean lift, given the political power of Big Agriculture?
“Yeah, but you’ve got to pick a fight – I mean we’ve got to make change. We can’t keep going. We’ve got a ticking time bomb with the diabetes issue in the United States and no one’s talking about it. You want to drive down health-care costs, well, let’s make sure that the next generation of kids, they don’t all have diabetes.”
Ryan doesn’t indulge speculation on what his political future holds. Following the practice of mindfulness, he tries to stay centered in the present and his policy objectives.
“If you’d have told me a few years ago that I’d be married with a couple of stepkids and two rescue puppies and baby on the way, I would not have necessarily seen that coming,” he says. “Now I want to be a position where I can get the solutions that I think are out there implemented. I really don’t care where that is. If it’s in Congress, that’s great. If at some point, I run for another office, we’ll look at that when the time comes. There are some solutions out there that aren’t getting a voice right now that can transform our country. I want to be in a position to get them implemented.”
EDITOR'S NOTE: This story first appeared in the January print edition of The Business Journal.
Copyright 2014 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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