1. 10/28/15, 1:47 PMRyan’s Rise Was Fueled by Networking and Economic Focus - NYTimes.com
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MAN IN THE NEWS | PAUL DAVIS RYAN
Fast Rise Built With Discipline
Stephen Crowley/The New York Times
Paul D. Ryan, near center, with House Republicans last year before a meeting with President Obama.
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER and JONATHAN WEISMAN
Published: August 29, 2012
WASHINGTON — In the early 1990s, Tortilla Coast, a popular
Capitol Hill watering hole, was staffed by ambitious young men and
women flinging Tex-Mex and margaritas at patrons whose jobs in the
nearby House and Senate office buildings they not so secretly
coveted.
One of those waiters, a tall, dark-
haired Midwesterner named Paul
Ryan, stood out to his boss and co-
workers. He was the guy who always
showed up for work on time, wore
neatly pressed khakis and chatted
about economic policy as he floated
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2. 10/28/15, 1:47 PMRyan’s Rise Was Fueled by Networking and Economic Focus - NYTimes.com
Page 2 of 6file:///Users/Brian/Documents/CPG%20PARTNERS/Marketing/Rya…king%20and%20Economic%20Focus%20-%20NYTimes.com.webarchive
opinion, polls,
campaign data and
video.
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Enlarge This Image
Ryan Family, via Associated Press
Mr. Ryan with his brother Tobin and
Jack Kemp in 1998.
Mr. Ryan in the 1988 yearbook for
Joseph A. Craig High School in
Janesville. He had an early interest in
economic theory.
Enlarge This Image
Andy Manis/Associated Press
Mr. Ryan's childhood home in
Wisconsin.
Enlarge This Image
Eric Thayer for The New York Times
Mr. Ryan shaking hands with Mitt
Romney at a campaign event in
March. Mr. Ryan has spent most of his
adult years in Washington.
along in a kayak at an after-work party. While the other
twentysomethings pounded beers after work, Mr. Ryan was
known to stick to just a few.
“I think even then he probably had an eye toward his
future,” said Scott Johnson, a waiter back then who was
looking for work in the Clinton administration.
Mr. Ryan’s sense of purpose extended to the conservative
research group where he was also working at the time,
winning the sort of praise from Republican elders that
would help pave his remarkably propitious path in
Washington, where he has spent most of his adult life.
From his first summer as a Senate intern, a position he got
thanks in part to the libertarian economist who was his
college mentor, Mr. Ryan made an impression with his
discipline, his command of supply-side economics and his
uncanny ability to develop relationships with like-minded
conservatives.
“We were the beginnings of the network that he has now
developed,” said former Senator Robert W. Kasten of
Wisconsin, in whose office Mr. Ryan first worked as a
college junior.
Winning the right supporters wherever he went, Mr. Ryan
has risen rapidly in Washington, moving easily from lowly
staff aide to 28-year-old congressman to the Republicans’
pre-eminent policy expert. His economic ideas, which once
placed him outside his party’s mainstream, have shaped the
2012 campaign debate. And on Wednesday night in Tampa,
Fla., the policy wonk who through his political skills and
disciplined focus defined the Republican agenda will, at age
42, accept its nomination for vice president.
“There are people in Washington who when you meet them
you know they are headed for something big,” said Brian
Hart, who worked with Mr. Ryan in the office of Senator
Sam Brownback of Kansas in the late 1990s. “That was
Paul.”
Born and raised in Janesville, Wis., where he still lives with
his wife and three children, Paul Davis Ryan took an early
interest in economics, according to family and friends. At
Miami University in Ohio, he became enamored with
conservative economists, and he came to realize that the
best place to morph theory into policy was Washington.
“I don’t think he really planned to go into politics at that
point,” Mr. Kasten said. “It was more how the policies
could be implemented.”
Cesar Conda, who was the Republican staff director for the
Senate Small Business Committee, on which Mr. Kasten served as the ranking Republican,
recalled an earnest young intern carrying the mail between Mr. Kasten’s personal office
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3. 10/28/15, 1:47 PMRyan’s Rise Was Fueled by Networking and Economic Focus - NYTimes.com
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and his committee office.
“Every chance he got, he’d take the opportunity to pop his head into my office to ask:
What’s Senator Kasten up to? What did I think about this economic policy or that
economic policy? What about supply-side economics?” said Mr. Conda, who is now the
chief of staff for Senator Marco Rubio of Florida.
A Return to the Capital
Mr. Ryan graduated in 1992 with a degree in political science and economics, and it was
right back to Washington, this time on Mr. Kasten’s staff.
The next year, while moonlighting at Tortilla Coast for extra cash, Mr. Ryan landed a job at
Empower America, a research group run by two prominent conservatives — Jack Kemp,
the former quarterback and congressman, and William J. Bennett, who had held high
posts in the Reagan and Bush administrations. It was a place where young conservatives,
driven into the wilderness by the election of Bill Clinton, went flocking.
Mr. Ryan made an impression once again with his diligence and his intense embrace of
supply-side economic theory. Also, he cheerfully did what he was told to do.
Peter Wehner, who hired Mr. Ryan, insisted that the assistants clip articles from the
newspaper, copy them “neat and centered,” and present the clippings in a nice sheaf each
morning. That task fell to Mr. Ryan, who was not the type to complain. “He never held it
against me, and he should have,” Mr. Wehner said.
While at Empower America, Mr. Ryan did not miss an opportunity to network, Mr.
Bennett said. Although Mr. Ryan was in the economic section, he went to talk to Mr.
Bennett frequently, flattering him, until they became close, a relationship that continues to
this day. “I remember he complimented me,” Mr. Bennett said, “saying I don’t try to
demonize the other side. ‘How do you do that?’ ”
Mr. Ryan sat in the camp of energized outsiders. It was the tail end of the Reagan
revolution, and pragmatism was in, not ideological fervor. Newt Gingrich was rising in the
House, with his sharp partisan edge, but he had not yet emerged triumphant over the
conciliatory old bulls like Robert H. Michel of Illinois, the House minority leader.
A. Mark Neuman, a longtime friend who met Mr. Ryan when he was at Empower America,
said Mr. Ryan was just like most Capitol Hill denizens at that time. He lived in a group
house with his buddies from college, “a dumpy place in a rough neighborhood furnished
with the kind of stuff that people left on their curb,” Mr. Neuman said, where Mr. Ryan
once barricaded the door at night with sofas after a crowbar break-in. They went out for
drinks after work at places where they knew someone who could cut them deals on beer or
waive the cover charge.
But Mr. Ryan never lost focus. He left the research group to work for Mr. Brownback, the
Kansas conservative, who said in an interview that he resisted hiring Mr. Ryan as his
legislative director because of his youth, but that Mr. Ryan won him over in part by
proving that he had “the clear principles that I was looking for.”
An Opportunity Arises
With his mentors firmly in place, Mr. Ryan saw the chance that Congressional aides dream
about. His hometown congressman, Mark Neumann, announced in 1998 that he was
vacating his House seat to run for the Senate. Mr. Ryan, though he was only 28 and had
lived outside the district for most of his post-college years, wasted no time. “Paul is
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4. 10/28/15, 1:47 PMRyan’s Rise Was Fueled by Networking and Economic Focus - NYTimes.com
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disciplined,” said Mr. Neuman, his old friend. “It was like, ‘I gotta do this, I gotta put
everything into it, I’ve gotta focus and do everything I need to do.’ An opportunity arose,
and he grabbed it.”
Almost no one who worked with him anticipated the jump to electoral politics, but Mr.
Bennett and Mr. Wehner said that it flowed naturally from the moment. The “country
club” wing of the Republican Party was in eclipse. Mr. Kemp had been named his party’s
vice-presidential nominee, and with the 1996 welfare overhaul, his ideas — and, by
extension, Mr. Ryan’s — on conservative social policy were very much in vogue.
In the 1996 election, Mr. Brownback shocked the party with his primary victory over Bob
Dole’s handpicked candidate for his Kansas Senate seat. As a college student, Mr. Ryan
had put up yard signs for John A. Boehner’s first House campaign in Ohio in 1992. Now
Mr. Boehner was a member of the Congressional leadership.
“It would have been hard for this idea not to go into his head,” Mr. Bennett said. “He had
more than a taste of power. He was right in the kitchen.”
Mr. Ryan had his own explanation for his decision to jump from back-room wonk to
candidate. “I learned how Washington does and does not work,” he said then. “You’ve got
to go to Congress and stand up for your principles.”
Mr. Neumann had been a card-carrying Gingrich revolutionary, but he was also ahead of
his time, a math teacher and a proto-Tea Party figure obsessed with the deficit and budget
matters. His experience showed Mr. Ryan that such a focus appeared to work well with the
electorate in his corner of southeastern Wisconsin, and he took up the Neumann mantle
even as the congressman was losing in his Senate race against Russ Feingold, a liberal
Democrat.
Still, the odds at first seemed long.
“Paul Ryan’s biggest problem was that he was a young single guy who had lived away from
the district,” said Lydia Spottswood, the Democrat who ran against him.
A columnist for The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel openly mocked him. “Ryan, a high school
senior, has apparently decided to run for national office as part of a school project or
something,” the columnist wrote. “It’s an admirable message for the youth in our
community. How did he raise the money anyway, selling lemonade? Although it’s almost
laughable someone so young would think he actually has a chance to win.”
Mr. Ryan cheerfully pressed on, with the help of his brother Tobin and Tobin’s wife, who
took leaves from their jobs to assist him. “He needed to create the impression he was
deeply embedded in the district,” said Ms. Spottswood, who added that Mr. Ryan would
often take his sister-in-law and her baby to factories during the early-morning shift
changes to campaign. “Lots and lots of people were getting the impression that was his
wife and his baby, and this was critical for him,” Ms. Spottswood said.
He also made advertisements in which he wore a hard hat, which left voters with “the
impression of Paul that he was actively working in the construction trade and had a family
and was older than he was,” she said.
“It was awesome to watch it,” she added. “It was like an acting job.”
While Mr. Ryan ran as the “paycheck protection” candidate, Ms. Spottswood said, the
campaign focused more on other issues, like gun rights.

5. 10/28/15, 1:47 PMRyan’s Rise Was Fueled by Networking and Economic Focus - NYTimes.com
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A version of this article appeared in print on August 29, 2012, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Fast
Rise Built With Discipline.
Both Mr. Kemp and Mr. Bennett stumped for him, and Gov. Tommy G. Thompson made
calls to local political operatives promoting his candidacy.
“It was clear to me he’d worked for Sam Brownback, he’d worked with Bob Kasten, he’d
worked with Jack Kemp, he was being groomed to come back up here when the time was
right,” Ms. Spottswood said.
With Mr. Gingrich, by then the House speaker, breathing new life into an embattled party,
and with the Monica Lewinsky scandal in the backdrop, the timing was right indeed. It
would be Mr. Ryan’s first and only tough race, and he won with 57 percent of the vote.
A Particular Focus
He did not arrive in Congress as a superstar, but he did possess a skill that would make
him one: a genuine interest in the federal budget.
The Budget Committee — unlike, say, the Ways and Means Committee — is no sexy
landing place, and its terms are shorter. But Mr. Ryan made the most of his assignment.
“When he first got there, he did his yeoman’s work as a backbencher,” said former
Representative John M. Spratt Jr. of South Carolina, a Democrat who led the panel. “He
mastered a lot of budget.”
He also used the committee’s hearing process to highlight the work of his conservative
contacts. “He was very astute at building his base of support,” Mr. Spratt said,
“particularly with groups that were some distance to the right. He was a very clever
networker. When witnesses were called, it was always the Heritage Foundation or the Cato
Institute.”
Whether Mr. Ryan helped galvanize the Tea Party with his tough-medicine budget ideas or
simply rode its wave is a matter of debate. But there is no question that the rising concern
over the deficit and the arrival in 2010 of 87 Republican freshmen who were loyal to Mr.
Ryan’s ideas made him the intellectual leader of the House’s majority party.
“The first time I went to talk to him was about monetary policy the first week I was in
Congress,” said Representative Trey Gowdy of South Carolina. “And I assumed because he
is who he is, and is always busy with countless demands on his time, that it would be a
short conversation. He had all the time I wanted or needed, gave me a book to read on it,
and I passed the book back to him and asked him if he would sign it for me so I could tell
my grandchildren I served with a future president.”
Only last winter, Mr. Gingrich was dismissing Mr. Ryan’s ideas as “right-wing social
engineering.” By the spring, Mitt Romney was traveling to Capitol Hill to woo the author
of those ideas. By August, he had asked him to be his running mate. And there it is — Mr.
Ryan, the classic mentee, now mentor.
Kitty Bennett contributed research.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: August 29, 2012
An earlier version of this article misstated the age at which Representative Paul D. Ryan
became a congressman. He was 28, not 27. (The correct age was given later in the article.)

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