Rep. Tim Ryan (D., Ohio) says the United States is ready to ban gas cars, arguing in 2019 that socialist Bernie Sanders's plan to ban gas vehicles wasn't ambitious enough. On the Senate campaign trail, Ryan is sticking to gas guzzlers.
Ryan's first Senate campaign ad features him riding around with his son in a 2020 GMC Yukon, which gets roughly 14 to 15 miles per gallon around town. When leaving a campaign stop in Zanesville, Ohio, last month, Ryan boarded a 15-mile-per-gallon Chevrolet Tahoe.
Sometimes Ryan prefers his comparatively eco-friendly 2020 GMC Sierra, a truck, which gets around 23 miles per gallon. GMC does make an electric truck, the Hummer EV, which can get around 350 miles on a single battery charge, but it will set consumers back nearly $110,000.
"Tim loves his UAW-built American-made Tahoe," Ryan campaign spokeswoman Izzi Levy told the Washington Free Beacon, "and wouldn't trade it for anything—not even the $70,000 BMW that chauffeurs J.D. Vance around Ohio."
The debate over how much the United States should embrace electric cars has been a flashpoint in Ohio's Senate race, in which Ryan is facing off against Republican J.D. Vance. Although Ryan is a rubber stamp for President Joe Biden's green agenda, which has poured hundreds of billions of dollars into renewable energy initiatives, he has remained mum on how much the federal government should be regulating what cars Americans drive.
"When Tim Ryan ran for president, he fully embraced banning gas-powered vehicles and said that Bernie Sanders's climate change plan didn’t go far enough," a spokesman for the Vance campaign told the Free Beacon. "Now that he is running for Senate in Ohio, he's doing everything he can to run away from those radical, far-left positions. Simply put, Tim Ryan will say whatever it takes to get elected and then sell out working-class Ohioans at the first chance he gets."
Ryan, who votes 100 percent of the time with President Joe Biden, has championed the Democratic Party's green push. A campaign spokeswoman told a local outlet earlier this month that the "auto industry is quickly moving toward electric vehicles." After Ryan voted for Biden's infrastructure bill in February, the congressman's office released a statement applauding provisions for, among other things, an "equitable network of chargers" for electric cars.
That money for green infrastructure is not much immediate help for Ohio voters. In the last week alone, gas prices there have spiked 10 cents per gallon, according to AAA.
As Ryan can testify, current electric vehicle models also do not offer enough space for large families—or campaign staff. Ryan was spotted last month exiting a gas-powered Forest River Forester RV in Zanesville with his family.
Upon arriving at a fundraiser earlier this month with Paul Simon in Gahanna, Ohio, Ryan exited a Prevost H3-45 passenger bus. The miles per gallon? Seven to eight, according to an owners' forum.
Ryan will face off against Vance in November for the Senate seat occupied by retiring Republican Rob Portman. A RealClearPolitics average of recent polls finds Vance leading by over 1 point. The site rates the race as "Leans GOP."