Jennifer Leaver
Jackie Wood has known Paul Ryan since the 1980s, when he was a student at Craig High School, one of Janesville's two public high schools. At the time, Wood was president of the school's parent-teacher organization, and she was immediately impressed by Ryan's intelligence and confidence.
"He'd ask to come to our meetings, wear a suit and tie, address the PTO ladies and was very astute," Wood remembers. "I've always marveled at how smart he was."
But Wood recognizes that not everybody in Janesville feels the same about Ryan, who was the Republican candidate for vice president in 2012 and is considered a leading contender for the presidency in 2016. At recent Labor Day parades, Wood says, some in the hometown crowd have taken to booing Ryan when he walks by. "That took me aback," she says. "It doesn't bother him. He waves at them all the more."
Yuri Rashkin, a former Janesville council member who is not a fan of Ryan, notices a different trend at parades. "He's always pushing a stroller. At first it was his kids, but now that they're older, it's someone else's kids."
Rashkin surmises that the strollers are a defensive prop: "You wouldn't throw a tomato at someone pushing a stroller, would you?"
It is not difficult to find people who dislike, even despise, Ryan in his hometown. The city of 63,000 remains a Democratic, union stronghold, even if many of the factory jobs have left. Still, Ryan has always managed to win Janesville -- until 2012, that is. That year, he lost the city and his neighborhood in both the presidential and congressional races.
Ryan himself conceded his waning popularity in Janesville after the last election, telling a radio station: "Well, as you know, Janesville is a very Democratic town, but I'm a Republican. But I've always done very well here, because more people saw me not as a Republican but just as a Janesville guy."
He is facing a competitive race for his congressional seat next month, as he's challenged a second time by Democrat Rob Zerban, a former Kenosha County supervisor. But if Ryan wins again, and if he runs for president, it will likely be without the support of his hometown.
"He's representing the 500,000 households in Walworth County," says Dan Hartung, a property manager. "Those are his people."
A Janesville guy
Ryan's back story has been told many times. Born in January 1970, he comes from one of three prominent Janesville families -- the Ryans, the Fitzgeralds and the Cullens -- often called the "Irish mafia" for their role in building the town.
In 1884 Ryan's great-grandfather started Ryan Incorporated Central, a successful excavation company that is still family-owned. Ryan's grandfather and father were lawyers.
However, Ryan did not grow up pampered. In the summer of 1986, after his sophomore year in high school, Ryan was working at a McDonald's. One morning, when his mother was visiting relatives and his brother was working at another job, he woke up to find his father dead in bed. "It was just a big punch in the gut," Ryan told The New Yorker in 2012. "I concluded I've got to either sink or swim in life."
In his recent book, The Way Forward, Ryan writes about how his father had struggled for years with alcoholism, which contributed to his death. After his father died, his mother returned to college, in Madison, while Ryan began taking school more seriously and assuming more domestic responsibilities, like caring for his grandmother, who had Alzheimer's. Ryan also received Social Security survivors benefits, which he saved to help pay for college.
He attended Miami University in Ohio, where he studied economics and political science. After graduating in 1992, Ryan worked for U.S. Sen. Bob Kasten (R-Wisconsin) until Kasten was defeated by another Janesville native, Russ Feingold.
Ryan later worked as a speechwriter for the conservative advocacy group Empower America and as a speechwriter for U.S. Rep. Jack Kemp (R-New York) during Kemp's 1996 presidential bid. Ryan has frequently cited the late Kemp as a mentor and role model.
He returned to Wisconsin in 1997, where he worked for Ryan Inc. for about a year, then ran for Congress in 1998. When elected, he was the second-youngest member of the House.
He has easily been reelected every two years. Janesville is on the western edge of the currently mapped district, which stretches east to Lake Michigan and the affluent Milwaukee suburbs.
GM collapse
During the 2012 presidential campaign, Ryan put Janesville front and center in his speech to the Republican convention in Tampa, Fla.
He talked about the General Motors auto plant that built his hometown and how Barack Obama visited when he first ran for president.
"A lot of guys I went to high school with worked at that GM plant. Right there at that plant, candidate Obama said: 'I believe that if our government is there to support you...this plant will be here for another hundred years.' That's what he said in 2008."
But Ryan reminded Republicans what happened next: "Well, as it turned out, that plant didn't last another year. It is locked up and empty to this day. And that's how it is in so many towns today, where the recovery that was promised is nowhere in sight."
Fact checkers quickly pounced on the story, noting the closure happened before Obama took office. And Ryan's running mate, Mitt Romney, had argued against bailing out auto companies.
General Motors bought the property in 1918 and began producing Chevrolets there in 1923. It was, at the time of the closing, the company's oldest factory. At its peak in the 1970s, it had employed more than 7,000 workers. When it closed Dec. 23, 2008, it had a workforce of around 1,200.
Ryan did make efforts on behalf of the plant, lobbying GM's chief executive officer, Rick Wagoner, and offering state tax cuts. Gov. Jim Doyle later told the Los Angeles Times that Ryan made sure to "complain about the so-called stimulus and bailouts while also lining up to make sure their districts were getting taken care of."
Even some who don't particularly care for Ryan doubt there was much he -- or anyone else -- could have done to save the GM factory. "GM had to close Janesville because SUV sales went through the floor," says Hartung. Many people had been buying those SUVs by leveraging their home equity, he says, which dried up with the housing and financial crisis of 2008. "I don't know what we could have done to keep GM here."
Although surrounded by a chain-link fence, the factory is still owned by GM and could be activated again. "They have to keep everything up to code, so I see contractors there every single day," says Andrew Stigwell, who owns Zoxx 411 Club, a bar that sits on the factory's parking lot. "There's security there 24 hours a day."
The plant closing cost Stigwell -- whose family has owned the bar for 52 years -- most of his customers. "My business is 100% different from what it was when the factory was open," he says. "Everybody left, everybody got transferred. So I changed it into a neighborhood bar."
Rashkin, who served on the Janesville City Council from 2008 until 2012 and has lived in Janesville for about a decade, says the plant made Janesville a relatively prosperous city. "You used to be able to drive down the street and see motorboats and nice cars [parked in driveways]," he says. "People spent their salary on toys, or they'd buy a cabin up north."
Now, he frets that Janesville -- without a college to keep its young people or a major employer to attract families -- is becoming a retirement community.
Nevertheless, the GM plant remains an iconic symbol here. Cathy Myer, a teacher and Democratic activist who serves on the Janesville School Board, lives a block and a half away from Ryan. During the 2012 election, many volunteers came in from out of town to help canvass for Democratic candidates, and Myer often showed them around.
"Two things that people always wanted to see: the GM plant and [Ryan's] house," Myer says. "And those things were synonymous. The failure of the GM plant to them was really associated in their minds with him and his work."
Against government spending
Rashkin, a Russian immigrant and musician, remains an active community member, helping found a community radio station and website, Discover Janesville. He also organizes weekly kaffeeklatsches.
While he was on the City Council, Rashkin says city officials never saw Ryan as an ally. "We were told if we want anything, we can't go to Paul Ryan, we can't go to [U.S. Sen.] Ron Johnson."
Janesville's current city manager, Mark Freitag, who started the job last year, declined through a spokesperson to comment about Ryan to Isthmus.
Rashkin wishes Ryan would do more to help fill the void left by GM. "He's so against government spending, but maybe he could get folks to come open businesses here," Rashkin says. "I don't recall Paul Ryan even having a local summit. He's a local resident and he has a national profile, but he's not a local servant."
Ryan has argued that government aid and intervention do more harm than good. In his goal to rein in government spending, he's given special attention to social welfare programs. His budget plans often call for trillions in cuts to social programs, with radical restructuring of Medicare and cuts to food aid, Medicaid and Social Security.
These proposals have not sat well with many Janesville liberals.
"In Rock County, our poverty rate is nearly 14%," Myer says. "He doesn't win Rock County. Waukesha, which he does win handily, has a 5% poverty rate. He gets those votes because they're like-minded people and they didn't experience the same sort of economic fallout from the recession."
Myer adds: "Fifty percent of Janesville students are on free or reduced lunch. As a teacher, I can tell you kids who are well fed perform well in school. If you want education to do well, you've got to make sure those kids have something to eat."
Recently, Ryan has tried to soften his image around poverty issues, saying he will no longer use the terms "makers" and "takers." He put out a poverty plan, "Expanding Opportunity in America," that called for expanding the earned income tax credit, which supplements the wages of low-income workers, and combines 11 welfare programs into a single block grant and gives states the power to decide how it is used.
Mike Tearman spends much of his time trying to help the homeless in Janesville. He briefly ran a homeless shelter until it was shut down for improper zoning, and he runs a thrift shop, where he sells clothes, books, used furniture and odds and ends. Ryan's wife, Janna, is a frequent customer: "She's a real bargain hunter," Tearman says.
"She was in here yesterday and we talked a little bit," Tearman adds. "I think [the Ryans] genuinely care about the poor." But, he adds, "I don't know how connected they are to the poor."
Tearman says he has voted for Ryan in the past but doesn't analyze his policies all that closely. "I know the man loves his wife, loves his family, and he's got a good home life," he says.
He doesn't know many poor people who bother with politics. "I don't know if the poor people really dream about the American Dream any more," he says. "They're just looking to survive or ease the pain."
Plenty of friends
When Paul Ryan first ran for Congress in 1998, Bryan Steil was there to help. Although Steil couldn't vote -- he was still in high school -- he helped canvass for the young candidate.
Steil hasn't been disappointed. Like a lot of supporters, Steil says Ryan is a man of integrity fighting against a corrupt and dysfunctional political system.
"He's a guy who tells you what he's going to do, explains it, and then goes to Washington and acts on his beliefs," says Steil, an attorney. "He's a man of great integrity."
Steil sees Ryan around town often. "You are as likely to see Paul on a Sunday morning news show as you are to see him grocery shopping at Schnucks on Sunday night."
Although he recognizes that Ryan has many ideological foes in Janesville, Steil says even his opponents respect him because he's willing to have "an adult conversation" on the issues.
David Babcock, who owns the billboard company Babcock Signs, has a giant Ryan yard sign in front of his office on Center Avenue, next to a "We Stand With Walker" sign.
"Paul has values that are in alignment with the way I think," says Babcock, who adds that his wife goes to the same church as Ryan. "He's a family man, a very sincere individual; he really wants to help the country."
He complains about the way liberals have portrayed Ryan, with ads showing him pushing an old lady in a wheelchair off a cliff.
"I know the opposition tried to find something they could use against Paul, and they just couldn't find anything," he says. "Paul certainly does not believe in pushing grandmas over the cliff."
In the neighborhood
Myer can see Ryan's red brick home from the window of her house on St. Lawrence Avenue, in Janesville's historic and affluent Courthouse Hill neighborhood.
Myer, who teaches in Illinois, lives with her partner, attorney Roger Merry. Their front lawn is crowded with election signs for Democratic candidates, including Ryan's opponent, Zerban, and Mary Burke, who is running for governor.
You might think this would make Myer unwelcome here, but she's quick to point out: "He lost his neighborhood. So I'm more popular than he is."
Some keep a sense of humor about the political differences. Merry says that during the last election, they put out a sign that read "Stop Ryan." The congressman's uncle, who also lives in the neighborhood and who is also named Ryan, came over and jokingly asked, "What do you have against me?"
Ryan lives in the 1928 house built by George Parker, who in 1888 founded Parker Pen -- another symbol of Janesville's fading industrial glory. Once the largest pen factory in the world, the company gradually shifted jobs overseas until it shut down its Janesville operation in 2010. That same year, Ryan reportedly bought the Parker mansion for $421,000.
Myer says Ryan is occasionally seen out and about. "People are friendly to him, of course, because there are nice people here and he's got a nice family. His wife is a delight to talk to. On occasion you'll see them walking the neighborhood, but it's rare."
After he was named to the presidential ticket, security was heightened, and the Secret Service set up a perimeter a block around his house, with checkpoints. Wood, the former PTO president who is a longtime supporter and also a neighbor, says "[Ryan] went around door-to-door and apologized to the neighbors and said he was sorry for that interruption." (The security barricades have since been removed.)
Several people interviewed by Isthmus relate anecdotes about spotting Ryan at stores, restaurants, parties and neighborhood gatherings. Myer says she helped him open a bottle of wine at a neighborhood Christmas party one year. Few bring up politics during these encounters.
"I've seen him at house parties -- I never felt like it was a time to assault him about [political] stuff," Rashkin says. "He never seems like someone you could talk to about politics because he is so set in his own ways. It seemed like a waste of oxygen. You might as well talk about coffee or the weather. He doesn't seem like a good listener."
Rallying the troops
Last Friday afternoon, Ryan stopped in at the Rock County Republican headquarters in downtown Janesville.
All politicians routinely make these visits to give their core volunteers some one-on-one time and help fire them up for the tedious ground work. (Zerban made a similar visit a few weeks earlier to Rock County Democrats.)
Ryan moved his visit up an hour so he could watch one of his children's track meets. A few dozen people were there to see him. He didn't seem especially worried about the challenge from Zerban, spending more of the time rallying volunteers on behalf of Gov. Scott Walker.
"Here's a guy who said what he was going to do when he ran for office, then he did it in office," Ryan said of the governor. "They tried to recall him for having done it. And guess what, the reforms worked."
Nationally, he said, Republicans need to run on ideas. "As you know, the last election didn't exactly go as we planned. And we feel the country is on a dangerous track. We have to be not only a good opposition party when we think the country is going in the wrong direction, but a good proposition party to say how we get it in the right direction."
Ryan took a handful of questions from the press -- about Ebola and the Islamic State terrorist group -- and then worked the room, signing his book and posing for pictures. He chatted with two young girls about their Irish heritage (Janesville's Irish festival was under way) and an older man about securing funding for Alzheimer's research.
The whole thing lasted about a half-hour. Jon Koniecki, a longtime supporter from nearby Milton, was happy to see Ryan and confident he'll win reelection. When asked if he thinks Ryan will win Janesville this time around, he said: "Janesville and Milton are areas where people would rather vote for the devil than vote for Republicans."
Losing support
There was a time when David McKay was happy to support Paul Ryan. But not anymore.
When Ryan first ran for office, McKay, who is a teacher, says, "He was your basic run-of-the-mill conservative then."
Although he hasn't interacted with Ryan a lot, McKay did go to a listening session several years ago. He got to the meeting about 20 minutes early, he says, and had the congressman all to himself for a little while.
McKay wanted Ryan to support a bill that would require food companies to clearly label products that include nuts or are processed with equipment that also handles nuts. For McKay, it was a personal issue -- his daughter has a serious tree nut allergy.
"He was unaware of the bill at the time, which I found surprising," McKay remembers. "He said if he could get permission from his minority whip, he would support it, and eventually he did."
McKay was grateful but has not supported Ryan in his past three election bids. He considers himself fiscally conservative and socially liberal, and Ryan doesn't fit his definition of fiscally conservative.
"[Republicans] think it means cutting spending," he says. "A fiscal conservative is someone who wisely invests in things. With education spending, for instance, we get a lot more out of it than we put in. That's a good investment."
McKay confesses that he has a hard time aligning his beliefs with any party or candidate.
"I'm kind of a centrist, except the country keeps moving toward the right," he explains. "Fifty years ago, I would have been considered a Republican, 20 years ago, a Democrat. I don't know what I am today."
Whatever he is, like a lot of people in Janesville, he won't be voting for Paul Ryan on Nov. 4.
