September 21, 2009 11:15 AM
On September 16, 2009, American Majority came to Kansas City to train activists and other interested parties about how to better communicate and effect political change. Ned Ryun, AM's president, sat down with The Missouri Record to discuss tea parties, what motivates them, and how they can change politics in America.
The Missouri Record: How did you get started in public policy before American Majority?
Ned Ryun: I‘ve been involved with politics since my dad ran in ’96. We’ve always been somewhat involved in politics before that, but his campaign was the next level.
I went to DC in 2000. I ended up at the White House as a writer. I left and started a national organization to help young people engage more in the process of politics. I left there in 2002. In 2003 I started Generation Joshua for young people. I did that for about four years. [In the fall of 2007] I had some interesting conversations with a few people about starting some sort of political training institute that helps identify and train people to run for state and local office. American Majority launched in January 2008, and here we are.
Tell us more about Generation Joshua.
Generation Joshua was aimed primarily at home school youth. We would develop educational materials about the Founding Documents, Founding Fathers; try to get them to grasp the nation’s founding, the principles and who the Founders were. We also wanted to answer the question, “How can you actually be involved in the process?”
We would turn out grassroots teams of sometimes up to 140, 150 people, for candidates in the last week to get out the votes. They would do the important work: going door-to-door, doing phone banking, all these things.
And they were ages 13 to 18?
Yes, generally it was like 14, 15, all the way up to 18 years old. And they loved it. It was a lot of fun because it gave them the ability to be involved in a real-world experience and be engaged in the process. It was a lot of fun.
You left there in 2007 and started American Majority?
It got launched, yes.
What is the difference between the two organizations?
American Majority is focused on creating a national network of leadership at the state and local level. My purpose is to create this national network, to identify potential candidates by going into communities and saying “Hey, you are a leader in your community. Did you know that there are these elections, school board, city council? Have you considered running? If you have, do you know what it takes to run?”
We give them those tools. Once they file, you know, we are nonpartisan, nonprofit, and we have to go hands-off. But if they file and if we have given them the tools to be effective in running for office, I feel like we have accomplished something. We are trying to create a farm team of Conservative leadership.
Are there particular national policy issues that either you identified when you started off American Majority or that you have become aware of since you started working with states that are more important than others?
Well we start with very big, broad principles of free market, individual freedom, limited government, fiscal responsibility, and move down from there. We are training people to win politically. We have developed school board manuals explaining how a school board works, but then issues that are relevant to that state—I’m hoping to get some think tanks to expand on some of the state-specific stuff, but explaining “Here are some of the issues that are taking place inside the state at the school board level.”
We have a city council manual. We are offering a county commission seminar this fall laying out how the system works and offering ideas for what reform items need to take place in a given state. So I am trying to get as specific as possible [while] realizing that states and localities are different across the country and what might be important in one state or one locality is not in another.
So American Majority is a national organization. Are there state chapters?
Yes. I’m a big believer in going to the people. We’ve got six state offices -- Minnesota, Kansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas. We might be going into one or two more states later this year--local offices, local staff that have the ability to be on the ground 24/7, reaching out to people, doing trainings.
It appears to me, just from what you describe, this is a top-down model.
I mean, national, yes, but I am trying to get people to come from the bottom up.
How do you accomplish that?
I am going to the state and local levels, just getting people involved. I want people as local in an area as possible to be engaged in the process. I want to talk about grassroots action, explain to people that if they take over their local community as best they can, they are going to cause national change. That is why we have offices and people in the states. I don’t expect them to come to me; I go to them.
Have you had any interaction with the various Tea Party groups that pop up?
Yes, we have. We have had interactions with a lot of local organizers; a lot of the 9/12 people. My message to them is, “Let’s move beyond the protesting and the rallying to doing something about implementing. Let’s move from protesting freedom to implementing on behalf of freedom. Take over your local communities. If you have 5,000 people showing up at your Tea Party, I’m betting out of those 5,000, there are a couple people that should be running for school board or city council. The rest of the people should be helping those people win.”
How receptive have people been? The message to me sounds like “Thanks for doing some work—now here is more work.”
The protests have been great, because it’s brought people out for the very first time. It’s brought them out; it has allowed them to connect with people they never knew existed.
My concern is now that they have come out and connected, what comes next? We set up www.aftertheteaparty.com to ask, “Now what? Now that you have come out and protested, what comes next? Some of you should think about running for state and local office. Some of you should think about becoming bloggers, Wiki contributors. Some of you should think about how you build a coalition to keep your elected officials accountable.”
A lot of these people are realizing that the work ahead is harder than turning out for two hours and protesting. But if you really want to see change, if you really want to see something effective happen, you have to implement. Implementing is not as easy as protesting, but it is how we cause lasting change.Some people have really bought into it. There are some local Tea Parties that are saying “We’re going to go try and take over city council.” Awesome, that’s what you should be doing. That is how you are going to see the real change. Others not so much, because it is harder. It’s where the rubber hits the road.
So, when you get up in front of a crowd or a class of people, after a while you are going to be able to identify true believers from the weekend warriors.
Right.
How do you tell one from the other?
The [true believers] rise to the top. They stay engaged. They keep in touch with you. You stay in touch with them. We distribute pledge cards at every training. I want somebody who comes to a training to pledge to doing something. We’re going to touch base with them in about a month or two and follow up.
Not everybody is going to commit to something. But the best are going to rise to the top. I want to get people involved in running for office. Some people are never going to run for more than the school board. That’s great. The best are going to rise to the top.
How is American Majority different from the Leadership Institute or Americans for Prosperity?
That’s a good question. A lot of people point out that the Leadership Institute has been around for 30 years. Why do you need to do this?
Our approach involves more going to the people. We are putting offices out there and not expecting people to come to us. The other thing we focus on is going out and identifying people to run for office and really being aggressive in training grassroots. This has not been a huge focus for the Leadership Institute. They have a big emphasis on campus reform, campus work. We’re going to train 4,000-plus this year either to run for office or be activists. From figures I have heard from some of the LI trainers, that’s going to be 1,000 more than the Leadership Institute does in regards to candidates at grassroots. And that is why we exist and that’s what we’re doing.
Do you have a goal for candidates and activists? If you have 4,000 butts in chairs at training, how many candidates do you want?
There are probably going to be 400-plus that are either going to run this year or next year. There are over a half million elected positions in America if you figure in everything—county clerk all the way up to president. Each year 10 or 15 percent of that total figure are actually open for elections. That’s a big figure, it’s a huge figure.
Somebody has asked, “Well, when is American Majority’s work done?” I answer that there are 15,000 school districts. There are over 3,000 municipalities. There are 50 state legislatures. There are state houses and state senates. The work is probably never going to be done because there are so many positions that need to be filled—and because we need so many people committed to principle running and winning. It’s going to take a long time.
The goal of American Majority is to eventually get to all 50 states with state offices and staff that are on the ground constantly identifying and training people to run for office and training activists to be more effective.
And I am very clear. Although I am a registered Republican, I believe it is principle first, Party second. I tell people. “If you will run on the principles of free market, limited government, freedom for the individual, freedom for family, and really implement policy that reflects those values, we are going to win and it is going to be a positive benefit for this country.”
Ned Ryun is president of American Majority.
My purpose is to create this national network, to identify potential candidates by going into communities and saying “Hey, you are a leader in your community. Did you know that there are these elections, school board, city council? Have you considered running? If you have, do you know what it takes to run?”
