Rep. Pat Ryan (D-N.Y.) on Sunday expressed confidence that Vice President Harris’s ascension to the top of the Democratic presidential ticket will boost the party’s chance at taking back the House majority this fall.
“Definitely, no doubt,” Ryan said when asked by CBS News’s “Face the Nation” anchor Margaret Brennan if Democrats have a better shot at gaining the majority in the lower chamber with Harris as the party’s presidential candidate.
“I mean, I won my last race by 1.3 percent. I’m very attuned to what’s happening in my district and talking to folks all day, every day. It has been just kind of putting rocket fuel into a jet engine and seeing [it] blast off,” he added. “It’s such, it’s so important, I think, to understand. It’s one thing to be against a set of things, but to be for a set of things and for core freedoms … that’s rallying people.”
When Brennan asked Ryan if Harris’s replacement of President Biden on the Democratic national ticket made it easier for him, specifically, to win his election, he responded with, “Without question.”
The New York Democrat pointed to last week’s Democratic National Convention and the past four weeks, during which the party has “seen such energy, such enthusiasm and such true joy and optimism.”
“When Kamala Harris talks about freedom, patriotism, reproductive freedom, economic freedom, freedom to breathe clean air and water, that is what folks, regardless of party, they want to believe in something, to be for something. And she has delivered that. And I think over the next 72 days, we’re going to see that momentum continue to build,” he added.
Ryan represents New York’s 18th Congressional District, which the nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates as a “lean Democrat” race. He was elected in 2022 in a special election, and Republicans are making his seat a top priority to flip in November.
Ryan was among more than two dozen Democratic lawmakers who called on Biden to step out of the race early last month following his lackluster debate performance against former President Trump. At the time, he said he did not believe Biden was the strongest candidate Democrats could field against the former president in November.
After weeks of remaining adamant to stay in the race, Biden ultimately decided to withdraw and endorse Harris as his successor.
Harris’s entrance into the race quickly bolstered energy for the Democratic Party, which rapidly consolidated support around the vice president and her newly tapped running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. She quickly became the party’s presumptive presidential nominee and accepted the party’s nomination last Thursday.
Other pollsters have argued Harris’s entrance into the race could positively influence other Democrats’ races. A Cook Political Report poll earlier this month found Senate candidates in a handful of swing states increased their already positive margins in their races since Harris replaced Biden.