Today’s County Commissioner, Tomorrow ’s Congressman

The Ryun brothers want to infuse new Tea Party blood into the political system.

So the veteran politicos behind the conservative American Majority organization are putting their energy into training novice Tea Party candidates running for a school board, city council or state senate seat in your town.

While other Tea Party-affiliated groups have zeroed in on specifically helping candidates win seats inside the U.S. Capitol, Drew and Ned Ryun are more focused on developing a farm team at the local and state level who one day could run for Congress.

“I make the argument that’s where political careers begin,” Ned Ryun explained in an interview. “Today’s county commissioner, tomorrow’s congressman. You’ve got to feed the system.”

The brothers’ organization launched in 2008 in a small office in Purcellville, Va., though American Majority has roots dating back to 2005, when the Ryuns drew up a document laying out plans to create a “systematic, year-in year-out, 365-days-a-year approach to identifying and training people to be a national farm team of conservative leaders.”

Ned Ryun is the founder and president of American Majority, registered with the IRS as a 501(c)(3) political training institute. Drew Ryun is the president of the 501(c)(4) arm that can engage in more politically tinged activities.

“We had noticed that a lot of times that it came to open-seat elections at the federal level, or when it came time to potentially have a good conservative run for and win a federal seat, we had no farm team,” Drew Ryun explained. “A lot of people would be looking around and going, “Well, where’s our farm team? Who’s going to be that person, that proven conservative, that can step up to the plate and actually, legitimately run for and win higher office?’”

The timing of starting such a group was perfect, they maintain, as it was just a few months later in the spring of 2009 when the Tea Party movement burst onto the country’s political scene.

“The thing that’s been cool that we’ve been able to do at American Majority is taking people that came out for the first time in 2009 and really empowering them and saying, ‘OK, move past the protesting to what really will cause change,’ and helping them really organize into a real political machine,” Ned Ryun said.

The group has done about 395 trainings in 40 different states since then.

The brothers maintain that they have a unique “perspective on life” because their father — former Kansas Republican Rep. Jim Ryun — was in the House for 10 years. Also, Drew Ryun was a deputy director at the Republican National Committee, and Ned Ryun was a writer in the George W. Bush White House.                            

Read more here