Democrat John Fetterman, who is running to replace retiring Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA), has been in the news quite a bit, including for his particularly soft-on-crime stance. As it turns out, he's not the only candidate with such a dangerous position on the issue. Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH), who is running to replace retiring Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH), and claims to be a moderate and "independent voice," looks to have taken a similar position in 2019.
J.D. Vance, Ryan's Republican opponent, shared a video clip of Ryan's remarks on Thursday morning, calling them "dangerous" and declaring "we need to vote to reject it in November."
Here’s Tim Ryan, the pretend moderate, calling for a release of half of all federal inmates. This is dangerous, and we need to vote to reject it in November. pic.twitter.com/JrEUhm7qFd
— J.D. Vance (@JDVance1) October 20, 2022
As John Binder uncovered for Breitbart on Wednesday, ACLU of New Hampshire Political Director Jeanne Hruska had reminded Ryan during a political event from 2019 that he had "made an ACLU commitment to reduce mass incarceration by 50 percent during your presidency."
Ryan was running in the Democratic presidential primary at the time, and had signed onto a pledge laid out by the ACLU. A piece from July 2019 declared "We Can Cut Mass Incarceration by 50 Percent."
To fulfill that pledge, which would entail freeing about one million inmates, Ryan talked about cutting penalties and sentencing for drug laws. A bullet point in the pledge from the ACLU indeed calls for "Ending the War on Drugs by decriminalizing all drug possession."
Tellingly, the ACLU page also calls for "bail reform" in their pledge, the kind "that reduces the number of people we lock up before trial, often simply because they are too poor to afford cash bail." Ryan also communicated that support for the idea at that 2019 event by calling for "eliminating" cash bail since it was "inherently unfair," was he claimed.
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And, as Steven Nelson covered last week for The New York Post:
“We’re seeing states end cash bail, state by state. Would you support that nationally?” Hruska asked.
“Yeah,” Ryan responded. “I think the bail system is inherently unfair and what it does is it sets people down a spiral of not being able to go to work, not being able to take care of their kids, then you have adverse childhood experiences, and all of a sudden a parent is not at home.
“It’s not much different than what we talk about when we see these kids separated from their parents through the immigration situation we’re dealing with in the United States,” added Ryan, who has represented a district that includes the city of Youngstown for two decades.
“There’s a great article in the New York Times, I think it was, about adverse childhood experiences,” the lawmaker concluded. “Those traumatizing experiences for kids lead to mental health issues, physical health issues, obviously behavioral issues. So I would be for eliminating it.”
Ryan did not identify any public safety guardrails to ensure violent criminals remain detained before trial.
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Although Ryan made the remark at a public event, it received little attention until now.
As of Wednesday, a three-year-old video of the event posted to YouTube by the law school had just 86 views. A clip of Ryan’s cash bail remark posted to Facebook by the New Hampshire ACLU had six likes. A web page published by Politico that tracked 2020 Democratic candidates’ views on hot-button issues said Ryan — who dropped out of the race in October 2019 — had stated no opinion on the issue of “cash bail reform.”
One other state that has ended cash bail is New York, which has led to disastrous effects. As The New York Post reported separately in August, "10 career criminals racked up nearly 500 arrests since NY bail reform began."
Vance brought up Ryan's position in favor of cashless bail during Monday's debate with Ryan to paint him as an "extremist" and "on the far-left of his own party."
Other points of the ACLU pledge included "Shortening extraordinarily excessive sentencing practices and abolishing rigid 'mandatory minimums' and 'three strikes' laws" and "Granting clemency to people trapped in prison who are elderly, sick, or have already served more than enough time for their offense."
Forecasters consider the race to be "Lean Republican," including RealClearPolitics (RCP), which also projects it will be a "GOP Hold" and shows a +2.5 lead for Vance in the polls.
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