By his own account, Tim Ryan, a Democrat who represented the Mahoning Valley in the U.S. House for 20 years, has achieved his ideal professional-personal life balance.

“I am so happy right now,” Ryan told me. “This is the happiest I’ve been personally and professionally in a long time so it’s hard to kind of change course.”

Yet he still hears the siren call of politics.

Ryan is making more money than he ever did as a lobbyist and working for a technology firm, gets to go on national television and write opinion pieces for Newsweek about his thoughts on politics. He has enough time to be home with his family, coaching his son Brady’s football team and was head coach of his basketball team.

He sold his Howland house in July 2023 and purchased a $1.27 million house in Plain City in Union County, near Columbus, in order to be better located for his job as chief global business development officer for Zoetic Global, a technology firm focusing on environmental and economic issues. He’s also a lot closer to a major airport, allowing him to travel.

Heated, a website that writes about the climate from a progressive point of view, recently reported that Ryan’s firm, Wuzzy Enterprises LLC, which operates out of his home, received $246,943 for “public relations services” in 2023 from a part-time job he has with Natural Allies for Clean Energy Future. Natural Allies is a lobbying firm that promotes natural gas and is funded by several major natural gas companies. Ryan was hired in January 2023 to the organization’s leadership council to promote natural gas.

In his best year in Congress, Ryan made $174,000 — and Natural Allies is just one of his jobs.

Ryan also serves as co-chair of the Bitcoin Policy Institute’s BPI Action, an organization that lobbies Congress in support of bitcoin.

While in Congress, Ryan was a vocal proponent of natural gas and bitcoin.

Ryan gets to go on national cable news shows regularly to discuss what he sees as the problems with the Democratic Party — as well as throw in plugs for natural gas and cryptocurrency.

He writes for Newsweek with his latest opinion piece recommending the Democratic National Committee move its headquarters from Washington, D.C., to Youngstown.

Despite Ryan’s overall happiness being at its highest level in a long time and his general dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party, he still has the itch to get back into politics, knowing it would take time away from his family.

“I love politics and public policy so I’m never going to rule it out,” he said. “Money was never a big driver for me. It was always about the service, so we’ll see what the future holds. But I’m not ruling anything out.”

Ryan specifically mentioned to me the possibility of running for governor in 2026 and that people are calling him asking him to again run for president in 2028. Ryan briefly ran for president in 2019, dropping out before the primaries the following year because of poor fundraising and low polling numbers. He said he doesn’t plan to run for president, but he made it a point to tell me he gets calls.

Ryan sees the national landscape as well as what’s happened in Ohio, saying the Democratic Party “is on life support. Many of them just don’t know it yet.”

He calls the Democratic brand “toxic” and the “party is so screwed up” in need of “a whole reboot and rebrand.”

The criticism of the party isn’t endearing Ryan to Democrats so it seems strange that he would consider running for governor. Also take into consideration that Republicans have controlled every statewide office dating to the 2010 election. There hasn’t been a single Democrat that has won a statewide executive branch race since 2008.

Since Republican legislators passed a law that took effect with the 2022 election to use party labels for Ohio Supreme Court candidates on the general election ballot, Democratic candidates have lost all six of those races.

Sherrod Brown, a Democrat elected senator in 2006, 2012 and 2018, was defeated last month by Republican Bernie Moreno. He lost Mahoning and Trumbull counties, which he long relied on to carry him to victories statewide.

There are a few Democrats looking to run for statewide office in 2026, but the party’s bench is not deep while several of the Republican candidates who will be seeking those positions have already won at least two statewide races.

Ryan’s support declined during the last two times he ran for Congress, and he lost Trumbull, which was his home county at the time, in the 2020 election.

In the 2022 Senate race, Ryan lost by 6.1% to Republican J.D. Vance. It was the best showing of any Democrat running statewide on the ticket, but the rest of the party’s candidates were exceptionally weak.

Also, Ryan lost both Mahoning and Trumbull counties in that Senate election.

Skolnick covers politics for the Tribune Chronicle and The Vindicator.