US

The Texas pastor who wants America to ‘stop crushing poor people’

Former football star Ryan Binkley (56) is a Republican campaign team’s dream, so why is nobody listening?

Ryan Binkley spent $3m in the final months of his Iowa campaign. Photograph: Stefani Reynolds / AFP

Keith Duggan's face
Keith Duggan in New Hampshire
Tue Jan 23 2024 - 06:46

Planted defiantly among the Haley and Trump placards on front lawns all over New Hampshire are signs that read: Who is Ryan Binkley? One of the strangest aspects of the Republican primary has been the stubborn staying-power of the photogenic (and seldom photographed) Texan pastor who spent the eve of the election campaigning with the same energy and zeal as the front runners.

At about seven o’clock last night, he made a brief appearance at The Goat, in downtown Manchester, where the state Grand Old Party primary wrap-up night was taking place. The mood was upbeat and casual, and the place was hopping. Binkley took to the stage and made a quick last plea to the voters before the band came on.

On the surface, Binkley is a campaign team’s dream; a youthful 56, six-foot and if he looks like a content prosperous Lone Star State son with a glittering football career behind him, that’s because he is. Binkley is both a man of faith and finance, having generated sufficient wealth through a mergers and acquisitions company he cofounded to enable him to spend some three million dollars in the closing months of the Iowa campaign.

In a state famed for its evangelicals, Binkley’s credentials were impeccable: he founded Create Church, in Richardson, Texas. It didn’t help. The Trump machine sucks up so much oxygen that once-touted candidates fell like flies through the winter, with Ron DeSantis the most recent and high profile prospect to call it quits.

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Nikki Haley had a degree of name-recognition even before she announced her run. Binkley has worked just as hard, but his predicament demonstrates the near-impossibility of making an impression when the Republican kingmakers are looking elsewhere. You look at Binkley move through the room and gamely shake hands with the evening-beer crowd and wonder why he has stayed the course.

“Because neither of the front leading candidates are addressing the two biggest issues our nation faces today,” he says when we find a corner, near the busboys’ station, where it’s possible to speak over the Blondie cover that the band has sparked up.

“That’s the 34 trillion dollars in debt that none of them have said they are going pay back or even attempt to. And if we don’t do that, we are going to bankrupt the country. Basically, we are making the rich richer and the poor poorer. Because unless you own an inflationary asset like a house or a stock portfolio – which 40 per cent of United States doesn’t – what you are saying is that the bottom 40 per cent is going to get poor.

“So, it is the wealth gap in United States that has been destroying so many people. I spoke with a young woman today who makes eight dollars an hour working at a grocery store. She can’t afford insurance or anything. Nobody is seeing these people. And I am in this because the next generation is going to be holding about fifty trillion of debt in the next seven years. And I’m not willing to let it happen. And until someone stands up and says something about it, I’m going to keep shouting about it.”

His message is as meaningful as anything offered by the two leading candidates on their relentless march through Iowa and New Hampshire. He has offered a consistent voice of cross-party co-operation on national issues. In May, he told the Des Moines Register, when asked about the burning issue of immigration: “One party wants a secure border, the other wants some sort of pathway of success for the immigrants that are here. I think we’re going to have to work with some sort of visibility plan to know who’s in our country right now.”

Given that voter after voter has voiced concern about the ideological chasm running through United States party politics, there’s a parallel universe in which Binkley is on all the TV shows and news-stands as a unifying figure, completely untainted by scandal. But very few have got to hear it or see him. He didn’t make the qualifying threshold for the Republican television debates and has held events here in New Hampshire for which a handful of people – or fewer – have shown up. But he finished in advance of Asa Hutchinson in the Iowa caucuses and a poll which showed him running within 4 per cent of DeSantis in New Hampshire earned him a line in Steve Colbert’s sardonic review of Iowa. “You got this, Brian! I mean, Ryan.”

And it could be that his persistent toil through obscurity suits Republican fixers fine given his view of where the party tradition is headed.

“I think we are getting bought off,” Binkley says.

“At the end of the day, rich people don’t mind it. Right? I mean our stock portfolio goes up. Houses are double what they were four years ago. Stock market is an all time high. We are doing pretty good! Are you kidding me? There’s other ways to make money than crushing the poor people. And that is what is happening. We better be Republicans again. Why did we lose our message of financial conservatism?”

It’s a valid question. But on primary day in New Hampshire, it would seem that nobody is listening.

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US ElectionDonald TrumpRon DeSantis