by Ryan Love
Along with my three brothers, I grew up in a small Iowa town back in the 70s and 80s. Despite the turbulent times of Nixon, Ford, Carter and Reagan, politics never entered into any of our family discussions. In fact, politics never became a big deal for me until I was into my 40s and had moved to Broward County, Florida.
It was in 2007 that I became enamored with seeking out knowledge about the world around me, including, and perhaps especially, local politics. The problem with Broward County was that you could add up all of the Republicans and all of the Independents and it still would not equal the number of Democrats. The end result was that I could find plenty of blogs created by Democrats, but almost nothing created by Republicans, and definitely nothing compiling all of the information I was looking for in one spot.
The end result was the birth of The Broward Republican, an online blog I created to provide others with the same information I was seeking about current politics, political organizations and political leaders. And what started out as one person’s idea grew in leaps and bounds. People from all over the state were logging in and asking for more.
It was at this point that I first began exploring my own political viewpoints. Despite the name of my blog, I don’t believe I still knew exactly what my political persuasion actually was, or maybe only knew of it subconsciously.
The more I studied up on the differences between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, the more I found myself identifying as a Republican. From what I could tell, Democratic policies were seemingly based on a person’s feelings while Republican policies were more about dealing with the issues logically. For instance, Democrats want to spend taxpayer money on welfare programs like unemployment because it “feels” good to help out other people. Meanwhile, Republicans realize there is not enough money to fund all of these programs and it would work better improving the economy so there are enough high paying jobs that you don’t have as much unemployment in the first place.
For me, logic won out and I was able to sum up my understanding of the Republican Party ideology with three primary tenets:
- Maintaining the smallest, most effective government needed to get things done,
- Collecting the least amount of tax dollars necessary to fund such a government, and
- Each individual should be responsible for their own actions and welfare.
With all of this in mind, I sent an email off to my family, proud of the recognition my blog was receiving and perhaps more so of my understanding of where I fell within this political spectrum. It was only then that I found out that everyone else in my family was also a Republican.
From that point forward, I devoted a lot of my free time not only to the Republican Party, but to helping out my community. I became the Director of IT for the Broward County Republican Party as well as the leader of the local Cub Scout troop. After moving to Minnesota in 2009, I not only rose to the level of secretary of the Minnesota Republican Party, but also became the chair of my city’s economic council, volunteered on the social media and communication committees for Relay For Life and Beyond the Yellow Ribbon, and became a campaign manager for State Representative Roz Peterson and State Senator Eric Pratt. Politics for me was never about us versus them as much as it was about helping out and doing what’s best for the community.
In 2016, I moved to Tampa, Florida, and have stayed primarily in the background, becoming a precinct committeeman and volunteering for the Hillsborough County Republican Party’s Social Media and Technology Committees.
Ryan Love is a member of the Hillsborough County Republican Executive Committee. He is a highly technical software engineer who once worked at a small IT company known as IBM. Ryan is now living in Tampa, still works in IT for a new company called WIPRO. He also created a unique database design that will serve as the basis for a political consulting and information group called Political Acuity.