WASHINGTON — Paul Ryan didn’t know until after he became speaker of the House that it meant he’d also be chairing the Republican presidential nominating convention in July.
He also didn’t know becoming chairman meant that he might be walking into a firestorm.
The sharply divisive Republican primary contest means that, instead of a largely ceremonial role, Ryan is almost certainly going to end up with the unenviable job of trying to piece back together a shattered Republican Party.
Whether that task will mean trying to unite a splintered party behind an unpredictable outsider, Donald Trump, or brokering a contested convention where Republicans slug it out over possible alternatives, Ryan will likely be on the hot seat. And everyone will be watching to see whether he is trying to tilt the outcome.
The stakes could hardly be higher, both for the party and Ryan personally. So far, the Wisconsin Republican has cultivated a reputation for leadership as speaker without doing much actual leading outside the ranks of loyalists in the U.S. House.
“There are dangers there for Paul,” said Morton Blackwell, a Virginian who is a member of the Republican National Committee and its Standing Committee on Rules, as well as a Ted Cruz backer.
One of the biggest risks surrounds the party’s frontrunner, Trump, who has minced no words when it comes to the prospect of a contested convention that nominates someone other than the billionaire.
“I think you’d have riots,” he told CNN Wednesday. “I wouldn’t lead it but I think bad things would happen.”
Ryan, the party’s 2012 vice presidential nominee, already has been prompted to deny that he has any interest — or intent — to claim the nomination for himself.
“It’s not going to be me,” Ryan told reporters Thursday. “It’s going to be somebody running for president.”
Ryan and his office have been downplaying his convention chairman’s role, calling it largely “ceremonial.” But on Thursday, Ryan said he and others involved in the convention are “now getting our minds around” the idea that it could be an open convention.
“My goal is to be dispassionate, and to be Switzerland,” Ryan said Thursday. “And to make sure that the delegates make their decision however the rules require them to do that.”
The chairman of the Republican convention is traditionally the top House Republican leader, who manages the convention under the rules of the House.
A description provided by Ryan’s office notes the chairman typically opens and closes the convention and signs nominating documents for all states and territories. The chairman also is the presiding officer over the actual roll call vote for the nomination for president and vice president. The document says the chairman is “not necessarily at all involved in any negotiating if no one receives a majority after the first ballot.”
Yet, much of the perception nationally, if not the reality, will be that Ryan will be among the party leaders pulling strings to orchestrate a desired outcome, particularly if the nomination is contested.
At the least, Ryan’s role as chairman will make him a prominent face of the convention that could be marked in history by protests, high emotions and intense floor fights.
Greg Magarian, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis, said “a brokered convention would automatically spur complaints about an undemocratic process.” In addition, if Ryan ultimately allowed himself to be considered for the nomination, some of the potential attacks against him could be even more intense. “He would, in that event, face accusations of undue ambition,” said Magarian.
“Ryan is between a rock and a hard place. In other words, between Scylla and Charybdis,” suggests Steffen Schmidt, a political scientist at Iowa State University.