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Cowboy Logic: Taylor’s roots run deep in North Dakota

Written by: Matt Bunk

Ten years ago, Ryan Taylor thought he had everything he wanted in life. At 31 years old, he had two college degrees, a ranch in North Dakota and a high-paying job with a large pharmaceutical company. But one day that autumn while he was training to run the New York City Marathon, he realized that everything had changed.

(Photo by Matt Bunk) Senate Minority Leader Ryan Taylor talking politics and holding a strand of his favorite rangeland grass, big bluestem, at his ranch southeast of Towner.

“After 9-11, I just thought to myself, ‘What am I doing?’” Taylor said. “I lost two friends in the Trade Towers, and that obviously shakes you to the core. I started thinking, the good job, the expense account and the company vehicle – well, there’s probably more to life than that.”

Shortly after completing the marathon in a city still dazed by disaster, Taylor decided to run for a seat in the North Dakota Senate. He surprised many of his neighbors in 2002 by defeating Ken Solberg, a Republican who had represented the rural, north-central district for decades.

A year later, Taylor got married and started a family on the same plot of land southeast of Towner that two generations of Taylors had homesteaded before him.

Through all of the rapid changes in Taylor’s life, the ranch was the one constant that defined him and reminded him what was important. He’s a writer, a policy wonk and the leader of the Democratic caucus in the state Senate. But he’s also a cowboy who learned to tie knots from his father, plays slap jack with his two young boys and enjoys talking about his favorite type of range-land grass – big bluestem.

“I swear I can see the cows smiling as they eat it,” Taylor said as he plucked a long, amber wisp of big bluestem from his pasture. “And when I see a nice stand of it bending in the breeze it makes my heart sing.”

Even now, as he contemplates a run for governor, Taylor holds tightly to his rural roots and a down-home mentality that was shaped by growing up miles from nowhere. (To read a transcript of the Great Plains Examiner‘s interview with Taylor at his ranch, click here.)

Taylor said he makes policy decisions based on conversations with his neighbors in small-town diners. His colleagues said he is respectful of everyone, whether he agrees with them or not. And even though he wears a cowboy hat and boots just about everywhere he goes, Taylor swears that he’s just as comfortable “in a fancy French restaurant as I am out in the hay field.”

It’s difficult to find anyone who has a bad word to say about Taylor. His colleagues in the Legislature – both Republicans and Democrats – said he’s respectful, articulate and easy to get along with. One theme that was repeated by all of the lawmakers interviewed for this story was that Taylor is “down to earth.”

“Most politicians struggle to communicate a public policy position that people can understand. Some of us are wonkish. And some of us are incapable of explaining issues well,” said Rep. Lee Kaldor, a Democrat from Mayville. “But then here’s Ryan – I heard him speak at a small group meeting last session and he tells a story of his neighbor and what they are going through, and all of a sudden this story turns into an issue we’re dealing with at the Legislature.”

Sen. Rich Wardner, a Republican from Dickinson, said Taylor understands his role as a leader of the minority party. Taylor is not easily frustrated, and if he does get upset, it doesn’t show, Wardner said.

“What I noticed most about Ryan is that he doesn’t talk just for talk’s sake,” Wardner said. “He speaks when he has something to say. And that can be a challenge for a lot of folks, because when you’re in the minority party you’re kind of like Rodney Dangerfield – you get no respect.”

Taylor has yet to decide if he will run for the Governor’s Office. He said he is planning to hold off on a public announcement until the completion of the Legislature’s special session this month. But to those tapped into state politics, his candidacy is almost a done deal.

“Democrats always bring up Heidi Heidtkamp and her brother Joel, but that’s only going to get them so far,” said one lobbyist who has worked at the State Capitol for many years. “I think they’ve really got something with Ryan Taylor. In my opinion, he’s the most viable candidate for statewide office that Democrats have right now.”

If Taylor does run, he would be going against all odds. He’s a Democrat in a state that has trended Republican for the past couple of election cycles. He lacks name identification among voters in larger cities. And, perhaps most daunting, he most likely would be challenging incumbent Gov. Jack Dalrymple, a Republican who has been in charge of the state during a period of unprecedented economic growth.

But Taylor has beaten the odds before. In fact, much of his family history is about rising above what appear to be insurmountable obstacles.

SETTLING THE TAYLOR RANCH

The story of the Taylor family in North Dakota began about the year 1900 when four brothers moved their wives and children from Indiana to the sand hills of McHenry County. They opened a livery stable in Towner and a brick plant on the outskirts of the community after acquiring land for a cattle and horse ranch through the federal Homestead Act.

The ranch was primarily the business of Harvey Taylor and his two sons, Clyde and Marshall. They began raising purebred Herefords as early as 1915. But it was Pearl, Harvey’s wife, who bought the cows with the money she earned as a school teacher.

And it was Pearl who was called upon to hold the family together a few years later when tragedy struck.

All three of the men who were working the ranch died unexpectedly within a 16-month period between 1921 and 1922 – Harvey died from blood poisoning, Marshall died at the age of 20 after being gored by a steer and Clyde was a victim of small pox. The widows were forced to put the cattle out on shares and move into town with their three small children.

One of those children, named Marshall after his father but called “Bud,” reclaimed the Taylor Ranch when he was 18 and restarted the family’s horse-raising legacy. Bud later served in the South Pacific during World War II, witnessed the surrender of Japan and came back home to begin ranching again.

Bud was Ryan Taylor’s father.

“The amazing thing was that the women didn’t sell the ranch and move back to Indiana,” Taylor said. “They were going into the 1930s, three widows and two kids, but they made it through the Depression and managed to hold onto the ranch.”

Today, the Taylor Ranch stretches across 2,900 acres and is home to half-dozen horses and more than 220 commercial Angus cows. More than 90 percent of the ranch has never been plowed, and last year it was inducted into the North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame.

Taylor and his wife Nikki are now rearing a fifth generation of Taylors: Marshall, 7; Ole, 5; and Sylvia, 3.

“It’s a grassroots story that is probably common in North Dakota – a family moving west to find a better life,” Taylor said. “We weren’t inducted (into the Cowboy Hall of Fame) because we have the largest ranch or the wildest history of great fortune. It was because of the hardships that my family endured.”

SHAPING A POLITICAL PLATFORM

Those hardscrabble beginnings, and a mother who was a die-hard Democrat, had a great influence on Ryan Taylor’s political philosophies. As he grew up, his experiences raising cattle on what can be an unforgiving landscape taught him that it’s always necessary to look out for the needs of others and then expect the same in return.

“We talk about being rugged individualists, but we’re very co-dependent on one another,” Taylor said. “You get out here, and if you’re by yourself you could die. If you get stuck in a blizzard, you could die. So we need to take care of each other.”

Taylor tries to avoid political labels, though he said it would be accurate to call him a moderate Democrat. He said he’s a “populist” who is comfortable within the Democratic Party. But he said he tries to stay away from partisan battles and instead focuses on issues that he believes all North Dakotans can believe in.

For instance, he spearheaded a Democratic proposal in the Senate last session that would have provided targeted tax cuts for low- and middle-income North Dakotans, but it was defeated by Republicans who favored a tax-reduction package that also reduced the burden on corporations.

“I think you need to do what you can for the greatest majority of the people, and if that’s a Democratic viewpoint, then so be it,” Taylor said. “So maybe I’m more of a populist. The folks who make $40,000 to $60,000 dollars a year ought to share in the tax relief that others might want to target towards the extreme high end of the scale. I don’t know if that should be a Democratic view point.”

There are quite a few issues that Taylor thinks should be excluded from the partisan battles. He said most North Dakotans, whether Republican or Democratic, agree that schools should be given the resources they need, children from low-income families should have access to access health care and the state’s natural resources should be developed in a way that establishes a brighter future for the next generations.

Taylor describes those things as “the right fights.”

“I suppose every politician says they want to represent North Dakota and that it’s not about the party, and I probably say the same thing, but I do mean it,” Taylor said. “Just because someone has a “D” or an “R” behind their name, they’re still a North Dakotan. And you might get elected on one side of the ballot or the other, but after that election you’ve got to be there to represent as great a majority of the people as you can regardless of how they voted.”

-Matt Bunk is publisher of the Great Plains Examiner. He can be reached at matt.bunk@highgroundpublishing.com.

 

 

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Comments

  1. Pingback: Senate Minority Leader Ryan Taylor in his own words | Great Plains Examiner

  2. Great article Matt! I will definitely be paying attention to Ryan’s political career after reading this. He sounds like someone who will work to keep what is great about North Dakota alive. We’re writing a significant chapter in our state’s history right now –
    http://bit.ly/twKAbV

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