Jim Ryun

This article is about the athlete and congressman from Kansas. For people with a similar name, see Jim Ryan.

Jim Ryun
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Kansas's 2nd district
In office 1997-(term ends 2007)
Preceded by	Sam Brownback
Personal details
Political party	Republican
Spouse	Anne Ryun
1Nancy Boyda defeated Ryun in the 2006 elections and will replace him in the House on January 3, 2007.

Olympic medal record
Men’s Athletics
	1968 Mexico City	1500 m

James Ronald ("Jim") Ryun (born April 29, 1947) is an American former track athlete and current politician, who has been a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives since 1997, representing the 2nd District in Kansas. In the 2006 election, Ryun was defeated by Democratic challenger Nancy Boyda. He was a world-record holding middle distance runner in college and famous for breaking the four minute mile as a high school student.

Athletics

File:Runryun.jpg

Jim Ryun breaks the world record

Attending Wichita East High School, in 1964 as a junior, Ryun became the first high school athlete in the world to run under a four-minute mile (1609 meters in 4 minutes). In 1965 as a senior, he set the American high school mile record of 3:55.3, a record that stood for thirty-six years.

In 1966, at age nineteen, Jim Ryun set the world record in both the mile and the half-mile runs, and received Sports Illustrated magazine's "Sportsman of the Year" award, as well as the James E. Sullivan Award as the nation's top amateur athlete. In 1967 he lowered his world-record time in the mile to 3:51.1, a record that stood for nine years and set the world record for the 1500 meters that same year in 3:33.1. He also held world records in the 1500 metres, the indoor half-mile, the sprint medley, and the distance medley relays.

Ryun attended the University of Kansas on a track scholarship; he graduated in 1970 with a degree in photojournalism. When rumors arose that he was going to come out for football as a split end, the football coach quipped, "Yes, he would be perfect for those 'fourth-down and a mile to go' situations."

Ryun participated in the 1964, 1968, and 1972 Summer Olympics, but the gold medal eluded him. Battling mono and a hamstring injury, he still won a silver medal in the 1500 meters in 1968 in the high altitude of Mexico City, losing to Kip Keino from Kenya. In the 1972 Munich, Germany games, he was tripped, and fell down during a 1500 meters qualifying heat.

In 2003, Ryun was inducted into the National Distance Running Hall of Fame and remains the last American to have held the world record in the mile. He and his sons, Ned and Drew, have co-authored two books, Heroes Among Us and The Courage to Run.

Personal

Ryun was born in Wichita, Kansas. He now owns a home in Lawrence, Kansas. Ryun and his wife, Anne, who he married in 1969, have four children and six grandchildren.

After graduating from the University of Kansas in 1970, Ryun moved to Eugene, Oregon, looking for a good training situation to continue his track career. Six months later, he moved to Santa Barbara, California, where he and his family remained for nine years. He and his family moved back to Lawrence, Kansas in 1981.

Raised in the Church of Christ, Ryun and his wife are members of Grace Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Lawrence, KS. He spoke in tongues during at least one campaign rally in 1996, according to a report in the Wichita Eagle.

Career prior to election to Congress

Before being elected to the House of Representatives in 1996, Ryun had operated Jim Ryun Sports, a company that ran sports camps, and worked as a motivational speaker at meetings of corporations and Christian groups around the country. Among his projects, Ryun, who has a 50% hearing loss, helped the ReSound Hearing Aid Company develop a program called Sounds of Success, aimed at children with hearing loss. Since 1975, Ryun and his family have hosted running camps every summer for high school aged runners and continue to do so.

House of Representatives

In the House, Ryun serves on the Armed Services, Budget and Financial Services committees.

Elections

Ryun was first elected in 1996 to fill a seat vacated by Republican Sam Brownback. He won the three-person Republican primary with 62 percent of the vote, defeating former Topeka mayor Doug Wright and Cheryl Brown Henderson, the daughter of the plaintiff in the historic Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka desegregation case. In the general campaign, Ryun was in tight race with Democrat John Frieden, a prominent Topeka trial attorney, who outspent Ryun $750,000 to $400,000. Ryun won with 52 percent of the vote.

He was re-elected in 1998, 2000 and 2002, receiving more than 60 percent of the vote each time. Ryun's strongest challenge came in 2004 from Democrat Nancy Boyda. She ran a well financed campaign, spending $1,105,838 (compared to Ryun's $1,136,464)., but Ryun still defeated her by a margin of 56% to 41%.

Boyda was again the Democratic nominee in the 2006 election. Ryun also faced Roger Tucker of the Reform Party USA. Initially expected to win, Ryun found his campaign faltering as internal polling by both Boyda and Republicans revealed a Democratic lead. In response, Ryun's campaign recruited both President Bush and Vice President Cheney to visit Topeka to campaign for Ryun. Ryun was defeated by Boyda, 51% to 47%, on November 7, 2006.

Political positions

The National Journal has rated Ryun as one of the nation's most conservative members of Congress, more so than 90% of his colleagues.

Ryun generally has supported President Bush's legislative agenda, though he broke with the President over Medicare reform legislation that included a prescription drug benefit. In opposing the bill, Ryun said the bill didn't provide enough reform to keep future costs from soaring.

Ryun voted with fellow conservatives against the $373 billion end-of-session spending bill in 2003 because he considered it to be too costly and had come to Congress to support fiscal restraint.

Controversies

ARMPAC campaign contributions

Ryun received $31,777 in campaign contributions from former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's political action committee, ARMPAC. DeLay has faced ethics charges. To date, Ryun has not offered to return the contributions, despite calls from Democrats to do so. Ryun has also contributed to DeLay's legal defense trust.

Townhouse purchase in 2000

On December 15, 2000, Ryun bought a townhouse in the District of Columbia from U.S. Family Network for $410,000,, in a private sale. That organization was controlled by Ed Buckham, DeLay's former chief of staff; funding of the organization came mostly from Jack Abramoff's lobbying clients. The townhouse had been purchased about two years earlier, for $429,000, to house Buckham's consulting firm Alexander Strategy Group and DeLay's ARMPAC.

When questions arose as to whether Ryun had paid full market value in 2000, his office released documents showing that another home on the same block was sold for $409,000 on the same day he bought his home. According to property records, the other home is on a land area about half the size of Ryun's, and was assessed in 2006 as worth $528,000, compared to $764,000 for Ryun's home.

Connection to Mark Foley

After Rep. Mark Foley resigned in October 2006, following revelations he had sent sexually explicit e-mails to teenage congressional pages, Ryun contended that he barely knew Foley, had never spent time with him, and was unaware that they lived directly across the street from each other in Washington, D.C. "I know that [we were neighbors] only because somebody has mentioned that, too, already," he told reporters at the time. However, it was later revealed that Ryun and Foley had hosted a joint fundraiser on their street on May 18, 2006, called the "D Street Block Party." An invitation to the fundraiser included side-by-side pictures of Ryun and Foley. Ryun's campaign manager later admitted that Ryun had always known he was Foley's neighbor.

External links

• Ryun's official Kansas 2nd Congressional District website
• Associated Press profile
• Ryun's official campaign website
• National Track & Field Hall of Fame entry
• Kansas Sports Hall of Fame entry
• record maintained by the Washington Post