The former House Speaker will have to find a way to blend in with “elites in Washington” that he so often criticizes.

Carolyn Kaster / AP Photo

After making it so abundantly clear that D.C. wasn’t his cup of coffee, Paul Ryan is moving his family to the Washington area.

The former House speaker and self-reported “Wisconsin guy that came to Washington to make a difference” is leaving his home in Janesville for a new rental somewhere in the Maryland suburbs, Politico reported on Tuesday. He will also maintain ownership of his Wisconsin home, per Politico.

The move is a bit of a reversal for the congressman. During his tenure as an elected official, Ryan repeatedly took pride in not settling down in D.C., opting to sleep in his office instead and fly back to Wisconsin on weekends.

“I’m just a normal guy,” he told CNN in 2015. “I live in Janesville, Wisconsin, I commute back and forth every week. I just work here, I don’t live here.” For Ryan, staying in D.C. every now and then was “simply a factor of convenience,” he told reporters at a press briefing in 2017.

Ryan’s beef with the District stems from an apparent belief that Washington elites have co-opted the nation’s government. “We do not believe that we should be governed by our betters, that elites in Washington should make all those big decisions,” he once told students at Georgetown University.

He also, however, has expressed a belief that D.C.’s local government “needs to be reined in” by Congress. “The D.C. government wants to use revenues to fund abortions in the District,” his 2016 statement says. “House Republicans will not stand for that.”

But as it turns out, “normal guy” Ryan and his family will now have to try to blend in with the rest of us here in Washington. And only time will tell whether he can adapt to an area he once called “hostile” in an opinion piece. “I’ve tried to be civil by respecting others and showing what it means to be ‘Wisconsin nice’ even in hostile Washington, D.C.,” he wrote.

It’s not yet clear whether Ryan’s new home will be big enough for the many freezer chests of wild game meat that he is used to storing back in Wisconsin. But it’s possible the former congressman and his family may have to cut back on his consumption of pheasant, duck, and deer. “My family is used to eating wild game,” he told Deer And Deer Hunting in 2012. “But they don’t in D.C. That’s foreign to them.”

Ryan’s decision drew some scorn and sarcasm online, with some Twitter users questioning his purported dedication to his Wisconsin homeland.

https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1163808867987443712

https://twitter.com/abeaujon/status/1163796822957187072

Ryan opted not to run for reelection to Congress in 2018, a decision he said was in part to be more present for his wife and children. But Ryan didn’t stray from conservative politics for too long. Following much public speculation over what his next role would be, he joined the advisory board of a newly reformed Fox Corporation after the Murdoch media empire sold some of its assets to Disney. The new position is surely a huge salary bump for Ryan, who may now have to leave his “normal guy” roots behind. It’s unclear what other jobs he may undertake in the area.

Before Ryan served in Congress, he worked on Capitol Hill as an intern and speechwriter, with a side gig at the Tortilla Coast in the neighborhood.

One question that remains is whether Ryan will get along with his new neighbor, President Donald Trump. Last month, the commander-in-chief went on a Twitter rampage against Ryan, calling him a “lame duck failure” in response to the former congressman’s criticism of Trump in a new book by Politico reporter Tim Alberta.

Filed Under: d.c. politics, Donald J. Trump, paul ryan, President Trump, speaker of the house,