Democratic Senate candidate Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, gives his concession speech during an election night campaign event in Boardman, Ohio, Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2022. (AP Photo/Phil Long)

With Democrat Sherrod Brown planning a U.S. Senate seat bid, Tim Ryan, a former 20-year congressman, is again giving serious consideration to running in 2026 for governor.

“Sherrod Brown’s decision to run for the U.S. Senate has renewed and heightened Tim Ryan’s interest in running for governor to further serve the people of Ohio,” said Dennis Willard, Ryan’s spokesman.

Ryan and Willard declined Wednesday to comment further.

Ryan, who represented the Mahoning Valley in the U.S. House for two decades, previously said he would decide on running for governor sometime in the summer. But there is no timeline for Ryan to make a decision.

Ryan’s interest in a gubernatorial run decreased as Brown, a former three-term senator defeated last year, was mulling bids for either governor or the Senate and the belief was he was leaning toward the former.

While Brown hasn’t made an official announcement, numerous media outlets — with Cleveland.com being the first — reported Tuesday that he will run next year for senator against Republican Jon Husted, who was appointed to the open seat by Gov. Mike DeWine in January.

Dr. Amy Acton, a Youngstown native who rose to prominence during the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic as the state’s health director, announced in January that she would run for the Democratic nomination for governor.

Sources in both camps say that if Ryan runs, he and Acton are confident they could win the Democratic primary.

After it was learned Brown would run for the Senate, 314 Action, an organization that recruits Democratic scientists to run for office and backs Acton, pointed to an April poll by Bowling Green State University and YouGov showing Acton leading Ryan 52%-38% in a potential Democratic primary matchup.

The Republican Party, including President Donald Trump, has coalesced around Vivek Ramaswamy, a wealthy biotech entrepreneur who briefly ran for president in the last election cycle, for governor.

The last Democrat to win a statewide executive branch race in Ohio was Richard Cordray in 2008 for attorney general.

In the first half of this year, Ramaswamy’s campaign raised $9.9 million, including $203,535 from the candidate, to $1.4 million for Acton. Also, a super political action committee supporting Ramaswamy reported raising $17 million in the first half of the year. That mostly came from two donors: $10 million from Jeff Yass, a technology firm co-founder, and $5 million from Ross Stevens, founder and CEO of a hedge fund.

A poll last week by Impact Research showed a statistical dead-heat between Acton and Ramaswamy. The April Bowling Green / YouGov poll also showed a statistical dead-heat with Ramaswamy up 50%-45% and a 4.08% plus or minus margin of error – meaning the results could swing as much as 8.16% either way.

Ryan was first elected to represent the Mahoning Valley in Congress in 2002 and served 10 terms. With his margins of victory lessening during his last two House elections and state Republican leaders planning to draw him into a Republican district, Ryan chose to run in 2022 for U.S. Senate. Before that, he briefly ran for president in 2019, dropping out after low polling numbers and weak fundraising.

In the 2022 Senate election, Ryan lost to Republican JD Vance by 6.1% in Ohio’s closest statewide election that year.

In that race, Ryan lost his home county of Trumbull as well as Mahoning. Both were longtime reliable Democratic counties until Trump’s first presidential election in 2016.

Ryan, who wasn’t a prolific fundraiser in the House, raised $57 million in the 2022 Senate race to $16 million for Vance. Senate Democrats didn’t provide funding for Ryan’s campaign. Outside funding groups spent $55 million to benefit Vance compared to $27 million for Ryan, according to OpenSecrets.org, a website that tracks campaign spending.

Vance was elected vice president last year and resigned in January from the Senate. DeWine appointed Husted, who was his lieutenant governor, to succeed Vance.

Whoever is elected next year in the Senate race will have to run again in 2028 for a full six-year term.

Since losing the 2022 election, Ryan and his family moved from his Howland home to Plain City in Union County. Ryan said in December: “This is the happiest I’ve been personally and professionally in a long time.”

Ryan serves as a consultant and advocate for a natural gas organization and for a cryptocurrency group.

Ryan has also been critical of the Democratic Party, saying in December, “Our brand is so bad,” and it’s been “hog-tied by a bunch of fringe interests that have moved them away from Bill Clinton and Barack Obama into this realm of really extreme politics that don’t connect with anybody’s day-to-day economic situation.”