A businessman from Texas who’s launched a campaign for the G-O-P’s 2024 nomination for president is visiting Iowa this week. Ryan Binkley is also a pastor and co-founder of Create Church in a suburb of Dallas. “The Lord really placed it in my heart really about eight years ago. I really started hearing a message in my heart about what’s needed in our country,” Binkley says, “and today I see our country really in the biggest crisis I think that it’s been in the last 30-40 years and I see a great need for us to unify our country so we can tackle some of the biggest problems we have and I believe now’s the time.” Binkley says one of the biggest obstacles the country faces is an unwillingness between the left and right to compromise.

“We need leaders that will do more than just talk unity,” Binkley says. “I remember when President Biden ran, he was making statements about unifying our country, but he never gave us anything that we can unify on, so it’s going to take a lot more than talk. We’re going to actually have to do it.” Binkley considers the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border to be the cause of many of America’s biggest problems.”Obviously we have a huge crisis with crime, but now the drugs that are coming in,” Binkley says. “…Opioids are the number one killer of young people age 18-25 and it’s about 200-300 young people a day that are dying and the politicians are just watching it happen and this is where unity comes in on this. I really think it’s going to take both parties to unify on this issue.”

Ryan Binkley. (Binkley campaign photo)

Binkley says Republicans have a great opportunity to connect with college students who are facing a weak job market and a tough economy. “Inflationary spending, the kind of things that we do with our monetary and fiscal policy today is not a long term win for them,” Binkley says, “and I think we have a great chance now to begin to speak to them (about) what freedom looks like, what smaller government looks like, what it means to their pocketbook, what is means to job opportunities.”

Binkley is the C-E-O of a business consulting firm with 400 employees. He also founded a non-profit called “The Way to Freedom” last July. Its website says the country needs leaders with integrity and lists freeing the economy and solving immigration as top goals.