On Saturday morning, Mitt Romney answered the question many have asked during this 2012 presidential election campaign: Who will be his vice-presidential running mate? While names like former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have been circulated, it was Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan [5] who joined the GOP candidate onstage in Virginia to announce their partnership. As Ryan was introduced to a new audience outside of his middle-America constituency, the Guardian [6] dug into the candidate's personal history.
Unlike the vastly moneyed Romney, who was born the son of a state governor and an auto-industry magnate, Ryan's background is more modest and marred by tragedy.
He was born in Janesville, Wisconsin, on 29 January 1970, in the south of the state, amid a region of rolling hills, farms and small towns struggling with the decline of American industry.
His father, Paul Ryan Sr, was a successful lawyer, in Janesville, and from a long established prominent Roman Catholic family in the town. It was a stable and solidly middle class family ideal that Ryan himself has replicated.
He remains a Catholic, married Oklahoma-raised tax lawyer Janna Little in 2000 and has three children.
But Ryan's childhood was not always easy. His father died when Ryan was just 16 years old.
Indeed Ryan – the youngest of four children – discovered his stricken parent in bed, laid low by a fatal heart attack at just 55.
Read more at the Guardian [6].
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