8 Hours On the Campaign Trail With Kathleen Rice

Kathleen Rice; Photo: Katie Friedman

The actual headquarters of Kathleen Rice’s congressional campaign is located in an unassuming office building within Garden City, Long Island. Inside, the phone is ringing. Braided dog treats tend to be strewn around the carpeted floor and a sign drawn in multicolored marker (a task engineered by Rice’s eight-year-old niece, Ruby), spells out “Kathleen Rice four Congress. ” At the front of the office, a paper easel reads: “One Day(s) Until Election. ” It is November 3rd, and in fewer than 36 hours, arrêters will decide whether Rice will take a seat in the United States House of Associates.


Noon, 18 hours until polls open
At the moment, however , Rice is sitting at the head of her morning staff meeting inside the Nassau County Court Home. For the last nine years Rice has served as the district attorney for Nassau Region, elevating the office to one of the most respected in the nation. The first female DA within the county, she has pioneered laws surrounding DWI by harshly prosecuting crimes because manslaughter (earning her a segment on 60 Minutes), tackled government problem cases, and spearheaded an illegal gun buyback program. “One of the goals was to make the DA’s office the best in the country, ” says Rice, “It was just my dream job. ”

Inside Rice's campaign office within Garden City; Photo: Katie Friedman

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When she was first elected as the AG, it was a controversial win: Rice had just turned 40 and had pulled ahead of a 31-year incumbent, Denis Dillon, for whom she had once interned. “People were devastated because I beat an institution, ” Rice displays. “At first I thought it was a gender thing…but I actually think [it was] the fact that I was young. I was just such a different picture associated with what the people thought about the DA. ”

Kathleen Rice; Photo: Katie Friedman

Rice, now 49, is a slim woman with wide blue eyes as well as thick auburn hair slightly gray at the temples. She is full of energy and appears to subsist on candy corn and the stray Twizzler. On this day, she's dressed up in a trim gray suit with a white top and a long gold diamond necklace.

Rice leans forward in her chair as her team discusses brand new techniques to combat drugged driving (drug related deaths in New York state exceed traffic accidents and gun violence) and new road-side saliva testing laws. After 45 minutes, an aide reminds Rice of the time and she apologizes as well as excuses herself-Senator Gillibrand is waiting for her at a rally for local Democrats in Long Beach.

For the last 10 months, Rice has simultaneously been campaigning against Bruce Blakeman (Rep. ), for a seat formerly held by Carolyn McCarthy. When McCarthy decided to step down after 18 years in The legislature to undergo cancer treatment, she encouraged Rice to run in her place. “If somebody ever asks you to run for office, don’t think about it. Just state yes, ” Rice says. “Because if you thought about it, your rational solution is going to be, ‘No way. ’”

As of Oct 15, polls for the congressional race had Rice leading Blakeman by dual digits. She's raised $3. 1 million in campaign funds and obtained endorsements from Hillary Clinton (who swore her into office in 2005), New York congressman Joseph Crowley (Dem. ), the Long Island Herald, and Emily’s List. Her opponent, Blakeman, raised $1. 6 million (nearly $900, 000 from his own account) and was endorsed by former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani. Like most congressional races for Democrats this election, it is expected to become close.

2: 00 P. M., 16 hours until polls open
It requires Rice and her team 30 minutes to drive from Garden City to the nearby chapter for Democrats in Long Beach, which is next to a surf store. A crowd of labor workers and volunteers has packed sardine-style into the little office where posters of JFK, MLK, President Obama, and “Kathleen Grain for Congress” hang on the walls. Four of Rice’s siblings (Kathleen is one associated with 10), her grandmother, and her niece Ruby gather in the front. Everybody in her Irish Catholic family is tall, with strawberry blond tresses and a pronounced resemblance to one another.

(From left to right) Rice's sisters Christine, Ellen, and Elizabeth; Photo: Katie Friedman

“Are you ready to get the political election out for national Election Day? Are we going to win this competition? ” Senator Kirsten Gillibrand asks the group when she takes the ground. “Yes we are! ” The room cheers loudly.

“Kathleen is a fighter. She features our values, she believes in our democracy, ” Gillibrand continues. “But our own democracy doesn’t work unless regular, everyday people stand up and demand change. ”

Sen. Kristen Gillibrand and Rice; Photo: Katie Friedman

When Rice requires the microphone she encourages the crowd to knock on doors, access it the phone, and make the most of the time leading up to the election to rally voters. The girl mentions her strong record as DA, the fight for equal pay for the same work, and the need for children to have access to a good education from an early age.

“We possess 24 hours left, ” Rice says, “No rest for the weary-there is plenty of time for you to rest on November fifth. ”

After the rally, Gillibrand reiterates the need for much more gender balance in politics. “If Congress was 51 percent women... we might not be fighting the battles of our mothers and our grandmothers, we would become moving forward, ” she says. “I hope women, particularly, make sure their voices tend to be heard because we are very much underrepresented in Washington. ”

The scene at the Lengthy Beach rally; Photo: Katie Friedman

3: 30 P. M., 14 . 5 hours until polls open
Gillibrand and Rice part ways. Rice requires her campaign to Waldbaum’s supermarket to meet more Long Beach locals-it scars her second visit in the last 24 hours. In the mornings, Rice goes to local teach stations to introduce herself to grumbling commuters, and visits schools in pick-up time to meet parents. “I try to be gentle, ” she says, laughing, prior to she dives in to shake shoppers’ hands. “It’s almost over, ” the girl promises one woman pushing a cart inside. “Tomorrow is the last period you will have to see these ads. ”

Greeting Waldbaums' shoppers; Photo: Katie Friedman

Her sister Elizabeth and brother-in-law Michael, who have flown in from Ca for the election, smile on the sidelines as they watch Rice graciously greet consumers. Their daughter, Ruby, whom Rice is particularly close with, has left to go searching for an Election Day dress. “Red” (Rice’s family nickname) often flies in order to L. A. to pick up Ruby and bring her to New York for normal visits. Rice is especially in her element with children. Though she has in no way married and doesn’t have children of her own, she has 11 nieces as well as nephews (Ruby is the second youngest) and prides herself on being the favourite aunt; politically, it encourages her to fight for education. “It is the excellent equalizer, ” she says.

Rice with her niece Ruby; Photo: Katie Friedman

4: 30 P. M., 13 and a half hours until polls open
Rice’s strategy team drives to the Martin Luther King Community Center. Outside, men are cooking vegetables on a large rotating grill, and children crowd around Rice with regard to pictures. She helped fund the after-school program through a DA lawsuit towards Walmart, which helped to get the center running again after Hurricane Sandy strike in 2012. Long Beach was one of the regions most devastated by the surprise: Two years ago, on these same streets, people dressed in hazmat suits to stomach debris from flooded buildings. The area was so ravaged that a sense associated with rebuilding is still very present in the Long Beach community.

Kathleen Rice tackles the MLK Community Center; Photo: Katie Friedman

“You guys remember whenever super storm happened. It was really scary, wasn’t it? ” Rice requires the students, who nod in agreement. “I want you to repeat after me personally, ” she instructs. “Feel the fear. ” The students and adults echo the girl. “And do it anyway, ” she finishes. “And do it anyway, ” the actual crowd repeats. “Everyone has obstacles thrown in their way in life, all of us. We have them too, ” Rice tells them. “You gotta feel the fear, and you also gotta do it anyway. ”

Kathleen Rice; Photo: Katie Friedman

6 G. M., 12 hours until polls open
After wrapping up her visit at the local community center, Rice brings pizza to volunteers, stops by the train station, and then earnings to the campaign office, cracking open a fresh bag of candy corn. The actual campaign office is buzzing now. The phone continues to ring, and family and strategy members stream in and out as if the heavy office were the swinging kitchen area doors of a restaurant on Saturday night.

Rice was born in Forest Hills, A queen, but her large family moved to Garden City by the time she was at high school. Three of her siblings still live in the district; two other medication is close by in Manhattan. Her mother was a stay-at-home mom and her dad took over the family construction company; both her parents were college informed and insisted their children be as well. “The opportunities you can have if you get things such as a quality education, and can grow up in a safe environment, are just enormous, ” Grain says. “[As a child] I always wanted life to be reasonable. ”

Her father encouraged her to become a lawyer from an early age (“I was always very vocal, very determined, really passionate about protecting my siblings, ” she reflects, blaming her fierce character on her red hair. ) After law school, Rice spent eight many years working at the DA’s office in Brooklyn, then six years in Philly as a federal prosecutor. When her mother developed dementia, Rice moved returning to Garden City and was asked to run for DA; her mother passed away two months after she was sworn in. Her father passed away last year, soon after Rice began her run for Congress. “I haven’t even been able in order to process that yet, ” she says.

Instead, certain routines helped to keep stability in Rice’s life. Most mornings she wakes up at 5: 30 to look for a five-mile run at the gym, often with a few of her siblings (she’s finished two marathons). Every Sunday morning Rice attends 7: 30 mass in St. Joseph’s Cathedral-the same service she attended with her father. This past Weekend, her campaign team accompanied her to that mass-followed by six additional solutions at local synagogues and churches. (Nassau county is nearly 20 percent Jewish, along with one of the highest orthodox populations in America. )

“When you might be on the campaign trail, so much of what you do has nothing to do with you, ” says Grain. “It’s really important, no matter what you do in life, to have one hour a day where you just relax and do whatever recharges your battery. ”

7: 30 P. M., ten and a half hours until polls open
The group packs once more into its caravan of SUVs and heads to Queens. WNYC plays on the radio, predicting a recap of recent polls leading up to the next day’s elections; now, under 12 hours before voting will begin, the conversation feels personal and tense along with anticipation.

“I’m sick of hearing about the polls, ” says Coleman Lamb, the spokesman for the Rice campaign. “You get to a point where you’ve got to believe in that you’ve done what you can-but I want to win it for her. ”

eight P. M., 10 hours until polls open
The night sky is tinged pink when the Rice campaign arrives at its final stop. A narrow atrio leads into the Chabad house where the remains of Menachem Mendel Schneerson tend to be buried. Schneerson, known as the Rebbe, is considered one of the great leaders of the Hasidic Jewish community. Since his death in 1994, many people make pilgrimages in order to his remains to make a prayer. On each election eve before her campaign, Grain has been led here by her friend, Rabbi Perl. The group huddles together and is instructed to change into rubber-soled shoes (it is considered disrespectful in order to walk on sacred ground while wearing leather) and write a prayer on a page of paper. Rabbi Perl takes Rice’s team through a back door to disclose an expansive graveyard of tightly packed white tombstones inscribed with Hebrew letters. Rabbi Perl explains the cemetery is separated by gender every tomb is shaped like a shoe-a symbol that the soul will one day proceed.

Rabbi Perl and Kathleen Rice; Photo: Katie Friedman

The tomb from the Rebbe; Photo: Katie Friedman

Rabbi Perl leads the women to a mausoleum as well as through a narrow corridor (in the orthodox faith women and men must pray individually, too) lined with prayer books and lit with tea candles. The actual group passes through a wooden door on the other end of the room and comes forth into a bright white marble square open to the night sky. He talks about the work associated with great leaders and shares the parable of an aged rabbi who trained, “If you are bound above, you will never fall below. ” In the center, big shreds of paper lay discarded. The room is quiet, and Rice quietly reads a prayer from the Jewish book (chapter 50, to represent her following birthday). Then she tears her paper in half and drops it in to the basin of discarded prayers, like wishbone broken in two.

At twelve: 33 A. M., on November 5th, Kathleen Rice won the congressional seat for New York District 4, with 64. 2 percent of the political election.

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