Published: October 23, 2008 12:28 pm      

Rice campaign visits Ada

Ada — Dr. Apple Rice, wife of Oklahoma State Senator and Democratic challenger for U.S. Senate Andrew Rice, spent Wednesday morning in Ada as part of the Rice campaign’s “Working for Main Street” tour.

Rice said the idea of the tour is to visit many downtown areas within Oklahoma communities. The tour will take Rice and her husband through more than 50 Main Street communities. “We just kind of went to downtown Ada and talked to people, telling them about Andrew’s plan for the economy to get Main Street versus Wall Street going again,” said Rice.

Another aspect of the Main Street tour is “to hear about people’s issues here and talk to them, and try and tell them why we think they should vote for Andrew, and why we need a change in Washington,” Rice said.

“He really believes in putting people, regular Oklahomans, the middle class, first,” she said, “as well as small businesses.”

Rice said one of the main ways her husband plans on supporting the middle class is through tax breaks. “People ask, ‘how do you do that? Where do you get the money to do that?’” she said. “Basically it’s closing loopholes for these multi-million dollar companies that are able to, say, have their headquarters based in the Caymon Islands or something like that and get out of paying taxes. If he can stop those things, which to me are just not right and not fair, then you can bring it back to helping the middle class and regular people, which also helps the economy because people can start spending money again.”

Rice said she and her team had managed to cover a sizable chunk of downtown Ada. “We went to the Aldridge Beauty Shop, and then we went and talked to the firefighters,” she said. “We went to the courthouse and walked around there, and went to a jewelry store.”

Both Rice and her husband will be going strong until election time, she said.

“In the next 13 days that we’ve got left, we’re trying to get out and meet people,” she said.

While Rice said the response the campaign has received during the Main Street tour has been very positive, she would rather let people draw their own conclusions by watching Andrew Rice debate the issues with Republican Incumbent Jim Inhofe.

“I wish that all Oklahoman voters could watch more debates between the two of them,” she said.

“But Jim Inhofe has refused to do any more. To me that’s the way (Oklahoma residents) could really get a feel of who these people are and make an informed decision. But Jim Inhofe feels like he doesn’t need to share that with the voters.”