Published: August 20, 2008 11:28 am            

Chatting with Oklahoma State Senator Andrew Rice

Ada — Below is an interview with Oklahoma State Senator Andrew Rice, transcripted in its entirety. Rice was in the Ada area earlier this year, and agreed to stop by for an interview in the AEN newsroom. Staff Writer Judd Morse was on hand for the interview.



Judd Morse: First off, you’ve been on the campaign trail for some months now. So far, how does the experience of running for US Senate compare to that of running for State Senate? What have been some of the challenges you’ve faced thus far?



Andrew Rice: You know, it’s different. A state legislative race is unique because obviously you’re in a smaller area. So you get out, go door-to-door and to events, get a real good chance to have a lot of direct voter contact with most of your voters. And so, the difference in running state-wide, you know state-wide with 77 counties, it’s hard to get out and to meet a huge percentage of voters. So it’s been a little frustrating because that’s my favorite part in campaigning, the retail politics side of it. Finding out what people are going through, and sort of finding out what they’re looking for. Then you get your chance to offer up to them what your vision is. But it’s been a great experience because I’m getting to sort of figure out region-to-region about different parts of the state — areas that are doing well, other areas that are struggling because the local economy may be different. In western Oklahoma with natural gas booming out there, there’s a lot of revenue. And so you go to Elk City and they’re doing pretty well. But then you can go to other towns where they have manufacturing jobs that have left, and it’s created some economic strains.



JM: So there are some pretty drastic changes?



AR: There’s a lot of diversity with the local economy. And one thing that’s really unique also is areas of the state where you have a very large tribal presence like you do here with the Chickasaw Nation. They themselves, because of their work and their investments, have created a lot of local economic revenue, like with the big hospital they’re building. So it’s creating local jobs, not just for members of the tribes, but for citizens of the state of Oklahoma as well. But it has been a great experience.



JM: In terms of fund-raising, does money for your campaign come more from groups and organizations, or is it from individual donors?



AR: The overwhelming majority is from individuals. The only type of group that could give us money is a Political Action Committee, and I think it’s accounted for less than 4 percent. Part of that is the nature of how these campaigns are. When you run against an incumbent, there’s a lot of political action committees that represent different industries, different interest groups that aren’t going to go against the incumbent because they don’t want to upset the incumbent. Therefore, they may have a bill that’s coming that affects, say, the manufactures, and they want to go see them, and you know. It’s too bad that works, but that’s the way that Washington works. And so, if you look at his [Inhofe’s] reports, he’s got a tremendous amount of money in PAC money. Probably about half of his money comes from PAC money, compared to a real small minority of mine. So mine overwhelmingly is from individuals, and then a lot of it is really small donors, people who give 25-50 bucks. We have some large donors who can give the maximum, but the majority of ours are people who give in the $100 to $50 to $25 range.



JM: Before anything else, you’ll be competing for the Democratic nomination in July’s primary election. How have you been able to set yourself apart from Jim Rogers, the other Democrat that’s running?



AR: Yeah, you know, I don’t really know a lot about him. I’m just really getting out, just talking about what my principles are. What I would like to do if I’m elected, like work in a cross-party alliance when necessary to get something done, rather than staying stuck in your party ideology. And then you come home for recess and you don’t have much to offer the people of Oklahoma. I don’t really know what he’s running on; I’m not going to be doing much contrasting with him. This is just a chance for me to get out and find out what voters are concerned with and see if we can find some common ground. But I’ll be busy with that a lot. You know, we’re going to be doing a state-wide, where we go through most parts of the state, RV tour on the week after July 4th, from the 7th to the 12th. I think we’re coming to this area and the surrounding counties. And so we’ll be trying to get local media to cover some small events we’re doing. I’ll probably go out and do some canvassing in certain neighborhoods.



JM: Assuming things go your way in the primary election, your next challenge will most likely be Senator Inhofe, who will likely win the GOP nomination. What will your plan of attack be? How will you kick things off?



AR: Well, I’m still really in the process of introducing myself so much to voters. There was a big public poll that came out recently where my name I.D. was very low. A lot of people don’t know anything about me. So there’ll still be a lot of introducing myself, my background, what motivated me to first become a state senator and now run for this seat. But when it does come time to contrast myself and him, a lot of it is going to be on obviously some votes he’s made, and failures to support legislation that’s good for the state of Oklahoma. Whether it’s his voting against student loan funding that would have helped a lot of our college students pay for school by having lower loans, or whether it’s the Indian Health Services federal money that would have helped a lot of our tribes with the big hospitals and clinics that they’re building. But generally more of our contrasting with him is that he’s someone who really seems to be in love with party politics. That he’s into fighting whoever the new Democrat on the scene is in Washington, whether it was Bill Clinton in the 1990s or Nancy Pelosi the last couple of years, and then it’ll probably be President Obama after this year, if he wins re-election. He sort of has this penchant of, it’s all about fighting the other party, and not really about good public policy. Sometimes that may be his own party, offering up stuff that’s good for the country, or maybe crossing the aisle and working with someone from the other party to get something good done on energy independence or whatever it may be. That’s something that we’re finding, and this again is not just something that I’ve come up with; it’s something that when I go out and talk to people, this is what they tell me. Everyday voters. They’re really tired of that political posturing and bickering across party lines. And we’re in the position that we’re in now, with $4 gas, and more people who are uninsured with healthcare because of the sort of people who have been more concerned with this stuff over the last 10-15 years and not preparing for this crisis we find ourselves in. Because we knew that a lot of this was coming; we knew that healthcare was getting to the point where we knew we couldn’t pay for it; we knew that if we didn’t diversify our energy options that it’d be the year 2008 and you didn’t have any other choice to fill up your truck or your car in Oklahoma than with gasoline. So that, I think, is probably one of the bigger negatives that we find through our campaign and through polling. That he doesn’t have a lot more to offer than being a Republican attack dog.



JM: Your stance on many key issues that will be under the microscope in the November elections differs drastically from that of Senator Inhofe. What’s your view on issues such as the war in Iraq and environmental responsibility as opposed to Inhofe’s?



AR: Well the war in Iraq, I thought, was a real strategic mistake. Any time you’re going to vote to go to war or not go to war, you have to weigh whether it’s necessary to protect our country and/or our national interests. And if it is, then our country comes together both with the money and putting people out there. People who step forward to sacrifice, to protect the country. I don’t think it really met those measures, and there’s a lot of evidence at the time that it didn’t. Granted, we were a year after September 11th, which was a very difficult time. People were very afraid and anxious about the future. And understandably, having just been attacked. And so I think that that cut in a bit to people’s objectivity in Congress about whether we should slow the process down, let the inspectors do the job, and really be objective about where the real problem was. And so one of the reasons this was a real strategic blunder is that we’ve got a huge part of our own military stuck in a country in the middle of a civil war insurgency. International terrorism is very much a multi-faceted process that has spread all over the globe. It goes from dealing with these extremist groups in the Philippines to working with intelligence agencies in Europe to find out where these sleeper cells may be, like the ones that attacked the trains in Great Britain. So it’s a huge issue, and to have so much of our military force tied down and so much money spent in a conflict zone where Al Qaeda and its public resources that support it weren’t located. It’s a real strategic blunder. Separate from the fact that you have all these lives that have been lost, American and Iraqi, which is a huge problem. So essentially my position on the war is that we should have never done it. But now that we’re in there, the military has done its basic-level job of apprehending Saddam Hussein and created somewhat of an opportunity for the Iraqi government and security forces to take care of themselves. So I would definitely vote for a phased withdrawal, to pull our troops out of there so that they could be better utilized to deal with real threats.



AR: On environmental issues, not dealing with basic, mutually agreed-upon dangers that we have with environmental problems— and this is pretty bipartisan. I mean, Senator John McCain, who’s the Republican nominee for president, is running on dealing with climate change as a serious issue. It deals with national security and our economic security. Not dealing with it is economically devastating. It’d be nice if we lived in a world where we could say, “Well, we can ignore it and go along down the road.” But not dealing with it is worse than anything. Because there’s some pain in dealing with it, too. Transitioning into having a more diverse array of energy options to fuel your home and meet vehicular energy needs is going to be a big transition because we’ve sort of put off the problem. Sort of like in a bad relationship. You ignore this problem you have with your spouse and it gets worse. The good thing is that Oklahoma is positioned to where we can benefit from the new energy economy as much as we benefit from the traditional energy economy that we are already leaders in, in natural gas and oil. Being an agricultural state, being a state that has such a huge amount of wind energy potential, further positions us to where we create jobs in places like Ada and Pontotoc County, so that our children can stay here and have good-paying jobs in the new energy future. Biofuels and such, southern Oklahoma will have a big role to play in that with soy bean and switchgrass and all the stuff that’s going on between here and Ardmore. Again, Senator Inhofe has sort of taken a stance out there that’s really made him isolated within his own party. There’s not a lot of Republicans debating whether it’s global warming or climate changes that is a problem. Now there may be disagreements between party alliances on how to deal with it, but within his own party most have accepted that there has to be something done to deal with it. So that’s the biggest contrast.



JM: And how has your voting record reflected both of those opinions?



AR: Well, on the war, there’s really no direct vote that would be directly attributed to it, being on the state level. Although there was something that was somewhat related to it; I had a bill this year that was not allowed a hearing in committee. The Republicans blocked it. That would have had our state retirement pension plans, the judge retirements, the teacher retirements, all of our big state retirement plans that are invested in mutual funds, that would have forced us to divest our retirements out of mutual funds that invest in countries that are state sponsors of terrorism. Syria, North Korea, Iran. Our idea is that if they are national security threats, we shouldn’t be economically investing with their governments. And there have been a lot of states that have done these divestment plans. This is what we did in South Africa during Apartheid; we divested the money out of South Africa until they dealt with ending Apartheid. That bill was stopped. So that would have had somewhat of a direct effect on national security issues.



AR: But on the energy independence issue, we’ve had several. I had a bill that we were able to get an amendment to another bill, converting about 10 percent of our state fleet to alternative fuel vehicles to save on gas prices, to be better on the environment. We got that onto a bill and it got to the House, and it got killed in the House. There was some partisanship. We had a bill to get our school districts to have benchmarks issued to be more energy efficient; like with light bulbs, or the paint they use on the exterior of the buildings to reflect heat, or a new dishwasher they buy for the cafeteria, making sure it’s energy efficient. Just try to find ways to incentivize them to move along. There would be no penalties. There are a lot of school districts that are already doing it; this would just uniformly try to get all the school districts in Oklahoma to do that work. And then I had some others that were just not allowed hearing. I don’t know if it was because I’m running for what I’m running or if it’s just philosophical difference, but the Republican leadership was able to block a lot of what we attempted to do on that. Although what’s interesting is when that stuff hits the Floor, when you’re able to get it out there and voted on, we’ve gotten quite a bit of rural Republican state senators and House members that are pretty supportive of it because of this intersection of agriculture and industry. Once we sort of got it around their leadership, there was quite a bit of bipartisan agreement on working on that stuff. But there’s just some politics on not letting it out.



JM: How do you respond to charges that claim you don’t have the necessary experience for the job, saying you’ve only served one term as a State Senator?



AR: You know, the experience that someone like Jim Inhofe has, which is being a politician for 40 years and sort of stuck in his ways, and being part of the Washington Establishment that hasn’t really accomplished all that much in the last 10 or 15 years, that’s not really experience that I want. So if that’s what the voters are looking for, then I imagine they’ll re-elect him. The experience I have is in a legislative environment, on knowing how to have good working relationships with people that, you know, you agree with 95 percent of the time, and then people you only agree with 10 percent of the time. But still having good working relationships, where you have decorum and integrity, and respect each other. And you know how to build those coalitions across party lines and getting people in. Sometimes it’s within your own caucus; you may have members of your own political party that don’t agree with you, and you sort of build coalitions with people of the other caucus. So I know how to get things done and get bills passed. I’ve had about six or seven bills passed and signed into law by the governor. All of them except for one had House Republican authors, so there’s a lot of bipartisanship there where we came together to get that stuff done. I know how to go to the people who are the experts, people who work in different federal agencies, people who are running federally funded health clinics in Oklahoma. For them to tell me, what are the things they need, how can they better do their job? Whether it’s more research or new policies. I know how to listen to the experts and not claim that I know all the answers. When you’re a legislator, or you’re a member of Congress, member of state legislature, you’re really not an expert of any one issue. You may have one area, you know, like I’m the Co-Chair of Health, I know a little bit more about healthcare issues. But you sort of need to rely on vast networks of advisors and people who are out there on the ground doing the work. If you approach the job thinking that you know better than everybody, you can really limit your ability to do good things for the state. So I’m not worried about that. I’ve been out campaigning in a lot of different areas, and usually when someone brings up my lack of experience or my youth, they do it in a joking way. They sort of, you know, ask if I’m old enough to run, or something. We haven’t found it to be an impeder yet, but we’ll see. We could be surprised.



JM: Many of Inhofe’s constituents are fiercely loyal evangelical Christian voters. How will you work to appeal to them during your campaign?



AR: Well, you know, part of what we do is to talk about Oklahoma values and to really broaden the platform of that. Traditionally, those have been centered around a couple of wedge issues that get people very emotional on both sides. And I’m sure we’ll have discussions about that during the campaign. But part of what we’re doing is trying to really broaden it to deal with economic fairness issues, which very much appeals to social conservative and evangelical voters. If you and your spouse both work hard, play by all the rules, if you don’t have the ways you used to be able to provide for your family or you don’t have basic healthcare coverage, is that morally right? Is it morally right to pollute our atmosphere at a time when we could be transitioning to other energy sources that are better for the environment, better for the planet that we’ll hand over to our children. There are a lot of ways that those issues are very much important. My approach with any demographic group is to not cede any of those groups, whether they’re a traditional Democratic constituency or not, to not cede them to Inhofe at all. I may not win that demographic group, but I want to cut into it as much as I can, as far as peeling voters away to come over to our side. We find that in Oklahoma, a lot of people are not party-loyal. There are other states where you sort of get these block-party votes, people who are part of the machine, one side or the other. Here we get a lot of people that don’t really have a party allegiance, so they’re pretty open to going one way or the other. If they like you as a person, if they can find common ground on enough of the key issues. Most people understand that it’s going to be hard for them to find a candidate who they agree with on every single issue. So we’re trying to go out there and have a real honest conversation about where can we find common ground, and can we have a working relationship. Or maybe we can’t. So we’ll see how the chips fall on that in the election.



JM: If I remember correctly, you have an educational background in theology as well, don’t you?



AR: Yeah, I have a master’s in theological studies. I was going to teach at that level, but I got into journalism. So there are some areas that, as a Christian, with the work I’ve done I understand our theological history and scripture and traditions and the way that our religious communities and our churches have engaged society to try to improve society. There are some common areas there that I think with my past work I can find some common ground with voters.



JM: How do you respond to claims that you’ve “spent a lifetime weaving a tangled web of left-wing political connections,” as asserted by the web site andrewricesweb.com?



AR: Yeah, I like that I have a “lifetime” of doing stuff, when they’re also saying I don’t have any experience. Two years of lack of experience must be a lifetime of weaving... You know, there’s no substantiated claims on the site. I mean, there are positions that I’m progressive about, there are positions that I’m moderate on, there are positions that I’m conservative on. There have been traditional Democratic groups that have been supportive of me, that have come to me to help me on issues or with elections. Which, I’ve been happy to have their support. There’ve been groups that aren’t traditional Democratic, sort of ideological groups that want to support me. And so that’s just sort of the Republican Party, that site was started by the Republican Party. They don’t have a lot to offer the people of Oklahoma, or their own party members, Republican voters. They don’t have a lot to offer them or Democrats or independents this year because they’ve been at the helm of government over the last eight years and have been at the steering wheel and have driven this country into the ditch, which is where we are economically and with the war and with healthcare, everything. So what they’re doing is the traditional stuff. They’re going to try to make me into some caricature, someone who is not like your average Oklahoman, who is somehow a threat to the Oklahoman way of life. Where the fact of the matter is I’m a father like every other father in Oklahoma. I have two boys. I care about them and want them protected, and to have a good opportunity. I’m very much committed to my family and my community, and I believe in giving back and shared sacrifice. My values and religious traditions have taught me to not be selfish or grow up with blinders on to see only me and my family, but to see myself as part of a larger community. But I imagine there’s going to be a lot more of that between now and the election because Inhofe doesn’t really have much to get re-elected on, so he’s gonna have to try and tear me down.



JM: We’ve touched on this a little bit already, but one of the major hot-button issues right now is soaring gas and energy prices. If elected to the US Senate, how will you help to address these issues?



AR: Well, there’s no silver bullet immediately to bring down energy prices, short of advocating some sort of program to help people pay for gas, which is not feasible given that we’re in a big deficit, we don’t have a lot of revenue. The best and most prudent thing we can do is quickly start transitioning into diversifying our fuel options. You do that by creating big tax credits and tax incentives for people who are starting to invest in big ways. I’m not talking small. In big ways, into creating natural gas as an opportunity for people to drive their cars on. Which means infrastructure has to be there. You have to have natural gas filling stations, you have to be able to have people that know how to work on those kind of tanks, which are different from traditional petroleum tanks. That’s a bill that was brought up before Congress that would have done that, the same way that we incentivize people to sort of move into wi-fi and cellular and all the new communications that we enjoy now today, we’ve done that every step of the way. We try to find ways to incentivize the private sector to do that. The reason why this helps is it means it will be that much sooner and quicker that we will be able to enable — and it’s also the auto industry, with plug-in hybrid technology and all the ways that we can get more electric cars, et cetera. There’s a finite amount of oil out there. Opening up coastal drilling and ANWR is gonna have less than a 3 percent impact on production, and it’s gonna take about eight to ten years. That’s sort of Inhofe’s thing; “Well, we could just drill more.” If we go out there and try to pull up and extract every last amount that may be in some of those areas, or may not, it’s going to have no impact on gasoline prices. We’ve expanded drilling and oil companies have invested huge amounts of money into new exploration. Exxon-Mobile and Chevron and all of them over the last eight to ten years have expanded their ability to drill, and the price of gasoline has gone up two dollars since about 2000. It was $1.70 when Bill Clinton was leaving office, and now it’s approaching $4. Like anything in our capitalist economy when you give people choices and there’s competition, the prices go down. There’s no competition. Unless you are innovative enough to make your own biodiesel fuel in your kitchen and fuel up at home, there’s no competition in choices out there.



JM: Polls by SoonerPoll and Research 2000 indicate that Inhofe’s popularity has seen a dip lately in numbers. What does this signify for your campaign?



AR: There are incumbents in Congress who have been able to show to their constituents that they’re part of this reform process, whether they’re a Democrat or Republican, that’s trying to reform the way that Washington works and to really do something different because the way we’ve been doing it hasn’t been working. Is it going to be easy to do that? No. But there are ways that we, together, across party lines, can try to fix it. If you’re not able to effectively convey that message to your constituents that you’re part of the solution instead of part of the typical way we’ve always done stuff. Sort of lobbing political bombs at the other side. And what you’re seeing in almost every state, whether it’s Oklahoma, New Hampshire, Oregon, Kentucky, Mississippi, is the incumbents’ numbers are dipping because they sort of don’t get it. That what we attribute that much to. And I think as the campaign wraps up and my name I.D. increases, and we start having our ads contrasting our styles, I think you’re going to see it really tighten on the ballot-front. There’s gonna be a pretty evenly split electorate here, and I’ll have a chance. It’s not going to be easy because he’s an incumbent and he’s got much more money than me and a bigger political machine. But I think we have a chance to knock him off and get to 51 percent. You know, we find that, anecdotally, when we go out there and talk to people, that they’re not happy with the job that Senator Inhofe’s doing. So I’m not surprised to see it. And these polls have been done when he’s up, saturating the airwaves with his own TV ads, sort of touting what he says is good for Oklahoma. So it’s pretty remarkable that his numbers are dipping when he’s doing that. I’m not up on TV: I don’t have the money yet to be running continuous TV ads. We feel good about that.



JM: Independent candidate Stephen P. Wallace has also declared candidacy for the seat. What effect could an independent candidate have on your campaign in the long run?



AR: Yeah, you know an independent candidate could go either way. It depends on what type of independent candidate they are, what state you’re in. He could pull votes away from me. I met him and talked to him; he’s a former Republican. And so he’s running as sort of a disgruntled Republican. So if he has the resources to get his message out there, I could see it hurting Inhofe more than me. He’d be pulling from more disgruntled Republican voters who maybe can’t quite bring themselves to vote Democrat, but they want to make a protest vote. So we’ll see. It’ll be interesting to see what role he plays. He sort of feels like his party has left him, is what he’s told me.



JM: Anything else you’d like to say to readers, Senator?



AR: People that are out here that aren’t familiar with me, I encourage them to call our campaign office in Oklahoma City. Hopefully we’ll have a local office down in this area at some point. By all means, please try and reach out to us. Send me an e-mail or a phone call, and I’ll be happy to try and get back to everybody about whatever positions I may have or plans on specific issues and such.



JM: Will you be making your way back to Ada as the campaign continues?



AR: Absolutely. On this RV tour that we’re doing in the middle of July, we’ll be coming through here. Marianna is working on that one with our field staff. And after that, if I’m able to get the nomination, which we feel pretty good about, August, September, October, in the heat of the general election I imagine I’ll come through several more times. Pontotoc County in particular is a real key area where I want to do well, so I’ll be coming back.

        

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