Can Rice stick?

The hero myth goes like this: A novice departs the safety of home and wanders into the unkonwn, roughly hewing to the path of destiny (think Jesus in the Judean desert).

Along the way, the novice meets sage helpers who provide useful trinkets or a nudge in the right direction (think Yoda and Luke on the swamp planet Dagobah).

As the novice gains experience, he battles a personal or external foe or meets with great personal loss (think Michael Corleone and the car explosion that killed his young bride in the Sicilian countryside).

The darkness and loss are most intense shortly before the novice achieves enlightenment, the elixir of life (think Buddha nearly starving as he sat under the Bodhi tree).

The newly minted hero then returns home to bestow the boons of his enlightenment upon his fellow man and woman (think Andrew Rice returning home after the death of his brother in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to stump for progressive politics and reconciliation in the face of extremism).

Rice, the 34-year-old freshman state senator and Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, studied mythology and religion at Colby College and Harvard Divinity School, internalizing this archetype and applying it to his life. The wandering took him as far as jungle villages in Sri Lanka and an AIDS hospice in India, where he filmed a documentary on the work of a tattooed and morally ambiguous AIDS activist, an unlikely sage.

His intellectually inevitable return to Oklahoma was rooted partly in what Rice calls the "Gramscian idea of the organic intellectual." The Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci divided the intellectual world into two camps: those who floated above the fray and those who did something with their knowledge. Rice placed himself squarely in the latter camp.

"If you go from a rural area to a place of culture and gain knowledge and experience there, it is your organic responsibility to return to your community and effect change," Rice told a magazine at Colby College shortly after coming back to Oklahoma.

Now Rive wants to sell the boons of his journey, a progressive message, in a statewide Senate race, the top of the ticket in 2008. The question is: Do Oklahomans want what Rice has to offer?

In 2004, the Senate race between Brad Carson and Tom Coburn drew more money from national interest groups and party committees than any race in Oklahoma history. Carson outspent Coburn by more than $1.2 million and still lost by 12 points. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee spent $2.3 million in the losing effort.

In 2007, the Democrats are steering the national debate, abandoning Rovian wedge issues like gay marriage for a dressing down of U.S. strategy in Iraq. But it remains to be seen whether national Democrats, feeling burned from the Carson race, will pour millions into a young candidate or whether sending money to Oklahoma is like kicking a dead donkey.

When Rice filed his candidacy papers to run with the Federal Election Commission on Aug. 2, he kicked off a new journey into the unknown, a road lined with a million handshakes in rural hamlets that passes over multi-million dollar fund-raising mountains and through dark forests haunted by 30-second attack ads. The road leads to Washington or nowhere.

Oklahoma state Sen. Andrew Rice smiles as he waits for a television interview in Oklahoma City, Tuesday, July 29, 2008. Rice won the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe. (The Associated Press)The message

Democrats get 10 percent off their mushroom-smothered steaks and iced teas at the Westside Club on the outskirts of McAlester, a stubbornly Democratic disrict for state Sen. Richard Lerblance and state Rep. Terry Harrison, who owns the restaurant.

The tenth-off steaks translated to a sympathetic audience for Rice a this stop -- one of dozens of sallies into rural Oklahoma in his nascent bid for the U.S. Senate. Lerblance, a Democrat with a pristine, white cowboy har, stood up to introduce Rice and thanked hime for "going out on a limb for the party and the state of Oklahoma."

Rice took the floor and delivered his stump, at ease and talking with his hands, weaving biography with policy. He grew up in Oklahoma City, attended Casady School and went to college back east in Maine. (He couched this with the fact that he got in on a football scholarship.)

He ran into trouble with alcohol in high school. His family had struggled s well, and that led him to seek help. He was in 12-step programs by age 20.

He mention offhand that the audience probably knew his brother, David, was killed in the World Trade Center attacks. His death was a wake-up call that made Rice "deeply focused on trying to figure out what happened on 9/11 and why our country was so unsafe."

Rice described his search for accountability in Washington alonside other families of 9/11 victims, romaing office from K Street to Capitol Hill where then-U.S. Rep. Porter Goss hid behind his office foor rather than face the widows of 9/11 victims. This lack of accountability, Rice said, trickled down from President George W. Bush to all Republicans who have "gone Washington" like his potential opponent, Sen. James Inhofe.

Over the same period, Rice spoke to experts on national security who were unnerved by the beating of war drums at the White House. Rice was vocally opposed to the Iraq War from the beginning, appearing on "The O'Reilly Factor" and telling anyone who would listen that he felt the war seemed dangerous, rash and counterproductive. It was not a popular position.

"They said: You're unpatriotic. You're dishonoring your loved ones who were killed," Rice told the McAlester Democrats. "We're not proud of it, but we were right about everything."

In an interview at his Oklahoma City office, Rice said he would support bills with a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, but wanted to be a realist about how long that withdrawal would take and make sure the United States could pull out its troops and equipment safely.

When Rice told the audience about his two boys -- one 3 years old and one born this February -- he bemoaned the fact that conservatism hadn't lived up to its fiscally responsible billing. The dept of Repbublican presidencies would fall to his kids, he said.

Finally, he acknowledged his lack of experience, something Inofe has in spades after 13 years in Washington. "I haven't been a career politician all my life," Rice siad. "I don't want the experience Inhofe has."

The battle

When Carson packed up and left his Capitol Hill office after losing the 2004 U.S. Senate race to Coburn, his operation was so broke it had an unpaid intern measure every picture fram and stapler in the office with a ruler so more boxes wouldn't be ordered than necessary.

State Sen. Andrew Rice, D-Oklahoma City, and his son Noah attend the Slow Food Fall Picnic Oct. 7 at the Harn Homestead. (The Oklahoma Gazette)Campaign operatives from the Inhofe and Rice camps agree that each side will raise and spend at least $3 million in the next year, leaving someone with an office in Washington. If recent history is any indication, Rice is the early favorite for measuring staplers in December 2008.

No Democratic Senate candidate has notched more than 40 percent of the vote in Oklahoma since University of Oklahoma President David L. Boren gave up his seat in 1994. Inhofe has stockpiled $1.4 million in preparation for whoever faces him in the general election, according to FEC reports filed at the end of June. Although the deadline for Rice to file his first report with the FEC was Oct. 15, he said in a release that he had raised $311,000 in the first 60 days of his candidacy.

If elected, Rice would fly by New Hampshire Republican John Sununu to become the younges member of the U.S. Senate by nearly a decade. 

Rice readily admits that he is an underdog. Inhofe's ampaign is confident that, despite a national climate set against Republicans, Oklahoma remains as red as Sooners quarterback Sam Bradford's home jersey. Inhofe's campaign manager, Josh Kivett, said the incumbent's fundraising effort has been slightly more agressive this cycle. His $1.4 million on hand is nearly half what he spent on the entire election five years ago. 

"There's no doubt that the environment is different than it was in 2002 when the senator last ran for re-election," Kivett said. "But we have every confidence that the senator will be re-elected again in 2008."

Steve Patterson, a campaign consultant for Rice and a seasoned political operative who worked on Dave McCurdy's race against Inhofe in 1994, pointed out that Oklahoma has voted for yong leaders before. Boren was 34 when he became governor, and Don Nickles was 33 when he joined the U.S. Senate.

Rice has served only one year in the state Senate and faces an uphill battle outside his urban Oklahoma City district -- arguably the most liberal precinct in the state. "In terms of expanding his name recognition across the state, that's just a 24-7 slug-it-out job that Andrew's looked at and is willing to take on," Patterson said.

Without shaking the hands of Oklahoma's political mavens who can drive a grassroots campaign, Rice could fall flat and never tap into a store of national vitriol aimed at Inhofe, said Markos Moulitsas, founder of the left-wing blog Daily Kos.

"Inhofe is a national joke. He is very much a top-tier villain, somebody who could be easy to run against from a national perspective," Moulitsas said. "(But) I wouldn't even sai it's a second-tier race for us. It's a third-tier race."

To climb the ladder, Rice will have to prove he can pull in $25 checks from rural Oklahomans and motivate college students to knock on doors for him.

"If he can do that, this race merits attention. If he can't do that, then this isn't going to be much of a race," Moulitsas said.

If elected, Andrew Rice would be the youngest member of the U.S. Senate by nearly a decade.The helpers

Two days after Rice launched his campaign Web site, Moulitsas published a blog entry introducing Rice to his readers. The first sentence was, "A real Senate race in Oklahoma?" The next day, Rice stopped by the blog for a real-time Inhofe hate-fest with some enthusiastic Kossacks who offered encouragement.

A close look at Rice's state Senate finance records shows donations that could become bullet points for one of Bill O'Reilly's "Talking Points Memos." Not many Oklahoma state Senate campaigns solicit donations from actors like Edward Norton and Janeane Garofalo, or Eli Pariser, executive director of MoveOn.org, whose group drew the ire of Democrats and Republicans last month with a full-page ad in The New York Times asking if it should be "General Petraeus or General Betray Us?"

Pariser declined an interview with the Oklahoma Gazette, saying "it's hard to keep separate my personal endorsement and feelings from MoveOn's." Rice said he met Pariser while working on 9/11 advocacy in Washington.

Such affiliations make Rice an attack ad waiting to happen, said Walter Ludwig, executive director of Project 90, which helps field Democrats in deep-red districts. (The name comes from the Woody Allen quote, "Ninety percent of life is jsut showing up.")

"It doesn't matter whether you take money from 'Little Sisters of the Poor' or from MoveOn," Ludwig said. "They're going to attack you anyway."

Rice said he pulled modestly on his connections to the film world in Los Angeles and New York City and his friends in Washington during his state Senate campaign. Big Democratic donors are interested in seeing someone like himself run against someone like Inhofe, and he could draw deeper on that base without much effort. "I'm confident about outside help and I assume it will continue to come. Outside stuff is more involuntary," Rice said.

The interest is there. Ludwig said he plans to come to Oklahoma and speak with Rice about how Project 90 could help the campaign. He expects the race to draw attention from both parties. "I think this race could be really feisty," Ludwig said. "I would not be surprised, especially if it starts to look a little closer than it would on paper, if the national (Republican) party came in and started running some nasty stuff."

Rice has met with Sen. Charles Schumer, chair of the DSCC, and discussed strategy. There have been no promises either way on whether the national committee sees Oklahoma as a potential money target, Rice said. DSCC spokesman Matthew Miller said the committee feels Rice is a strong candidate, but that it is too early to talk abotu where money will go.

The DSCC has outpaced its doppelgänger, the Republican National Senatorial Committee nearly two-to-one this cycle in fund raising, Miller said. The DSCC currently has $20.6 million in the bank compared to $7.1 million for the Republicans.

But there are more Senate seats in play this cycle than in 2006 -- Republicans are defending 22 seats -- which makes the competition for cash stiffer on the Democratic side.

"The map is not working in our favor," RNSC spokeswoman Rebecca Fisher said.

For the Republicans -- who have 10 more seats to defend than the Democrats -- the money will flow to vulnerable states, and Oklahoma doesn't make the list yet, she said.

The return

After Rice came back to Oklahoma in 2003 and before he jumped into electoral politics, he found the Progressive Alliance Foundation and the Red River Democracy Project. Both organizations sought to unearth pockets of progressive thought in the state.

Now, "progressive politics" is the ideological mantra that hums beneath his stump speech. It got him elected to his district in Oklahoma City, and Rice will soon find out if the chant will tip outside downtown Oklahoma City.

"I don't know how many plaid shirts he's got to wear or wheat straws he's got to have in his mouth to wander around the rural areas," said David Walters, the last Democrat to face Inhofe in 2002.

Walters said the climate is vastly different this cycle and Rice may be a better candidate than himself. He donated $1,774 to Rice's state Senate campaign.

In 2002, Inhofe's campaign aired ads of Wlaters taking policy lessons from a Bill Clinton impersonator. "(Inhofe's) view of the Oklahoma public is that if you can just associate any Democrat with a Kennedy or a Clinton, that will be the death knell for them," Walters said, an early association to make this cycle with Hillary Clinton possibly on the ticket.

Walters said he fears that Oklahomans have grown immune to Inhofe's abrasive style like they would a "crazy uncle who pops up every once in a while and says embarrassing things." You can't kick him out of the family, though.

Carson, the latest Democratic Senate candidate to fall in the state, said he also fears the "crazy uncle" treatment could affect Rice, but feels that Inhofe's polarizing nature has led to a more opinionated than disaffected public. "No one is lukewarm about Jim Inhofe," Carson said.

Any Senate challenger in Oklahoma will spend a year and a half working 110-hour weeks, traveling the country and never seeing his family, Carson said. But he thinks Rice is in it for "all the right reasons."

"This is a long road, and he's just getting started," Carson said.