Hello Kossacks,
It’s a special honor to join my friends on DailyKos this afternoon, just hours after the official launch of my temporary U.S. Senate campaign website. We are working daily to add content and interactive features to the site and hope to be fully operational very soon. In the meantime, I hope each of you will share it with your friends and encourage them to contribute or sign up to join our netroots team.
More below the fold.
I also want to thank Markos for his entry in the last hour. He seems to understand the Oklahoma political landscape pretty well.
Last week I filed papers with the Secretary of the Senate declaring myself a candidate for the U.S. Senate seat in Oklahoma occupied for the last 13 years by Jim Inhofe, who currently boasts on his website that he is one of the last right wing Senators left. Unfortunately, Senator Inhofe’s partisan rhetoric doesn’t help Oklahomans get health care for their kids, body armor for our troops, or pump $3-per-gallon gas into their cars.
As a member of the evenly-divided Oklahoma State Senate, I had to work with Republicans in order to get results for my constituents and for all Oklahomans. Unfortunately, Jim Inhofe believes that if it’s Democratic, it’s wrong.
I am extremely grateful to my wife and our families for encouraging me to run, even though we all know that Jim Inhofe has waged notoriously negative campaigns against his opponents in the past. I have also been heartened by a substantial draft movement on the web and by the support from many of my colleagues in the state legislature.
In many ways, my decision to run for the U.S. Senate is deeply personal. When my brother David Rice died in the World Trade Center on 9/11, my life and the lives of most Americans were changed forever. This motivated me to get involved in politics because I wanted the post-9/11 world to be one that is safe and where we can retain our Democratic principles and our good standing in the world. I will always seek to honor his life by doing everything in my power to ensure that America stays focused on the real terrorist threat, Al Qaeda and other international terrorist networks, and not on conventional wars in the Middle East that are counterproductive and entirely unrelated to the network of people who attacked us on September 11th, 2001.
I am looking forward to today’s dialogue and to my continuing dialogue with the netroots community throughout this campaign.
Thank You,
Andrew Rice
P.S. And HERE IS MY ACTBLUE PAGE. If you are moved to contribute, consider doing it through ACTBLUE to demonstrate the power of online networking and small dollar contributions!