On an autumn Friday not long before the 2018 elections, Susan E. Rice was traveling through the Phoenix airport and watching from afar as Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh moved steadily toward confirmation. The convulsive Senate battle had reached a climax, and for Rice's party an unhappy one: Sen. Susan
On an autumn Friday not long before the 2018 elections, Susan E. Rice was traveling through the Phoenix airport and watching from afar as Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh moved steadily toward confirmation. The convulsive Senate battle had reached a climax, and for Rice’s party an unhappy one: Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, had just announced her support for Kavanaugh, effectively sealing his victory.
They were wrong: Before ruling out the race, Rice had quietly explored the idea of battling Collins for weeks, seeking advice from seasoned politicians in Maine, friendly operatives in Washington and top advisers to former President Barack Obama, including Valerie Jarrett and pollster Joel Benenson. Within her political circle, the sincerity of her interest was clear.
And how eager, after all, is Rice to emerge from the halls of Washington and plunge into the undignified melee of a national political campaign? She would bring clear strengths to a ticket and administration, reinforcing Biden’s message of sober and seasoned leadership and appealing further to Americans who pine for the Obama years.
Allies of Rice have argued privately to Biden advisers that the learning curve for a first-time candidate might be smoother than normal given the strictures of a pandemic-era campaign. If a town-hall meeting or rally might be a relatively new setting for Rice, a television studio or webinar surely would not. They point, too, to the electoral inexperience on the opposing ticket: Rice, after all, has won exactly as many elections as Trump did before defeating Hillary Clinton in 2016.
In an interview, Rice said she was comfortable on the campaign trail, pointing to her activities for Obama. Without addressing the vice presidency explicitly, Rice said she remained interested in running for office. She left open the door to seeking a Senate seat in Washington, D.C., where she grew up and has spent most of her professional life, if the city were to achieve statehood.
The decision not to run for Senate, she said, had been about “a personal reckoning” with not wanting to uproot her family in her daughter’s final years of high school. Among those cautionary voices was Tom Allen, a former Democratic congressman and mayor of Portland who ran against Collins in 2008. Allen, who said he had known Rice’s mother, called himself an admirer of the diplomat and said she had given no definitive signal about her level of interest in the race.One person who did take Rice seriously was Collins, who just days after Rice’s tweet assailed her in a television interview as lacking even the basic credential of Maine residency.
But Rice did not seek to court a swelling grassroots movement, in Maine and Washington, that was mobilizing against Collins after her vote for Kavanaugh. Other candidates were doing so, including Sara Gideon, the state House speaker, who would soon win support from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and build a grassroots following online that helped her raise $9 million in just a few months this spring.
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