Nassau DA's tenacity takes her career the distance

With Nassau District Attorney Kathleen Rice a declared candidate for state attorney general, her challengers face a rival who attacks full-bore.

In a stunning victory in 2005, political upstart Rice, a Democrat, unseated Nassau's 31-year Republican district attorney, Denis Dillon, in her first bid for public office.

And last November, when Democratic incumbents were dropping like flies, voters gave Rice, 45, a second term.

Raised in an Irish-American family of 10 children, Rice, a marathon runner, graduated from Garden City High School and earned degrees from the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., and Touro Law School.

In 1992, Rice went to work as an assistant district attorney in Brooklyn and served in the homicide bureau, where she tried 21 murder cases in a single year.

Rice moved to Philadelphia in 1999 to work as an assistant U.S. attorney and during her five years there, handled cases involving corporate and wire fraud, gun and drug crimes and public corruption.

Later, she returned to Long Island to run for Dillon's job. She had worked as an intern for Nassau Democratic first vice chairman Robert McDonald in 1989, when he was an assistant district attorney under Dillon. It was McDonald who persuaded Rice to run for district attorney.

"Albany and government in New York in general is in a terrible state," McDonald said, when asked about Rice's bid to become attorney general. "Kathleen is driven to do right. From day one, she looked for innovative ways to fight crime. There's an idealism back in the DA's office that may have been missing for years."

During Rice's first term as district attorney, her relentless pursuit of drunken drivers garnered national attention. She landed on "60 Minutes" for a murder conviction obtained in the case of a wrong-way drunken driver who hit a wedding party limo on the Meadowbrook Parkway in 2005.

Martin Heidgen, 24, of Valley Stream, killed two people in the limo: flower girl Katie Flynn, 7, of Long Beach and the driver, Stanley Rabinowitz, 59, of Farmingdale. Dillon's office had taken the unusual step of charging Heidgen with murder. Rice pursued the case after succeeding Dillon.

Rice sparked some controversy in 2008 by offering a group of Hempstead drug dealers the chance to avoid jail if they stopped dealing and took advantage of various social services, including job programs.

"She's not one of those traditional DAs that just do everything by the book," Hempstead Village Mayor Wayne J. Hall Sr., a Rice supporter, said.

Rice has pledged to visit each of New York's 62 counties yearly if elected attorney general and to appoint a top-level deputy for rural affairs - promises that could attract upstate voters.

Ron McDougall, president of the Jefferson, Lewis and St. Lawrence Counties Central Trades and Labor Council, met Rice for the second time a week ago at a Watertown dinner. McDougall has not committed to a candidate but said Rice definitely has "some toughness and aggressiveness."

Rice, who lives in Garden City, drew attention - some of it negative - for a novel settlement in the 2008 death of a worker trampled by shoppers racing into a Valley Stream Walmart for day-after-Thanksgiving sales.

Rice did not charge Walmart with a crime after the incident but demanded it revamp its safety plan for its New York stores. Walmart agreed to pay victims of the incident $400,000 and to donate $1.5 million to community programs.

Asked Rice why she should be attorney general, she said, "My work as an advocate for communities and victims drives my vision for this office, and I believe my career as prosecutor has given me a unique set of skills to do the job."