Kathleen M. Rice

Kathleen Maura Rice (born February 15, 1965) is an American lawyer and politician who served as the United States representative for New York’s 4th congressional district from January 3, 2015, to January 3, 2023. A member of the Democratic Party, she represented a suburban Long Island district based in Nassau County for four terms in Congress. Before her election to the House of Representatives, she served as Nassau County district attorney, and earlier in her career she worked as a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Philadelphia and as an assistant district attorney in the Kings County District Attorney’s Office in New York City.

Rice was born in Manhattan, New York, to Laurence and Christine Rice and was raised in Garden City, on Long Island, as one of ten siblings. She attended local schools and graduated from Garden City High School. She went on to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree from the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., in 1987. Pursuing a career in law, she returned to Long Island for legal studies and received her Juris Doctor degree from Touro College Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center (Touro Law Center) in 1991.

In 1992, Rice began her legal career as an assistant district attorney in the Kings County District Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn, serving under District Attorney Charles J. Hynes. There she prosecuted a range of criminal cases, including burglaries, robberies, and sexual assaults, and she became the first member of her class to be promoted to the homicide bureau. During this period, she was among the prosecutors involved in the office at a time when it faced later criticism and civil litigation over alleged prosecutorial misconduct in certain cases, including the prosecution of Antowine Butts for double homicide. That case ended in an acquittal in 2000 after Butts had spent two years in pretrial detention at Rikers Island, and he subsequently brought a civil rights lawsuit against New York City that was settled; Rice was among those named in the suit, though she largely escaped public attention in connection with the broader allegations about the office.

In 1999, then–Attorney General Janet Reno appointed Rice as an assistant United States attorney in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, based in Philadelphia. As a federal prosecutor, she handled white-collar crime, corporate fraud, gun and drug cases, and public corruption matters. Her work in Philadelphia broadened her experience beyond local street crime to include complex financial and public integrity prosecutions, laying the groundwork for her later focus on corruption and public accountability when she returned to New York.

Rice reentered local law enforcement when she ran for Nassau County district attorney in 2005. In that election she defeated 30-year incumbent Denis E. Dillon by approximately 7,500 votes, becoming the first woman to hold the office. Dillon, who had originally been elected as a Democrat before switching to the Republican Party in 1989, had generally won reelection easily and had not faced a serious challenger since his first campaign in 1974. Rice was reelected as district attorney in 2009 and again in 2013. As Nassau County district attorney, she announced in 2006 that her first major policy initiative would be an “assault on the drunk driving epidemic.” She lowered the blood-alcohol level at which plea bargains were offered, supported New York’s Leandra’s Law, and brought a high-profile murder charge in connection with a 2005 crash that killed a limousine driver and a child. She also implemented teen education programs addressing cyberbullying, drug use, texting, and dangerous driving.

During her tenure as district attorney, Rice pursued a range of public safety and reform initiatives. In 2007, working with Nassau County and Hempstead police, her office led a counter-assault on Terrace Avenue in Hempstead Village, a major drug haven and crime-ridden street on Long Island. Combining zero-tolerance enforcement for repeat and violent offenders with social-service-based jail diversion for nonviolent and first-time offenders, the initiative was credited with reducing crime in the area. She implemented gun buyback programs in some of the county’s most crime-plagued neighborhoods, removing more than 2,000 guns from the streets, and created the office’s first dedicated gun prosecution unit. In 2011 she announced a major prosecution of nine gun dealers and gun store employees following an undercover operation into alleged illegal assault weapons sales. One of the defendants, gun shop owner Martin Tretola, had previously been arrested on firearms-related violations in 2007; in 2012 a federal jury rejected Nassau County’s and Rice’s charges stemming from the 2007 arrest and awarded Tretola $3 million in compensatory damages and $2 million in punitive damages, a judgment that was later reduced on appeal to a total of $1.3 million.

Rice’s office also became involved in several high-profile matters beyond traditional street crime. In September 2011, her office arrested seven students after uncovering an SAT cheating ring on Long Island. As the investigation revealed a wider cheating scandal, she worked with the College Board, which administers the SAT, to update security standards to prevent future abuses, prompting other testing organizations, including the ACT, to revise their own procedures. Following the trampling death of a Walmart employee during a 2008 Black Friday sale, Rice pressed Walmart to upgrade security protocols at its nearly 100 stores in New York State. She formed Nassau County’s first Medicaid and public assistance fraud unit, which secured millions of dollars in restitution for county taxpayers, and she brought corruption cases against a range of public officials, including a deputy police commissioner, a Long Beach City Council member, former Nassau County legislators, and several town building department employees. In April 2013, she announced the arrest of 18 members of the “Rollin’ 60’s” gang, an “ultra-violent” subset of the Crips, on charges ranging from attempted murder of a police officer and assault and robbery to gun and drug sales.

Rice also engaged in policy debates related to criminal justice reform and public oversight. In 2010 she ordered a review of the controversial 1987 case in which Arnold Friedman and his son, Jesse Friedman, had pleaded guilty to sexually abusing boys in their Great Neck home. She convened a panel of outside experts, including Innocence Project co-founder Barry Scheck, to examine whether Jesse Friedman had wrongfully confessed; in a 172-page report released in July 2013, investigators concluded that Friedman had not been wrongfully convicted. In 2012 she publicly supported decriminalizing small amounts of “plain view” marijuana and backed efforts to allow some individuals to seal prior low-level, nonviolent convictions to improve their employment prospects. That same year Governor Andrew Cuomo appointed her to the Moreland Commission on Utility Storm Preparation and Response, which investigated the Long Island Power Authority’s failures after Hurricane Sandy and recommended replacing LIPA with a private, investor-owned company and strengthening the Public Service Commission’s authority to penalize underperforming utilities. She also supported the “Raise the Age NY” initiative to treat nonviolent teen offenders as juveniles in the criminal justice system. In July 2013 Cuomo named her one of three co-chairs of the Moreland Commission on Public Corruption, and later that month she was inducted as president of the District Attorneys Association of the State of New York.

On January 29, 2014, Rice announced that she would run for Congress in New York’s 4th congressional district to succeed retiring Democratic representative Carolyn McCarthy. In the general election on November 4, 2014, she defeated Republican nominee Bruce Blakeman and took office at the start of the 114th Congress in January 2015. As a member of the House of Representatives, she participated in the legislative process during a significant period in American history and represented the interests of her Nassau County constituents for four consecutive terms. During her tenure she served on key committees, including the House Committee on Homeland Security and the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, and later the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, where she was involved in oversight and policymaking on national security, veterans’ issues, and energy and health policy. She became known as a centrist Democrat and, as of September 2021, had voted in line with President Joe Biden’s stated positions 100 percent of the time.

Rice’s congressional record reflected both party loyalty and occasional breaks with Democratic leadership. On the Energy and Commerce Committee she was one of three House Democrats to vote against a high-profile provision aimed at lowering prescription drug prices, a move that drew attention to her more moderate, industry-skeptical approach to certain regulatory proposals. She was outspoken on gun control and public safety, continuing themes from her prosecutorial career. In August 2017 she drew national attention when she used social media to refer to the National Rifle Association and its spokeswoman, conservative commentator Dana Loesch, as national security threats under President Donald Trump; Loesch responded by calling for Rice’s resignation. In 2022 Rice publicly criticized Democratic-aligned groups that were spending money to boost far-right Republican candidates in GOP primaries in the hope of facing weaker opponents in the general election, arguing that such tactics were risky and harmful to democratic norms.

On February 15, 2022, Rice announced that she would retire from Congress at the end of her term and not seek reelection in 2022. Her service in the House concluded on January 3, 2023, marking the end of eight years in federal office following nearly two decades in local and federal prosecution and countywide elected office.