Ignoring appeals from many of his own admirers, Ralph Nader declared Sunday that he would run for president as an independent but vehemently denied suggestions he could derail the Democratic Party’s effort to defeat President Bush.
The longtime consumer advocate, whose third-party candidacy has been blamed for tipping the 2000 election to Bush, accused Democrats and Republicans of being consumed by corporate interests. By running again, he said, he hoped to break a “two-party duopoly that is converging more and more.”
“Washington is corporate-occupied territory,” Nader said. “The two parties are ferociously competing to see who is going to go to the White House and take orders from their corporate paymasters.”
His decision to enter the 2004 presidential race, announced in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” infuriated Democrats who believe the general election match against Bush could be as narrow as the last race. Several party leaders, including national Chairman Terry McAuliffe, had personally pleaded with Nader not to run.
“He has had a whole distinguished career fighting for working families, and I would hate to see part of his legacy being that he got us eight years of George Bush,” McAuliffe said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
A generation ago, Nader was the darling of liberal crusaders, championing the mandatory use of seat belts and scores of other consumer issues. While his work once endeared him to party activists, Democratic leaders had few kind words about Nader on Sunday.
“It’s about him. It’s about his ego,” said New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. “It’s about his vanity and not about a movement.”
Nader, whose Green Party candidacy received about 2.7 percent of the vote four years ago, faces new challenges running as an independent. He will have to fight state by state to be on the ballot and must raise money without an established political organization.
Still, with the 2000 presidential race in mind, Democratic strategists believe Nader’s presence in a few states could affect a close election.
Democrats believe many of Nader’s 2,882,955 votes might have gone to Al Gore, including some of the 97,488 in Florida and 22,198 in New Hampshire. Gore lost both states by narrow margins in an election so close that it ultimately was decided by a split Supreme Court decision.
In the 2000 campaign, Nader repeatedly argued that there were few differences between Democrats and Republicans. He conceded Sunday that there were some distinctions between the parties, but he said “it’s a question between both parties’ flunking.”
“They may be different in their mind, they may be different in their attention, they may be different in their rhetoric,” Nader said. “But in the actual performance, these corporate interests and their political allies are taking America down.”
When asked whether he was getting into the race to be a spoiler, Nader bristled, saying, “A spoiler is a contemptuous term, as if anybody who dares to challenge the two-party system is a spoiler, and we have got to fight that.”
The Bush campaign, which is preparing to step up its re-election effort Monday with a campaign-style speech by the president in Washington and with television ads to follow next week, did not comment on Nader’s announcement. Ed Gillespie, chairman of the Republican National Committee, though, said Bush would win regardless of who was in the race.
Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, said Sunday that he intended to reach out to voters who might be intrigued by Nader. He rejected the notion that there were few differences between the political parties.
“I think it was pretty clear to most Americans that the difference was night and day,” Kerry said while campaigning in Atlanta. “I intend to speak to all Americans. If people want to beat George Bush badly and they understand what’s at stake here, they will see that I am speaking to concerns that Ralph Nader and other people have.”
Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, who is chasing Kerry in the fight for the party’s presidential nomination, suggested that his candidacy would offer more appeal to Nader’s followers.
“It’s important for the Democrats,” Edwards said, “to have somebody at the top of the ticket who will be appealing to some of the voters that Ralph Nader might attract.”
Nader, who turns 70 this week, said he intends to begin campaigning immediately and hopes to raise money through the Internet and fundraising dinners.
With Howard Dean out of the Democratic race, Nader hopes to attract his followers by tapping into the same kind of resentment against the establishment that lured them to the former governor. Dean has vowed to support the party’s nominee.
Susan MacManus, a professor of political science at the University of South Florida, said she believed Nader’s candidacy could make the difference in a narrowly divided electorate where many voters may be dissatisfied with both parties by the fall election.
Dean supporters, she said, “could be attracted to a rebel and a non-traditional type of candidate.”
“Sometimes candidates like Nader aren’t for the here and now, they are for the future generations,” MacManus said.
The announcement that Nader would enter the race came in the wake of an unusually aggressive effort, led by former supporters and other Democrats, encouraging him to stay out of the campaign. A new Web site, ralphdontrun.net, was created to highlight the differences between the political parties.
While many Democratic governors meeting Sunday in Washington expressed concern about the prospect of Nader’s candidacy, Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack said the climate has changed considerably since the 2000 campaign, in which Nader declared both political parties equal.
“I don’t think his message is going to fly,” Vilsack said. “One thing we know for sure in this country, after three years of President Bush’s administration, there is one hell of a difference at every level. There’s a hell of a difference and people know it and people see it.”
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THE CANDIDATE
About Ralph Nader
Key facts: He turns 70 on Friday. He is the son of Lebanese immigrants and has never been married. He was born in Winsted, Conn., and lives in Washington.
Education: He graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University in 1955 and from Harvard Law School in 1958.
Experience: Attorney, Hartford, Conn., 1959; founder of numerous consumer groups, including Public Citizen, Public Interest Research Group, Center for Auto Safety, Clean Water Action Project, Disability Rights Center, Project for Corporate Responsibility and Center for the Study of Responsive Law.
Author: “Unsafe at Any Speed,” 1965; “The Lemon Book,” 1980; “The Big Boys,” 1986; “Winning the Insurance Game,” 1990; “The Case Against `Free Trade’: GATT, NAFTA, and the Globalization of Corporate Power,” 1993.
Political career: As the Green Party presidential candidate in 2000, he received 2.74 percent of the vote.
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Nader vote could have swung several states in 2000
Ralph Nader announced Sunday that he is again running for president, this time as an independent. Some Democrats blame his 2000 Green Party candidacy for the defeat of Al Gore, although in only two states that cast their electoral votes for George W. Bush–Florida and New Hampshire–did the Nader vote exceed the margin of victory.
2000 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
States where Nader vote exceeded margin of victory
Won by Bush
N.H.
FLA.
Won by Gore
IOWA
MAINE
MINN.
ORE.
WIS.
2000 Electoral College results*
Bush: 271
Gore: 266
States narrowly won by Bush
%% STATE (Electoral votes) VICTORY MARGIN NADER VOTES
Florida (25) 537 97,488
New Hampshire (4) 7,211 22,198
(Nader’s national vote total: 2.74%)
%% * There was one abstention.
Source: Federal Election Commission
Adam Zoll/Chicago Tribune
