Four years on, the United States presidential election is again a dead heat between a radical conservative and a mainstream liberal. And once more, Ralph Nader’s oddball candidacy threatens to tip the delicate balance to the right.
This time the consumer activist is a much-reduced force. The overwhelming majority of his closest aides and supporters have defected, including Michael Moore. The filmmaker went down on his knees on cable television to beg Nader to withdraw. Even Nader’s former running mate, Winona LaDuke, has come out for John Kerry.
Four years ago, Nader was the Green Party candidate, backed by its modest but enthusiastic machine. This time, he is on his own. All he has is the patchy backing of the Reform Party, a conservative, libertarian group a long, long way from his progressive roots.
Nader took 2,7% in 2000. In recent weeks, his rating has been closer to 1%. But that support is up to 4%, in some of the swing states. In any case, 1% can easily be the difference between victory and defeat for President George W Bush and Senator John Kerry.
In 2000 Nader took almost 100 000 votes in Florida. Al Gore lost (after US Supreme Court intervention) by 537 votes. That is why the Democratic party, abetted by many former ”Nader’s Raiders”, shock troops of the civic activism Nader pioneered, have spent six months desperately trying to keep him off the ballot papers.
The Nader campaign has been helped by rightwingers well aware of its potential to split the progressive vote. Naderites have resorted to dubious means to obtain signatures on state petitions to get his name on the ballot. Homeless people were paid for every signature they collected; thousands were found to have been forged in the states of Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Anti-Nader forces, meanwhile, have fought a legal war of attrition, bringing one case after another with the intention of driving him out of the race.
They have not succeeded. The 70-year-old is an independent in every sense. Political isolation only deepens his martyr’s sense of righteousness. ”I always thought that running for elective office is the consummate expression of the right to free speech, assembly, and petition under our first amendment. It shouldn’t be that difficult in a democracy to get on the ballot,” he told University of Minnesota students.
He has fought his way on to the ballot in nearly 40 states. But legal objections to the suspicious signatures in Ohio and Pennsylvania have kept him out of two of the biggest battlegrounds, and the legal struggle has drained his resources. The anti-Nader campaign, combined with Kerry’s powerful performance in the debates and outspoken opposition to the Iraq war, have helped erode Nader’s backing in the polls from 5% earlier this year to the current 1% rump.
Nader’s sheer determination is a testament to his single-mindedness. He has never married, and has few interests other than political reform.
Getting a job as a congressional aide in the early 1960s, he researched the car industry and, in 1965, produced Unsafe at Any Speed, an indictment of modern cars, particularly the Chevrolet Corsair. For years it was Nader against General Motors, who went so far as to hire private detectives to discredit him. They sent a prostitute to try to seduce him at a food counter at Safeway’s but he turned her away. So the gumshoes tried to prove he was homosexual, but were caught as they tried to follow him into Congress. The scandal turned Nader into a hero overnight.
The car makers were forced to introduce seat belts and, ultimately, airbags.
In the 1970s Nader toured the country again, urging students to set up public interest research groups for consumer and environmental reform. Ken Ward was a Massachusetts student in 1976. He became a follower and has spent his career as a consumer activist. Like so many other Raiders, he has joined the stop-Ralph effort.
Some critics put Nader’s perseverance down to sheer ego. But an egoist would be unnerved by the rising chorus of denigration. Nader’s certainty is so strong that defeat only reinforces it.
”We lose to win, eventually,” he told The New York Times. ”That’s the story of social justice. You have to be willing to lose and fight, and lose and fight … Until the agenda is won.”
However, former supporters see only a stubborn old man running on pride. ”It’s the whole St Ralph syndrome. He’s pure, and we’re all corrupt.” — Â