Dems Wary as Republicans Boost Nader

July 24, 2004 -- Consumer advocate Ralph Nader's quixotic presidential campaign says it submitted about 5,400 signatures to get on the Michigan ballot, far short of the required number of 30,000. Luckily for him, approximately 43,000 signatures were filed by Michigan Republicans on his behalf, more than meeting the requirement.

This week in Michigan, state Democrats filed a complaint to challenge a majority of those signatures, which they say are invalid. It is one chapter in an odd but potentially history-altering side story of this presidential election: Pro-Nader Republicans and anti-Nader Democrats may now be waging more aggressive Nader campaigns than even Nader's own effort.

‘You Are All Invited’

At an Oregon campaign event on June 26, Nader told the crowd, "You are invited here whether you are a Democrat, a Green, a libertarian, independent, a Republican; you are all invited."

Many Republicans didn't need the invitation and were already working hard to help Nader's signature drives to get on state ballots.

The Michigan Republican Party volunteers out circulating petitions two weeks ago, however, do not want Nader to be president. Rather, they hope Nader will siphon off votes from John Kerry to ensure President Bush's re-election. Nader could have rejected those GOP-obtained signatures, but the deadline to do so passed at 4 p.m. Monday with no protest from him or his campaign.

Just as aggressively, Democratic officials are doing everything they can to keep Nader off ballots, challenging his signatures in Michigan and elsewhere. Friday in Boston, Nader told reporters he had complained about these tactics — which he has called "dirty tricks" — with none other than Kerry himself.

"I said, 'Well, what are you going to do?'" Nader relayed. "He said, 'I'm going to look into this.' I said, 'You better look into this before you're presented with a mini-Watergate scandal.'"

Nader cautioned Democrats, whose national convention begins Monday, that, "It will only be a few days before we hold John Kerry and John Edwards personally responsible for what is going on." Seemingly threatening legal action, Nader added, "It won't be entirely verbal."

‘You’ve Already Done Enough, Nader’

The notion that Nader took votes away from Al Gore in 2000, enabling president Bush to be elected, has become lore. On a 2002 episode of The Simpsons, the villainous Mr. Burns, presiding over a meeting of the Springfield Republican Party, asks, "What act of unmitigated evil should the Republican Party undertake this week?"

Nader, sitting to Burns' left, raises his hand like an anxious kid in class.

"You've already done enough, Nader," Mr. Burns replies.

This perception is partly why the conservative group Citizens for a Sound Economy, or CSE, worked hard to get him on the ballot in Oregon, enlisting at least 400 of its local volunteers to help Nader's signature drive.

"We saw it as an obvious opportunity to split the liberal base in a swing state," Matt Kibbe, CSE's president and CEO told ABC News.

Kibbe said the effort to bolster Nader's popularity is also part of a plan to force Kerry to compete for liberal votes, thus complicating any efforts to appear more moderate.

"We care a lot about tax cuts, we care a lot about Social Security reform, and from our point of view, John Kerry is a dyed-in-the-wool liberal just like Ralph Nader, but he's been waffling on the issues, he's trying to run from his liberal record," Kibbe said. "We think Ralph Nader in the race forces John Kerry to articulate where he is on these key issues."

CSE's chairmen are influential Republicans — former House Majority Leader Dick Armey of Texas, and the former lawyer for the president's father C. Boyden Gray.

The president's first ambassador to Ireland, Richard Egan, has raised more than $200,000 for the president's campaign. But he and his family have also given $6,000 to the Nader campaign.

"I don't know Mr. Egan," Nader told ABC News, "but we'll take money from any individual American citizen under lawful procedures. We take no commercial money, no PAC money."

Nader said Democrats were being hypocritical: "Democrats get money from Republican fat cats who are playing both sides, and John Kerry wanted Sen. [John] McCain on his ticket. I wouldn't talk if I were them."

Change of Heart?

When GOP efforts to help Nader first became apparent a few weeks ago, Nader's running mate, Peter Camejo, told The San Francisco Chronicle that, "If you oppose the war, if you're against the Patriot Act, your money is welcome. But if your purpose is because you think this is going to have an electoral effect, we don't want that money."

But he later seemed to backtrack a bit from this stance, last week asking, "How are we to know if a person sends $200, that they're not a Republican who plans to vote for Nader? It is conceivable that pro-Bush, pro-Republicans believe we have a right to be on the ballot. We will not establish lie detector tests for people who give us money.''

Nader himself prefers to change the subject. If Republicans are helping him, Nader points out, Democrats are hurting him.

"Democrats think they are entitled to the votes instead of having to earn them," he said. "They don't want competition, they don't want more voices and choices, and above all they don't want an agenda for America that shows how limited and narrow and indentured to big money the Democratic agenda is in this country."

The consumer advocate accused Democratic officials of engaging in "dirty tricks" to keep him off ballots, such as "infiltrating openly our political convention" to complicate the ballot process in Oregon, and having "hired three corporate law firms" in Arizona to challenge the validity of the signatures on Nader's ballot petitions.Arizona Democrats say the three firms were working pro bono, and regardless, the Arizona tactic worked; Nader will not appear on that state's ballot.

Democratic officials in other states want to challenge Nader too.

"It's unfortunate he wants to run again and act as a spoiler," says Florida Democratic Party chairman Scott Maddox, "but we're going to make sure he follows the law in Florida. We're going to make sure he dots all his i's and cross his t's."

In Illinois on Monday, Nader campaign officials said 10 Democrat state employees were challenging Nader's petitions there, many from Democratic State House Speaker Michael Madigan's staff.

Other anti-Nader efforts from Democrats include the unleashing of former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, a one-time presidential candidate himself, who is trying to convince liberals that a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush.

"We live in the real world," Dean said a couple weeks ago when he and Nader squared off in a debate. "We have to make real choices."

Anti-Nader Democrats have also formed organizations such as the Nader Factor which have run ads on radio and TV arguing against Nader's candidacy. The Nader Factor is run by Tricia Enright and Karl Frisch, both of whom worked on the Dean campaign, and John Hlinko and Dr. Chris Kofinis of the Draft Wesley Clark movement.

Jack Date, Talesha Reynolds and Nicholas Schifrin contributed to this report.