ASGP News Circulator, Part 2

[David Lillie <davey@greens.org>]

August 23, 2000, Wednesday, BC cycle

SECTION: Political News

LENGTH: 273 words

HEADLINE: Nader to appear on ballot as independent

DATELINE: TOPEKA, Kan.

BODY:
Ralph Nader, the Green Party's presidential candidate, will appear on the Nov. 7 ballot in Kansas,
but as an independent.

The secretary of state's office confirmed Tuesday that Nader received the 5,000 signatures necessary
to put an independent candidate on the ballot.

Nader's supporters had obtained the signatures from registered voters on petitions circulated this
summer.

Nader, best known as a consumer advocate, must run in Kansas as an independent because the state
doesn't recognize the Green Party.

To gain recognition, a party must collect signatures from 14,854 registered voters. To keep its
recognition, a party must nominate a candidate in at least one statewide race and have at least one
candidate receive 1 percent of the total general election vote.

Bryan Caskey, administrative assistant in the secretary of state's election division, said Douglas
County provided the most signatures for Nader's candidacy, 3,298. Another 2,223 signatures were
obtained in Johnson County.

David Scheuer, who led the Lawrence petition drive, said he was pleased but not surprised that
Douglas County had the most signatures.

"Lawrence has always had a reputation of being a fairly liberal and open-minded town," he said. "We
knew that the big push would have to come here."

Terry Shistar, Nader's regional coordinator for the Lawrence area, said she thinks Nader will have a
good showing in Kansas.

Shistar also hopes the state will do its part in getting at least 5 percent of the national vote for
Nader, which would make the Green Party eligible for federal campaign funds in the 2004 presidential
election.

Copyright 2000 Times Media Limited Business Day (South Africa)

August 23, 2000

SECTION: News; Pg. 2

LENGTH: 931 words

HEADLINE: STARS & STRIPES - NADER IS JUST THE MAN TO SEND DEMOCRATS

BYLINE: Simon Barber

BODY:

EIGHT years ago, a third-party candidate the vicious human Chihuahua Ross Perot cost then president
George Bush a second term in the White House, siphoning away enough votes from the Republican ticket
to let Bill Clinton squeak to victory with a 43% plurality.

This year, in a neat irony, Clintons anointed successor, vice-president and newly minted Democratic
presidential nominee, Al Gore, may suffer a similar fate, and lose to Bushs son, George Dubya,
because of another spoiler, Ralph Nader.

Nader is nominally running as the candidate of the Association of State Green Parties. But it would
be more correct to say he is on a crusade to punish the Democratic Party, and particularly Gore and
Clinton, for letting themselves be corrupted by big corporate interests.

The Democrats, he says, need a cold shower for four years; otherwise we will really have a
Republicrat regime: one party, a corporate party, with two heads wearing different make-up.

At 66, combining the gauntly stoic demeanour of a Lincoln and the razor-like dialectical mind of a
Lenin, Nader, who first made his name bludgeoning Detroit into building safer cars, is the closest
thing the US has to a Roman tribune of the people. He may be slightly mad, and he could never win a
national election, but he is a force to be reckoned with, and can, through his web of organisations
and alliances, create havoc.

Perhaps he cannot take all the credit for the street theatre that helped derail the World Trade
Organisation meeting in Seattle. But a unit of his Public Citizen umbrella group supplied much of
the protesters intellectual ammunition (or propaganda, depending on your taste).

Without his behind-the-scenes stirring, the bosses of US organised labour most of whom are not noted
for caring much about their members (only their dues, which pay for the limousines, first-class air
fares, and other perks) might have long since acquiesced to further trade liberalisation not
conditioned on foreign competitors meeting basic human rights and environmental standards.

One may disagree with Naders arguments on the costs of globalisation. His attacks on the African
Growth and Opportunity Act, which very nearly succeeded in killing the legislation, were surely
misguided. But his arguments have to be made. This would be an even unhappier world if corporate
giants were allowed to make all the rules.

For corporations are just as stupid and narrow-minded as anyone else. Take Mastercard, the credit
card company, which, in its infinite wisdom, is suing Nader for $5m because he is a using a parody
of one its television ads to promote his presidential campaign. Mastercard could not have come up
with a better way of publicising Nader if it had consciously wanted to.

But then, one may mischievously wonder, might not the company want to bolster Nader so as to
undermine the Democrats in Novembers elections? After all, Democrats are far more likely than
Republicans to legislate against the usurious practices of credit card companies.

What is certain is that Nader scares the hell out of Gore. It was a Nader outfit, the Consumer
Project on Technology, also known as James Love, who masterminded the campaign last year that
embarrassed Gore into insisting on a major change in US intellectual property policy.

Nader and Love put together the case that Gore, as co-chairman of the US-SA binational commission,
was bullying poor little SA into dropping legislation that would have allowed it to obtain cheap
AIDS medicine to the disadvantage of greedy US pharmaceutical behemoths.

Armed with Nader agitprop, small platoons of gay activists started hounding Gore as he launched his
campaign. To appease them, Gore not only had the White House declare the SA legislation okay but
became an activist on African AIDS himself.

That in turn inspired United Nations ambassador Richard Holbrooke, who hopes to be Gores secretary
of state, to arrange a Security Council meeting on African AIDS, which inspired promises from the
World Bank and others to commit heroic sums to the problem.

Such commitments are not to be confused with meaningful contributions to alleviating the epidemic.
But it cannot be denied that Nader and his web of activists helped put the issue on the map.

Perhaps a greater testament to Naders power came in Gores speech accepting his partys presidential
nomination last week. The would-be president knows he is known to have prostituted himself in the
Clinton years by selling access to the rich and powerful. He promised, fatuously outside the Los
Angeles convention hall his partys cardinals were running up gross political IOUs at bacchanalia
sponsored by the rich and selfish that he would defend the workers and their families against the
powerful.

What rubbish. But Gore had to say it and make it his theme because he has little vision of his own.
Although his daddy more than his talent won him a place at Harvard, he can do enough maths to
understand that Nader can win sufficient votes in California and a few other key states to throw the
presidency to Bush. Which is Naders dialectical aim. He wants Bush whose daddy got him into Yale) to
win so that, after four years on the outside, the Democrats will be cleansed of Clintonite cynicism
and start standing, honestly, for something.

It would be good, but a vain hope, for the US to have a vigorous and truly tribunician left. A
little serious political debate on public matters as opposed to that most private of issues,
abortion would be healthy. Viva, therefore, Ralph.

August 22, 2000, Tuesday, BC cycle

SECTION: Political News

LENGTH: 538 words

HEADLINE: Secretary of State validates petitions from Green Party, Larry Rice

DATELINE: JEFFERSON CITY, Mo.

BODY:
Ralph Nader and other Green Party candidates have qualified for spots on the Missouri ballot in
November, Secretary of State Bekki Cook said Tuesday.

She also said that the Rev. Larry Rice of New Bloomfield, a television minister, advocate for the
homeless and death penalty opponent, qualified to be an independent candidate for governor.

Nader, the consumer advocate running for president, leads a list of seven Green Party candidates on
the statewide ballot. The party also has candidates for the U.S. House in six of Missouri's nine
congressional districts, as well as state legislative candidates.

The Green Party and Rice both needed at least 10,000 valid signatures from registered voters to be
included on the Nov. 7 general election ballot, and both far exceeded that number. The Green Party
had 17,370 valid signatures and Rice had 16,328.

Besides Nader, the Green Party's nominees for the statewide ballot are Winona LaDuke for vice
president, Elaine Taylor of Kansas City for the U.S. Senate, Lavoy (Zaki Baruit) Reed of St. Louis
for governor, Ken Kjelshus of Urich for lieutenant governor, Paula Elias of Columbia for secretary
of state and Ray Vanlandingham of Springfield for state treasurer.

The party's nominees for the U.S. House are Brenda (Ziah) Reddick of St. Louis in the 1st District,
Mike Odell of St. Louis in the 2nd District, Mary Maroney of St. Louis in the 3rd District, Charles
Reitz of Kansas City in the 5th District, Tom Sager of Rolla in the 8th District and Devin Scherubel
of Clark in the 9th District.

Green Party nominees for the Missouri House are Charles Winters of Kansas City in the 39th District,
Patricia A. Turek of St. Louis in the 66th District, Jason R. Toon of St. Louis in the 67th District
and Peter M. Coogan of Shrewsbury in the 68th District. The party has one nominee for the Missouri
Senate, Mary A. Auer of St. Louis in the 3rd District.

Two candidates listed on the Green Party petition were not certified by Cook. Mary Ann McGivern of
St. Louis was not certified for attorney general because she is not an attorney. And Frank Eller Jr.
of Rock Hill was not certified in the 87th House district because the petition did not indicate the
legislative district he was seeking to represent.

Certified as independent candidates for the Missouri House were Shirley J. Brungardt of Rayville in
the 36th District and S. Adam Sahid of Columbia in the 25th District.

Cook did not certify two independent candidates for the Missouri House - Leona C. Welch of Jefferson
City in the 113th District and Dianne Miller of Springfield in the 138th District.

Legislative candidates needed signatures of 2 percent of the number of votes cast in their district
in the last election. Welch needed 166 signatures and had only 157, Cook said.

The secretary of state said that during the verification process she got a report that at least
three signatures on Welch's petition were suspicious and might have been forged. She said her office
conducted an investigation and has referred its information to the Cole County prosecutor.

Miller had enough signatures but was not certified because her petition pages did not have her
address printed on them.

Copyright 2000 The Providence Journal Company The Providence Journal-Bulletin

August 21, 2000, Monday, All EDITIONS

SECTION: EDITORIAL, Pg. 4B

LENGTH: 1636 words

HEADLINE: COMMENTARY - Ralph Nader will surprise a lot of people

BYLINE: RICHARD J. WALTON

BODY:

ALTHOUGH AT 72 I'm kind of old for that stuff, tears streamed down my cheeks all the morning of June
25, a few hours before the Association of State Green Parties (ASGP) nominated Ralph Nader for
president. That morning in Denver was given over to short speeches by Green Party candidates past
and present, and I could not stem the flow of tears as these remarkable candidates, mostly young,
mostly female, some of color, spoke with passion, and optimism, of an America that could be, the
America we progressives have been longing for, and working for, with diminishing returns for more
than a half century.

They spoke of an America without hunger, without poverty, with economic justice and civil and gender
rights for all, for an America where We the People ruled, not the giant corporations a democratic,
nonviolent America that respected all the other cultures of the world and rejected corporate
exploitation of the Third World, an America that cherished the Earth and worked to restore it, not
despoil it.

The sheer excellence of these candidates - visionary, passionate, articulate, strong and persevering
the enthusiasm with which their words were greeted, the hope and optimism that filled that hotel
hall caused me to think that maybe this time a Third Party campaign could be different, that maybe
Ralph Nader and Wi-nona LaDuke could lead an electoral insurgency that could make a genuine
difference, that could lead to lasting change, unlike the candidacies of the Progressive Party's
Henry Wallace (1948) and Citizens Party candidates Barry Commoner (1980) and Sonia Johnson (1984)
that started with such hope and enthusiasm and, alas, end-ed far short of even the modest goal of
forcing a public debate of important issues.

The Green Party members in that room, mostly young or young middle-aged, with a fair sprinkling of
old folks like me, were lifted to an extraordinary high by those candidates and even higher by Ralph
Nader's acceptance speech that afternoon. They believed a miracle could happen, that maybe Nader
could win, perhaps confusing should win with could win. This old folk, with the wisdom (or is it
cynicism?) of age, knew that it would indeed be a miracle for Nader to win, although for a wondrous,
giddy moment the thought maybe flashed through his mind.

But even the realistic me sees significant differences between now and 1948 and 1980/84 that could
make Nader's campaign far more successful, a hell of a lot more interesting, and strike some genuine
(and well-deserved) fear into Democratic ranks. To be sure, in 1948, Henry Wallace was even better
known than Ralph Nader. After all, he had been an historic secretary of agriculture and Franklin
Roosevelt's vice president for the third term. He was also FDR's preference for vice president in
1944, and the unquestioned leader of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party after only FDR
himself. But in 1944, the president was too sick, too weak to force Wallace upon the big-city bosses
and the Southern political aristocrats, so Harry Truman was nominated.

When Wallace first announced, there was enormous enthusiasm, cheering crowds filled Shibe Park, in
Philadelphia, and Democrats began to quake. But then the Red-baiting began (eagerly joined in by
many Americans for Democratic Action liberals, thus foreclosing the serious de-bate on American
foreign policy that conceivably could have derailed the Cold War and the subsequent horrors). His
following steadily dwindled and, toward the end, the wasted vote, spoiler argument took hold as it
always has. So Wallace ended up with only one-million-plus votes, fewer even than the Dixiecrat
candidate, Strom Thurmond (yes, the current, ancient Re-publican senator from South Carolina).

In 1980, Barry Commoner's candidacy drew the enthusiastic support of great numbers of progressives.
The convention was much like Nader's convention in Denver, but the press largely ignored Commoner,
and with Jimmy Carter running against Ronald Reagan, the spoiler argument was powerful indeed. Even
The Na-tion magazine, sympathetic toward Commoner, counseled a vote for Commoner where you can and
for Carter where you must.

Four years later, the radical feminism of Sonia Johnson frightened off some progressives, articulate
speaker though she was, and she did much less well than Commoner.

This capsule history of postwar progressive insurgency would seem to be anything but encouraging for
Nader, but there are significant, even crucial differences be-tween then and now, differences
greatly advantageous to Nader. Red-baiting (al-though there have been some feeble whispers) is all
but dead in this post-Cold War era, so that which did Henry Wallace in is simply not a factor. And
although Commoner was, and is, a very distinguished environmentalist indeed, well-known in those
circles his name simply was not the household name that Nader's is.

For millions of Americans, Nader is, justifiably, Public Citizen No. 1. Also, although Commoner's is
a formidable intellect, he simply was not nearly as well-versed in the wide range of political
issues as Nader is. Commoner had to learn on the fly, whereas Nader is the ultimate policy wonk,
perhaps even more so than Bill Clinton (who should be honored to be in the same sentence). Nader
knows his stuff, and everyone, not least the press, knows it.

Furthermore, Commoner had to construct a political apparatus as he went along, whereas Nader has a
decades-old apparatus staffed by uncommonly able current people and alumni. And that apparatus
includes formidable fund-raising capacity.

Furthermore, Nader is getting the kind of press coverage Commoner could not even imagine, which
establishes him as a candidate impossible to ignore (although the capacity of the mainstream press
to ignore political issues in favor of covering the sport of politics is almost limitless).

But the most crucial factor limiting a Third Party candidate (putting aside the other important
factors of ballot access and campaign financing) is the fatal (at least till now) argument that the
candidate is a spoiler, that a vote for him/her is a wasted vote. Certainly one can see how millions
of liberals must have feared that a vote for Henry Wallace could elect the GOP's New York Gov.
Thomas Dewey, and that argument was even more persuasive when Carter was running against Reagan.

But Gore versus Bush? Hell, even USA Today, hardly a left-wing paper, had, on the day most of us
were returning from Nader's nomination, a front-page story illustrated with a portrait that was half
Gore and half Bush, which said that it was difficult to distinguish the economic programs of the
Democrats from those of the Republicans.

If there is no difference on economics, where is it? They are both, as everyone knows, the parties
of Big Business and business keeps getting bigger and bigger. Workers aren't dumb: They know that
the Democratic Party, once the party of the working man, is just as beholden to giant corporations
as the Republicans.

Which brings me to something else greatly in favor of Nader compared to past third-party efforts.
Disillusion with the two major parties has grown with each election.

Let me cite a personal example. My brother Gary is a tugboat captain and most of his friends are
blue-collar guys. Knowing that I'm a Green, they have been asking him for Nader bumper stickers and
eagerly paying for them. And Gary, who in 61 years has never put any kind of a bumper sticker on a
vehicle, has a Nader sticker on his pickup. And my hunch is that these pickup guys are going to be a
lot more steadfast than those Volvo liberals and progressives who, at the very last moment even
while hating themselves for it, pull the lever for Gore in close states because of the Supreme
Court.

The working-class people know that they're worse off now than they were a couple of decades ago and,
not given to theological disputation, don't care about one or two seats on the Supreme Court. They
know that neither Gore nor Bush is going to do anything for them, that their jobs will continue to
fly overseas to workers who receive criminal wages while working in horrible conditions.

I'm certainly not predicting a Nader victory, but he has demonstrated that he is an exceptionally
good campaigner (Gore and Bush would be crazy to step in front of the same television cameras with
him), he's putting together an effective and dedicated campaign organization, and the efficient
convention of the Association of State Green Parties (although with endearing Woodstock qualities
demonstrated that the Greens are competent and devoted to longterm political, economic, social and
environmental change.

They won't fade away after the 2000 election as the Citizens Party did after 1980 and 1984. And if
Nader qualifies for a ton of federal election money by achieving more than 5 percent of the vote,
the Greens won't be lacking well-known candidates.

So something important may be going on here, regardless of what the mainstream press and the Beltway
people think. Voting for the lesser evil has meant that with each election the choice becomes more
revolting, and my hunch is that, this year, millions of fed-up Americans are going to vote for the
candidate who is and this is obvious to just about everyone light-years superior to Gore and Bush.
And let the chips fall where they may.

**

Richard J. Walton, a Nader delegate from the Green Party of Rhode Island and a member of the
Coordinating National Committee of the ASGP, is a journalist and the author of Henry Wallace, Harry
Truman and the Cold War (Viking, 1976) and eight other books on American foreign policy,
was active in the Commoner campaign of 1980 and was Sonia Johnson's running mate in 1984.

--
David A. Lillie,S.E.P., davey@greens.org
3210 Darley Ave., Boulder, Co 80305-6412  303-554-1445
http://www.users.uswest.net/~lda2       Personal/User Interface Services
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A safe, loving, equally shared world: It's going to happen!


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