July 13, 2004
Signature Gatherers Hide Nader's Name
Today’s Charleston Gazette picks up Nader’s campaign trail:
A mysterious pair of men were gathering signatures on a petition Monday outside the Kroger store on Charleston’s West Side — apparently in an effort to get independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader on West Virginia’s ballot in November.
The story continues,
One of the men told at least two people, including a Gazette reporter, that the petitions were not for Nader. But Nader supporters were gathering signatures outside a Dunbar Kroger store on Sunday, and one woman at the West Side Kroger said she saw the petitions, and they were for Nader.Helen Lanham said one of the men asked her if she was a registered voter and whether she would sign a petition to “get a minority on the ballot.” She asked who it was, and they “hemmed and hawed” and wouldn’t tell her.
They had the name of the candidate covered up with a pencil on the petition, Lanham said. She said she moved the pencil aside and saw it was for Nader.
Cindy Smith, from the Secretary of State's office, notes that the top of the petition must have the candidates name and "you have the right to see that."
Whoever is responsible, it seems to confirm a certain duplicity in at least part of the Nader camp. Howard Dean all but pointed this out in his debate with Nader last week on NPR. "This is not going to help the progressive cause in America," Dean said. "The thing that upsets me so much about this is, you have the right to ... get in bed with whoever you want to, but don't call the Democratic Party full of corporate interests. They have their problems, we all have ours, none of us are pure. And this campaign of yours is far from pure." (excerpt source Salon).
Nader's campaign is staggeringly heartbreaking. His platform is so expansive and extroadinary that any educated liberal should have a hard time not, at least, being amazed. But any educated liberal, even an third-party one, should know that his campaign is doing very little to spur debate (except the inward sort, on how the campaign is being funded and operated) and will end up hurting the majoritarian liberal cause, the Democrats, in November.
The Gazette notes in W.Va. Nader's got not 2% of the votes in election 200 and Bush won by more than 6%.
Note
Disclaimer -- I am on the staff of the Gazette's teen publication Flipside.
Ry, I apologize, but, I don’t understand what benefit is gained by hiding Nader’s name. Are they trying to get signatures from folks who believe in third party access but don’t like Nader?
Is this a widespread practice, or, a trick dreamed up by these two particular signature gatherers?
Posted by: David R Remer at July 13, 2004 03:08 PMWell, this has certainly stirred debate.
Sadly, Nader is not accomplishing much with his candidacy. I did watch a debate between him and Howard Dean recently, which was interesting.
Nader stated that his intent was to develop an third party.
While I think that is a noble enterprise, and I must note that Ralph has walked lonely paths before that won him admiration, I don’t think his voice will be heard a great deal this time.
Ralph is using paid pettitioners, and I wouldn’t find it surprising that many paid petitioners would use unscrupulous tatics to gain their fees.
I wouldn’t use this as an attack on Nader’s efforts though as both parties often use paid petitioners. If this was a widespread tactic, then it might have some legs as a story.
Yes, Nader has to get signatures to get on the ballot and there is not a lot of support for Nader (on the ballot, as I said, he got less than 2%).
The story also says — and maybe I should have added that part — that someone asked if the petition was to get Democrats to vote to get George Bush out of office and the “mysterious men” said ,”yes.”
This furthers the point — brought up in a filing to the FEC last month, and some stories in Salon over the past weeks — that Nader is running a deceptive campaign.
Posted by: Ry Rivard at July 13, 2004 04:43 PMWell, with Tom Delay’s investigation gaining legs, it would appear Nader’s campaign will get moved to page 10 pretty soon.
Posted by: David R. Remer at July 13, 2004 05:44 PMThat would be a pity — leaving those progressives who support neither the Democratic party nor the GOP with no choice at all. Oh well, there is David Cobb.
Posted by: Natalie Davis at July 15, 2004 08:31 AM
