Beset Naderites vow to fight on

TOLEDO, Ohio -- It's not easy being a Naderite these days. Democrats are angry at you because they think Ralph Nader cost them the election in 2000. Republicans are nice to you because they hope your guy will do it again this year. And none of them really understand your continued devotion to the cause.

For these reasons, Julie Coyle was a little tense on Monday afternoon as she and other Nader volunteers headed to a plaza outside a government building in this union town, trying to coax workers to sign a petition to get her hero on the November ballot.

"You're about to see us get annihilated," said the social worker and erstwhile lounge singer.

"Would you be willing to sign a petition to allow Ralph Nader's name to appear on the ballot?" she asked the workers apologetically. "You don't have to vote for him. It's just to get him on the ballot."

Some refused her with heated absolutely-nots. Some took a more-the-merrier view and signed. And a few greeted Coyle's supplications with real enthusiasm.

"Sure!" said Gary Sartain, an accountant, who chuckled as he signed the petition. He is a Republican.

"I think everybody should get a chance," he said afterward, with mock innocence. Eventually, he conceded he had signed to help President Bush. It was only fair, he said. After all, Bill Clinton benefited in 1992 when billionaire Ross Perot drew votes from the president's father.

"It didn't bother Bill Clinton, did it?" Sartain said.

Coyle, cochair of Nader's campaign in Ohio, will take help wherever she can get it. Nader's presidential run this year has been no picnic for his shoestring operation. The consumer advocate and his devotees are struggling to make it onto ballots across the nation in the face of concern by some voters who don't want to risk a replay of 2000 and legal challenges from the Democratic party. So far, Nader is assured of a spot on the ballot in 12 states, said his spokesman Kevin Zeese, and his campaign maintains he will appear on the ballot in at least 30 others. Still, legal battles have begun over his standing in some places, he has written some states off, and he is expected to fail to qualify in others, including Massachusetts.

Although his run has been more difficult this time around, many Democrats, and some Republicans, perceive Nader as no less of a threat to Democratic nominee John F. Kerry. A recent Quinnipiac University poll gave Nader 4 percent of the Florida vote, with Kerry at 47 percent and Bush at 41 percent. Without Nader, Kerry garners 49 percent and Bush has 42 percent. If the Florida margin tightens, Democrats argue, Nader could cost Kerry this crucial state, just as, they say, he did to Al Gore four years ago. In at least a dozen other battleground states, points scored by Nader could be equally critical.

According to John Pearce of the Unity Campaign, formed to counter Nader's candidacy, the consumer advocate's presence in the race "deprives Kerry of Electoral College victory and pulls him into a virtual dead heat with George Bush." Without Nader in the race, Pearce projects 275 electoral votes to Kerry and 227 to Bush using current polls. In a three way race, Kerry's tally drops to 254, compared to Bush's 252.

Though some may believe Pearce is overstating Nader's impact, many of the consumer advocate's old allies are no longer willing to take the chance. Filmmaker and Bush critic Michael Moore, who came through Toledo to campaign with Nader in 2000, has publicly begged him to withdraw.

Nader is not going anywhere, however.

"He's the only serious candidate who stands for a responsible and rapid withdrawal from Iraq, and the only candidate standing up to the corporate control of Washington, D.C.," Zeese said.

That is why Coyle, 50, soldiers on. She became a disciple in 1974, after Nader spoke about solar energy to her class at the University of Toledo, and she's not about to abandon him now, even if that brings her "huge amounts of hostility." She is still a registered Democrat, but the Democrats, she said, "are moving too close to the corporatists . . . They're not my party anymore." Nader is the only one talking about universal health care, the environment, and the futility of the war in Iraq, she said. So she's sticking with him.

Coyle said she was "devastated" by Bush's victory in 2000.

"I really didn't think George W. had any chance," she said. "I didn't think he was intelligent enough. He can't make a sentence happen. It's embarrassing."

But even if she knew Nader's candidacy would tip the election to Bush this time around, she would still campaign for Nader, she said, because she has faith that people will eventually turn on Bush the way they did on Richard Nixon.

"We can always recall George W.," she said.

Few of the staunch Democrats Coyle approached in downtown Toledo shared her optimism, however.

"No!" said Carol Bruggeman, an attorney, when Coyle asked her to sign.

"As much as I like Ralph Nader, I hate Bush, and I'm more afraid he'll take votes away from John Kerry," she explained.

"Absolutely not!" said Leslie Kovacik, 36.

"All he's doing is pulling votes away from the two candidates most qualified, from John Kerry," said Kovacik, also an attorney. "I'm not in favor of a strictly two-party system, but in this environment, I think it's a little harmful. . . . I'm scared to death George Bush is going to win."

"Get lost!" said a man who kept walking. "I'm supporting the other Bush opponent. Maybe in '08."

Coyle and other Nader volunteers must turn in 5,000 signatures for their candidate by tomorrow. So far, she said, they have about 10,000 signatures, because they're hoping to guard against technical disqualifications and challenges from Democrats. The GOP hasn't organized to help collect signatures in Ohio as far as she knows, she said. In Michigan, most of the 50,000 signatures collected for Nader were gathered by people sympathetic to the GOP. Republicans have been accused of helping Nader along in other states too, including New Hampshire, Arizona, Oregon, Nevada, and Missouri.

Zeese is incensed by the talk of GOP puppetry.

"The Republican thing is highly exaggerated," he said. "We're doing our best to avoid Republican Party Machiavellian activity, but we're much more concerned with the Democratic Party being antidemocratic, and their attempt to deny voters a choice, because they don't trust the voters and they don't trust their candidate."

Zeese said about 5 percent of the money donated to Nader so far has come from people who also support Republicans, and that "a lot of that 5 percent are people who actually support Nader."

In Ohio, Coyle doesn't ask any questions.

"Anybody who hit the website and said, 'I want to get petitions signed,' I put them in an envelope and sent them," she said. "I didn't ask their affiliation. I asked if they wanted a button, too."

And she certainly didn't ask Maria Snyder, an elderly woman with a black bob and a purposeful walk, why she signed her petition on that hot afternoon earlier this week.

But after she got out of Coyle's earshot, Snyder let it rip.

"I don't want those Democrats," she said. "I've had enough of these giveaway programs. Let them all go to work like the rest of us."