Liberals Beat Drum for Gore, Hope Nader Backers Listen

Liberal leaders and interest groups are mounting a massive nationwide effort to drive supporters of Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader back toward Al Gore.

Fearful that Nader could siphon away votes from Gore and tip as many as half a dozen ordinarily Democratic states to Republican George W. Bush, a constellation of liberal stalwarts this week is organizing rallies, buying television and radio ads, and organizing phone banks all aimed at bolstering Gore against Nader.

The players range from celebrities such as feminist Gloria Steinem, singer Melissa Etheridge and actor/director Robert Redford to elected officials and national organizations such as the Sierra Club and the National Abortion Rights Action League.

On Tuesday night, for instance, just blocks from where Nader was meeting with Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura, a caravan of liberal activists held a rally here urging Nader supporters to switch their votes.

“I like to call this: It’s the Supreme Court Stupid Tour,” said Candace Gingrich of the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights group.

That argument was typical of those being raised by Gore’s liberal defenders.

Candidacy May Give Election to Bush

On one track, Gore’s supporters are challenging Nader’s core contention--that no meaningful differences separate Democrat Gore and Republican Bush on key issues. On the other, they are charging that Nader’s candidacy may set back the causes he espouses by delivering the election to Bush--and with it the power to appoint as many as three Supreme Court justices.

“I have tremendous respect for Ralph Nader, and I have stood with Ralph on just about every single issue,” Minnesota Sen. Paul Wellstone, perhaps the Senate’s most liberal member, declared at a downtown rally with Gore here last weekend. “But it would be a horrible irony if a vote for Ralph Nader meant George Bush becomes president of the United States of America. This is too dear a price to pay for our country.”

This effort is fraught with irony, because many of those now making the case for Gore against Nader have been among the liberals most disaffected from the centrist course that Gore and President Clinton have pursued. And, indeed, even as they are exhorting Green Party supporters to switch to Gore, several of the liberals mobilized in this effort say Nader’s appeal shows the risk of the Clinton-Gore drive to redirect the party.

“In a nutshell, they have pursued soccer moms at the expense of Greens,” complains California state Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles), who has made several appearances urging Nader supporters to back Gore. “The Democrats are blaming Nader, but on the other hand, Nader wouldn’t have a candidacy if there wasn’t a space there [on the left], if the space wasn’t open.”

In Minneapolis, sitting in the appropriately ramshackle office of the Nader presidential campaign, Ken Pentel is starting to feel as if he’s living in a bunker. Even before the rally Tuesday night, Nader supporters faced a steady barrage from Democrats and prominent liberals arguing that a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush.

“The Democratic Party is coming in with full force,” says Pentel, an experienced young organizer helping to direct Nader’s bid in the state.

In the short run, these attacks on Nader may have had the unintended effect of raising his visibility. But even Nader backers worry that the drumbeat from the left may cause second thoughts among liberals now inclined to support the consumer advocate. “People like Paul Wellstone, Jesse Jackson, Tom Hayden are definitely going to have an effect, no question about it,” says Pentel. “The fear factor is powerful.”

Gore had better hope he’s right: If voters still undecided in the campaign’s final days break away from the party in the White House, as they often do, the vice president will need every Nader vote he can find to hold several states that Democrats once considered a sure thing.

Mobilization Focused on Half-Dozen States

Although national in scope, the liberal mobilization is focused primarily on about half a dozen states with strong progressive traditions where Nader has shown his greatest strength--helping Bush to remain surprisingly competitive with Gore. These states include Maine, Washington and Wisconsin, where polls generally show Gore clinging to a narrow lead; New Mexico, which has been a tossup; and Oregon and Minnesota, where public polls have shown Nader drawing as much as 8% to 10% of the vote and Bush narrowly leading Gore. Except for New Mexico, a genuine swing state, all of these are states that Democrats expected to carry this year.

Gore campaign aides estimate that about half of Nader supporters may be open to supporting the vice president. Given that Nader generally polls 5% or less in national surveys, that isn’t a huge amount of votes. But with Bush and Gore so evenly matched in so many states, even small shifts in Nader support could prove crucial. In Minnesota and Oregon, for instance, Gore would be leading Bush in the latest surveys if he won half of Nader’s voters.

In these final days of the campaign, the effort to convert those voters is reaching a frenzy. The rally here Tuesday night was part of a series that NARAL, the Sierra Club and the Human Rights Campaign are sponsoring across the country this week, complete with such celebrities as Etheridge.

Of all the groups, NARAL appears to have unleashed the largest effort to reach Nader voters. Last week, it launched $500,000 in television ads in Oregon, Minnesota and Wisconsin, arguing that a vote for Nader could undermine the right to abortion by helping Bush win the election. This week, the group tripled its ad buy to $1.5 million, adding four additional states to the mix: Washington, Maine, Vermont and New Mexico.

In addition, NARAL is now systematically calling women it has identified as abortion rights supporters who back Nader in 15 key states, urging them to switch to Gore. “We are reaching as many people as we can,” says Kate Michelman, the group’s president. “We consider this Nader campaign a serious threat to a woman’s right to choose because of the potential Nader will give the election to Bush in these key states.”

Sierra Club Ads Target Nader Backers

Close behind NARAL in its efforts is the Sierra Club, a leading environmental group. Its efforts may be even more critical to Gore’s hopes because environmentalists have provided an important core of support for Nader, especially in Oregon and Washington.

Without mentioning the Green Party nominee by name, the Sierra Club is running television and radio ads in Oregon, Washington, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Maine challenging Nader’s contention that there is no meaningful difference between Gore and Bush on the environment. In Oregon and Wisconsin, the group has even placed ads with that message in alternative newspapers popular on college campuses.

“Those are aimed specifically at the most likely Nader voters,” says Daniel Weiss, the Sierra Club’s national political director.

Also without mentioning Nader directly, Redford--a longtime environmental activist--has recorded automated phone messages and radio scripts for the Democratic National Committee that target environmentalists with the message that a large difference separates Bush and Gore on this issue.

Similarly, People for the American Way, a group that works on civil liberties issues, launched a television ad Monday in Wisconsin and Oregon parodying an earlier ad from Nader that was itself a parody of a MasterCard commercial. Using the same “priceless” theme from MasterCard that Nader appropriated, the group’s commercial says, “The next president could appoint three of the nine Supreme Court justices. With our freedoms at stake, shouldn’t you cast a vote that really counts?”

Appearing on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday, Nader angered abortion rights supporters by arguing that even if Bush won and appointed Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe vs. Wade, states would still be free to permit legal abortion if they chose. But that argument doesn’t appear to be resonating much: Pentel, the Nader organizer here, says fear about the effect of Bush Supreme Court appointments, particularly on legal abortion, was the most powerful force driving Nader voters back to Gore.

‘They Feel Democrats Are to Blame’

Not all the liberals stumping for Gore are comfortable with these hardball arguments. Both Hayden and Wellstone argue that it may be counterproductive to tell Nader supporters that they are wasting their vote. “They don’t want to be told they are to blame, because they feel the Democrats are to blame,” Hayden says.

Instead, Hayden says, he’s urging liberals to back Nader in states that Bush or Gore have locked up, and to support Gore in those where the outcome is still in doubt. Hayden says that approach (which some Web sites also are encouraging) would help Nader reach the 5% vote threshold that the Greens need to secure federal funding in 2004, but it would also minimize the risk of assisting Bush.

Likewise, Wellstone says, “there’s nothing mysterious or magical or complicated about this. Ultimately, it’s what [liberal columnist] Molly Ivins said a long time ago: If you live in a state that’s not close, vote your heart; if you live in a state that’s close, vote your head.”