Worries of a Bush Win Raid Nader Support

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Idealism was supposed to be safe this year.

It’s not turning out that way for Eliane McNally, a Detroit bartender and mother of two who emigrated from Germany 30 years ago and became a citizen expressly to vote. When she first heard Ralph Nader, she said to herself, “Wow, finally somebody I can relate to in so many ways,” a chance to vote for principles.

But these days, she’s taking a constant drubbing from the union workers she serves at Honest?John’s tavern; they say she could help George W. Bush win the White House.

Kathleen Dragoman of Youngstown, Ohio, also is conflicted. A retired schoolteacher, she too yearns to support Nader--if only her state weren’t so important and the presidential race still so close. “I want to vote for Nader so badly. If I felt comfortable that Gore was getting in the White House, I would vote for Nader in a minute. I don’t feel comfortable, and Ohio is a swing state.”

And out in Olympia, Wash., at the Kill Rock Stars independent recording label, Maggie Vail says her colleagues talk of little else. “My sister switches back and forth every day” between Nader and Vice President Al Gore, she says. When did Vail decide she had to go for Gore? “Probably just in the last week.”

For an election in which a majority of Americans may not even bother to vote, the 2000 presidential campaign suddenly has become an exercise in anguish for one segment of the electorate: thousands of idealistic liberals, left-wingers and progressives.

They didn’t think it would be like this. Blessed with peace and prosperity, they had assumed Democrats easily would retain the White House, making it a good year to “send a message” by supporting Nader, the Green Party presidential candidate.

Instead, the race looks like a photo finish, and a relative handful of Nader voters find themselves viewed as a crucial voting bloc--and the target of unexpected attention.

Gore supporters warn them that they could indirectly elect Bush--a candidate who champions almost everything Nader backers hate, from big business and the global economy to fossil fuels and the death penalty.

On Friday, the executive director of the pro-Gore Sierra Club called Nader’s campaign “flawed, dangerous and reckless” but stopped short of calling on him to end it.

In a letter to Nader, which was e-mailed to the environmental group’s members, Carl Pope wrote: “My hope is that by electing the best environmental president in American history, Al Gore, we can move forward. My fear is that you, blinded by your anger at flaws of the Clinton-Gore administration, may be instrumental in electing the worst.”

Even Republicans are getting into the act. A new ad paid for by a GOP group features Nader attacking Gore and is running in some of the states where the Nader vote could tip the balance.

Torn between their hearts and their heads, Nader sympathizers are fighting with themselves and with each other.

“I can’t sleep at night. I’m a creature in torment,” says a West Coast consumer activist who has spent 20 years fighting shoulder to shoulder with Nader. “The stakes are huge,” she said, speaking on condition of anonymity because she represents a nonpartisan consumer group and is barred from partisan activity.

What lies beneath this angst is the extraordinary way the presidential campaign has evolved. Most times, the winner would be clear well before now. And third-party candidates normally fade to insignificance in the stretch.

“Voters flirt with maverick candidates in the primaries. But as they get closer and closer to casting a vote that could actually elect the president of the United States, there’s tremendous pressure to come back to the two major parties,” said Robert Loevy, a political scientist at Colorado College in Colorado Springs. “The tendency of third parties to disappear is one of the enduring realities.”

Indeed, Nader’s poll numbers are eroding. He and his hard-core supporters hope he will get at least 5% of the popular vote nationwide--and thus qualify the Green Party for federal campaign funds in 2004--but many surveys show him falling short of that goal. Still, the Bush-Gore contest looks so close that if Nader takes even a few percentage points away from Gore--and the vast majority of Nader votes come at the vice president’s expense, analysts agree--that could swing a handful of states to Bush.

Slim Support, but Could Tip Tight Race

There’s a prospect of significant Nader support in at least six states: Oregon, Washington, New Mexico, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Maine, which have a total of 48 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency.

But the Nader vote could be key even in states where polls show his support remains below 5%. In Michigan, for example, with its 18 electoral votes, some samplings suggest Nader may get no more than 2% of the vote. But with Bush and Gore dead even in several recent surveys, that 2% could spell the difference. Similar math could apply in Florida and Pennsylvania, which account for 48 electoral votes combined.

In California, which has 54 electoral votes, Gore’s once-hefty lead appears to have slipped, but his margin over Bush still appears large enough to survive Naderite defections.

The turmoil on the left that all this has created may be taking its most public form in Washington, which, like neighboring Oregon, has gone Democratic in each of the last three presidential elections.

Of the nine members of the Seattle City Council, five belong to the Green Party. On Tuesday, the news broke that three of the five are leaving the party out of concern that supporting Nader could give the state to Bush. One of the two remaining Greens on the council, Peter Steinbrueck, let it be known that he may switch to Gore too.

“I’m not trying to be coy about my vote,” he said. “I am feeling a lot of pressure as friends and family question my loyalty to Nader, and I am really conflicted.”

In a striking tableau Friday in Oregon, Democratic vice presidential candidate Joseph I. Lieberman sought to win over one Nader supporter as he visited the Bijou Cafe, an organic eatery in downtown Portland.

He spent several minutes trying to convince Mike Manning, 40, that voting for Gore is the wiser course. “I understand that it’s not an easy decision,” the Connecticut senator said, standing next to Manning, who was perched on a stool eating breakfast. “Obviously our feeling is that most of the Nader people--not all, but most of the Nader people--if Nader were not in, would probably vote for Al Gore and me as opposed to Bush . . . just because of the difference on issues like environmental protection or consumer protection, [abortion] choice or money in politics.

“I know Ralph really well. He’s actually from Connecticut. And we’ve had a friendship relationship for a long time, and I’ve admired him a lot of the time, but I guess I’d urge you to think about how you’ll feel on Nov. 8 and you wake up and George Bush has carried Oregon and is president because a lot of people voted for Nader.”

Manning, a bread truck driver and father of three, was unconvinced.

“I have to look in my children’s eyes when they look at me and say, ‘Why are species dying?’ ” he told Lieberman. “And . . . I think we need to really back off of the corporate push for money and the growth economy. I don’t mind paying more for gas if it’s going to save a species.”

Seeing Little Difference Between Bush, Gore

In the Portland on the other side of the country, the one in Maine, Elizabeth Cradock knows the feelings Manning expresses yet remains on the fence. A young professional who carries Nader longings, she said, “Usually, I vote Democrat, but . . . I’m having a hard time telling Bush and Gore apart.”

If final polls in the state are close, her fears of a Bush victory may win out.

“It’s not going to be eenie-meenie-minie-moe,” said Cradock, an accountant. “I’ll be watching the polls at the last minute to see what I’ll do.”

For Michael Charney, an environmental activist in Massachusetts, the decision to support Gore has a personal edge. In 1969, he was one of the original “Nader’s Raiders,” idealistic young people who answered the consumer advocate’s call to expose corporate influence in federal agencies.

Today, Charney said, “Nader does better represent my views than Gore, and I would like the Green Party to grow.” Yet he has joined a recently formed group of ex-Raiders who are urging Nader supporters to turn back.

“A vote for Ralph Nader in swing states, in my opinion, would be an act of unconscionably misguided, truly Green-behind-the-ears idealism,” he said.

For many others, the internal struggle goes on, even as the days to the election dwindle.

Alan Benchich, president of United Auto Workers Local 909 in Warren, Mich., watched the presidential debates. “I heard Gore say he supports the death penalty, he supported [the Persian Gulf War], all these things I find reprehensible. I was more and more sure that Ralph Nader was the person.

“But the fact of the matter is, in Michigan he’s not going to make it. I know my one vote may not be the one that changes the way Michigan goes, but it is fairly close and a few votes might make a difference.

“It’s a moral struggle I’m wrestling with.”

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Times staff writers Matea Gold, Melissa Lambert, Scott Martelle and T. Christian Miller and Times researchers John Beckham, Lynn Marshall and Anna M. Virtue contributed to this story.