The Princetonian: Nader fails to reach 5-percent threshold

Long discounted as a sideline spectator in a duel between Democratic Vice President Al Gore and Republican Texas Gov. George Bush, last night Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader '55 may have proved the decisive actor in a three-player contest for the several thousand pivotal votes in Florida and other key states that will decide the election.

Though only garnering three percent of the popular vote — two points shy of the cutoff to qualify for federal funding in the next presidential race — Nader secured enough support in the sunshine state, Iowa, Oregon and Wisconsin to make the election a battle for each Electoral College vote.

In Florida — a state with 25 electoral votes that many news outlets mistakenly awarded to Gore early in the evening — the Greens collected more than 95,000 votes, eight times Bush's margin of victory.

And while some pundits pointed to other factors accounting for the apparent Bush victory, many pinned Nader as the "spoiler" they had anticipated he would be.

"Ralph Nader delivered this election for Bush," said MSNBC commentator and former Clinton strategist Paul Begala. "The simple fact is that without Nader, Gore would have picked up those key states."

Nevertheless, it remains unclear whether Nader siphoned votes from the Democrats — as many experts predicted — or from the Republicans, or if his supporters came from outside those two parties.

Fending off criticisms that its candidate cut into the Democratic voter base, the Nader campaign claimed that up to 40 percent of Green supporters were voters who would not otherwise have voted, according to CNN.

And Nader himself made no apologies for allegedly losing the election for Gore, claiming, "You can't spoil a system already spoiled to the core."

Appearing on Larry King Live and addressing a crowd of supporters at the National Press Club in Washington DC, Nader remained resolute that the strong grassroots turnout indicates the emergence of the Greens as a viable third party that is "sending a message to the Democrats and Republicans that they are going to have to shape up."

"This is just the beginning, the take-off," he said. The "millions of voters" he expected last night, Nader said, have made the Greens "the third largest party, replacing the Reform Party, and making the fastest growing party."

With the popular vote in Wisconsin seeming early this morning to lean narrowly toward Bush, Nader's more than 37,000 votes far outnumbered the fewer-than-1,000-vote gap between the two front-runners.

"Whether Al Gore or George Bush wins, we are no longer the government of the people, it's the corporate government" Nader said last night. "That's what we are going to do — reestablish the sovereignty of the people."

Get the best of ‘the Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

The notion of a rotten system served as the base of Nader's platform to rid Washington of its "corporate welfare" and fat-cat backing. With vice-presidential nominee Winona LaDuke — one of the most outspoken leaders of Native American movement — the Green's progressive ticket pledged to lash out against the corporate grip that it claims corrupts national politics by siphoning funds from public works.

The Green Party platform also calls for the repeal of the death penalty and for legislation promoting Affirmative Action, gun control, disability rights and the Equal Rights Amendment.

And the Greens have found a majority of their appeal among young voters. "This is a young generation of Americans," Nader said of his supporters, "that understands that voting for the lesser of two evilisms is a bad idea that leaves us with evil."

Promising hundreds of Green candidates in the next round of local and national elections, he noted, "This party is the voice of the young generation of Americans."