On the Road With Ralph

by Janet Reynolds

His Lincolnesque stature and craggy face seem oddly in tune with the primitive American art filling much of the wall space.

"I'm not going to start with the usual exhortations," Nader says. "I want to talk to you about Gerry Spence."

Spence, for the uninitiated, is a wildcat flamboyant Wyoming lawyer, famous in part for winning a $1 million-plus verdict for the estate of whistleblower Karen Silkwood against the Kerr-McGee nuclear plant in Oklahoma, after Silkwood's car mysteriously ran off the road and her apartment was found to be contaminated with plutonium. When Nader heard a few years ago that a U.S. Senate position was opening up in Wyoming, he called Spence and urged him to run.

"Ralph," Nader recalled Spence saying, "I'm sitting here looking out the windows at the Grand Tetons, my life is good, I can take the cases I want. Why would I want to enter that Senate cesspool?"

"I think your country needs you," Nader says he responded. "I said, 'Suppose someone came by in the middle of the night and dropped a truckload full of manure on your front step, blocking your front door. Would you fight it or would you still say, 'I'm sitting here looking out the window at the Tetons and life is good'?"

There was a pause on the other end of the phone before Spence said, "You bastard."

The group in Newman's living room includes former talk-show host and longtime Nader friend Phil Donahue, as well as both the publisher and the editor of The Nation. After a pleasant meal of mushroom-stuffed chicken, wild rice and lightly sautˇed vegetables, they chuckle at the punch line. Nader smiles before delivering the real punch.

"I'm only standing here because any one of dozens don't want to."

Not exactly the fist-pumping rhetoric typical of other presidential hopefuls, who call up years of supposed public service as they shout, "I can't do it without you!"

The anti-politician Nader offers a far different message. "We're counting on each other," he said repeatedly to citizens' groups around New England two weeks ago, "and I don't want to do it without you because it doesn't work."

But Nader must overcome more than the already large -- some would say insurmountable -- obstacle of running as a third-party candidate. Besides fighting to get on the ballot and included in the presidential debates, Nader must combat the perception that he's yesterday's man.

Sure, he was instrumental in the mid-'60s and early '70s in changing political history. His intervention between 1966 and 1970 via Nader's Raiders, a group of young lawyers dedicated to exposing government abuse and corporate wrongs, is directly responsible for the Traffic and Motor Vehicle Act, Wholesale Poultry Products Act, Wholesale Meat Act, Radiation Control Act, Natural Gas Pipeline Safety Act, Coal Mine Health and Safety Act and Occupation Health and Safety Act. In addition, Nader was a key player in creating the Freedom of Information Act and the Consumer Protection Agency.

But in a society whose attention span can be measured in 30-second sound bites, many wonder what Nader has done for them lately. Those who do remember his role in this country's history may worry that his low-key approach and insistence on citizen involvement and grassroots democracy are anachronistic in an age rooted in cynicism and apathy.

Nader is haunted as well by his 1996 presidential bid. He spent less than $5,000 and did not campaign as the Green Party's candidate then, prompting people and political pundits to ask why they should believe he's really running this time around -- especially if it means that a vote for Nader is a vote taken away from presumed Democratic candidate Al Gore.

To dismiss Nader this way, however, is to miss the many ways in which he could be a real factor in this campaign and the ways in which he could, as he has in the past, change the course of political history. Overwhelmingly disgusted with political patronage and corporate corruption, Americans have avoided the voting booth in hordes in recent elections.

Supporters are counting on Nader's common-sense approach, coupled with his insistence of working on the people rather than for them, could lure people back into politics. Already, one national poll puts Nader in the 5 percent to 7 percent range, ahead of likely Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan, who has been campaigning for years.

Meanwhile, in Oregon Nader is at 7 percent -- before even campaigning there -- and in California, a key Democratic state, he's at 9 percent.

Which is good, some pundits, say because he's in for a losing battle. Besides the difficulty of getting on enough ballots to garner at least 5 percent of the national vote -- the magic number required for federal matching funds for the next election -- and trying to get included on the national presidential debates sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates, Nader could be hurt by the credibility of the party he's likely to represent.

After all, how seriously can people take a party whose other presidential hopefuls include former Dead Kennedys punk star Jello Biafra and Stephen Gaskin, who helped found The Farm, a hippie commune, in the '60s?

Nader's name recognition may help. But although he was a household name 35 years ago, an entire generation of new voters has no idea Nader is the man who has made their lives cleaner and safer.

"Ten to 15 years ago if Ralph Nader was going to a college campus, they had a sense of who he was," says Bruce Altschuler, chairman of the political science department at the State University of New York at Oswego. "Now he's been out of the spotlight, and I think more people in that age group, if you say, 'Ralph Nader,' you need some explanation. He'll have to make himself known. He's also not what you call a hip figure." (This despite the fact that Time magazine recently referred to Nader as "retro cool.")

Nader's name recognition and appeal only become more important when you consider the Green Party itself. While not as openly divisive as the Reform Party, which is gradually imploding under the new involvement of right-winger Pat Buchanan, the Green Party is certainly not without controversy.

The U.S. Green Party, founded about 20 years ago, had as its inspiration the Green Party founded on environmental principles in Germany. The U.S. Greens now have two factions, the National Green Party and the Green Party USA, under the broad Green Party label.

Randy Toler, one of the original Green Party founders, remains confident the party will galvanize around Nader.

"We have to get our act together here," he says. "Ralph Nader has his faults, but he is the best bet to push Al Gore on the environment. The Green Party needs Ralph Nader more than Ralph Nader needs the Green Party."

Finally, while Nader dismisses the spoiler effect, others don't. "Most people who are clearly on the left will end up voting for Gore," says political science professor Arthur Paulson. "The voter for Nader is not really a swing voter," someone who votes for a candidate rather than a party. "In the absence of Nader, that voter would vote Democratic most of the time.

"I really don't think a lot of people will sign on to the Nader idea," continues Paulson, who specializes in third parties and elections. "The disgusted voter will tend to stay home as they have in recent years."

Immigrants from Lebanon, Nathra and Rose taught by example, taking their children to Winsted town meetings. Anyone who ate at the family's Main Street restaurant knew that their food came spiced with commentary by Nathra. When a doctor commented that he charged his patients based on their ability to pay, Nathra said his martinis were $5 for doctors, 10 cents for the poor. Nathra once started a protest about congressional pay raises by walking alone down Main Street decrying the change. By the time he reached the end, the protest had become large enough to warrant an Associated Press photograph that was published around the country.

Nathra's spirit lives on in regular anecdotes. Nader often tells a story of his father asking him, when he was about 10 years old, whether he had learned to think or believe at school that day.

"I went into my room to think about that!" Nader laughs at a recent campaign stop. Another favorite is his father's response when a young Ralph told him America needed a good third party. Said Nathra, "I'd settle for a second."

Rose is still a regular part of Nader's audience whenever possible. In one speech Nader recalled his mother urging him to make his country more lovable when he became an adult.

Questioning the status quo began early for Nader, while an undergrad at Princeton University majoring in Far East politics and languages. (He learned to speak Russian, Spanish and Chinese.) In 1951, Princeton boys wore white shirts and tweed jackets. Nader thought this a silly convention, so he showed up to class one day dressed in his bathrobe. At another point, he noticed dead birds on campus the day after the elm trees had been sprayed with DDT. Suspecting a correlation, he wrote a letter to The Daily Princetonian, which was not printed. Nader complained.

The complaining continued at Harvard Law School, where Nader spent more time turning the student newspaper, the Harvard Law School Record, into a muckraking journal -- tackling the exploitation of migrant workers and the myth of black inferiority -- than he did attending required classes.

But it was while hitchhiking home from Harvard -- hitchhiking is the only way Nader traveled to and from college and home -- that Nader's consumer career path perhaps began. He saw a car accident in which a young girl in the back seat had been decapitated by a glove compartment that flew open on impact. He wrote a paper on car safety.

After graduation, he wrote an article for The Nation on car safety. But it wasn't until 1964, when then-Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan asked Nader to help prepare a report for a federal conference on traffic safety, that Nader really began to explore car safety in earnest. In addition to the report, Nader wrote an article on the Corvair for the New Republic, which led to the book Unsafe at Any Speed, which forever changed the auto industry and gave rise to the consumer activism movement.

Before this 1965 book -- published two years after Rachel Carson's environmental call to arms, Silent Spring -- the consumer was essentially held responsible for car safety. Nader's book showed how a car's design has a direct impact on the safety of its passengers. He accused the automotive industry of sacrificing safety for the bottom line.

By 1972 Nader was such an icon and political force that George McGovern considered him as a vice presidential candidate.

By the '80s, though, Nader's influence had waned. With Ronald Reagan at the helm, the government's attitude toward regulating industry did a 180. Reagan felt regulations stifled free trade and enterprise, and slashed away at many of the social services and agencies Nader had spent his career creating and building up. The Environmental Protection Agency, another creation Nader helped spawn, was especially hard hit. In 1986 his brother died and Nader suffered an attack of Bell's Palsy, paralyzing the left side of his face and affecting his speech.

It was the insurance industry that brought him back. In 1988, California citizens took on the insurance industry's usurious rates. Nader got behind Proposition 103, a measure to force insurance companies to roll back their rates. The insurance giants spent $70 million to fight the campaign. Nader et al. had only $2 million. They won.

That was just the beginning. As the country began to feel the effects of Reagan deregulation, damaging oil spills and the savings and loan debacle, Nader went on the attack. He was on the forefront of the S&L battle and a leader against a 51 percent pay raise for Congress. Nader was back.

Which is one reason he doesn't put a lot of stock in naysayers. He doesn't have time.

At Newman's fundraiser, Nader answers the spoiler effect argument -- in which people suggest a vote for Nader and the Green Party is essentially a vote for George W. Bush -- this way: It's a vote for progressive change rather than a vote against the least worst candidate.

In the car ride back from Manhattan to Winsted, Nader is abrupt about the suggestion his candidacy may hinder more than it helps.

"It helps with name recognition," he says of his candidacy. "It raises the sights beyond certain single issues."

As for the toll his '96 presidential stroll -- rather than serious run -- may take on this campaign, "That's dissipating fast," he says. "We're going to every single state."

Echoes campaign manager Theresa Amato: "When he first announced, that was the concern. But the last 10 weeks should have dispelled any such notion. In '96 he stood for election; now he's running."

And people who can make a difference in attracting voters are endorsing him weekly. To date Ani DeFranco, Bonnie Raitt, Warren Beatty, Susan Sarandon and columnist Jim Hightower have endorsed him, while Pearl Jam and Rage Against the Machine have said they will do voter registration on his behalf at their concerts this summer.

Indeed, it takes only a few days on the campaign trail to prove Nader's seriousness of intent. In a whirlwind tour through the six New England states in six days recently, Nader meets with citizen groups to talk of their successes or help with their struggles or give speeches on college campuses.

The overall theme is making all politics local.

So at Dis Mas House, an alternative incarceration home in Worcester, Mass., Nader talks of the cost savings and success rate of this kind of facility over a traditional state correctional approach. After noting that it costs $3,000 annually to house an inmate at Dis Mas rather than $60,000 at a traditional jail, and that the home has a much lower recidivism rate, he berates the governor for slashing appropriations to the facility and bemoans the national trend toward privatizing the prison system. "Almost nothing is off-limits to corporatizing except the Pentagon," he says.

In Rhode Island, at the State House Rotunda, he talks to a crowd composed heavily of college students about their fight to end sweatshop labor. In Hartford, he cites the fight against the Patriots stadium as a success story that shows citizens can make a difference.

"We need to merge the political movement with the civic movement so the political movement never forgets its roots," he says of this deliberate linking of his campaign with the citizenry. "You can't change inside Washington inside Washington."

Nor will Nader say outright what he knows to be true: that he won't win. "I don't have to believe one way or the other," Nader said when asked at Assumption College in Worcester, where he had gone to celebrate a nurses' win in a strike. "Whatever we get in November, we build on for the future."

"I'm not holding this campaign to any artificial ceiling," he said at a press conference in Hartford's North End. "We're out for every vote."

Nader points to history as proof that third parties and dedicated citizens can effect change. Abolitionists and trade unionists, for instance, succeeded against seemingly unbeatable odds.

"The key is, we don't grow up with a sense of civic stamina," he says. "The only place democracy comes before work is in the dictionary."

So Nader plugs away, repeating his message in homes and colleges across America. Time and again he reminds audiences that it only takes 1 million people each donating 100 hours of time and raising $100 to make a third party viable.

"To those who say, 'I'm not turned on to politics,' I say, 'then politics will turn on you.'"

Just how far he must travel, though, is clear. During a meet-and-greet that polished political pros would take an hour to accomplish, Nader walks down the street, intent in conversation with people. He has to be reminded to stop to meet various merchants along the way. Not once does he utter the words, "I hope I have your vote in November."

When the occasional person on the street whispers and points or, as one man does, yells out, "Yo, Ralph Nader my man," he doesn't even look up. Indeed, for the most part Nader walks unrecognized.

Until he enters a local bookstore, where he is scheduled to give a speech and sign copies of No Contest, a book on how corporate lawyers have perverted justice in America. As soon as he walks in the door, the clapping begins. First it's just a few of the clerks by the door. By the time Nader has climbed the stairs to the open space created for his speech, the applause and cheers resound from the couple hundred gathered there, many of them holding "Nader 2000" posters.

Again, no glad-handing. Nader walks to the side of the podium and waits patiently for the Green Party members to conduct a little business. Then he speaks.

"Why is it other Western nations have better public transportation? Why is it other Western nations have better health care? More livable downtowns? Are ahead in alternative energy?" Nader says. "We're supposed to be number one.

"Well, we're number one in the number of people in prisons. We're the world's leading debtor."

A few minutes later Nader holds up a bottle of Poland Spring water. "The contented classes can afford this, and they're no longer interested in improving our drinking water. The problem is that the contented classes have too many ways to exit."

He concludes his speech with a quote from two disparate and yet similar historical figures: Sir Alfred North Whitehead and Cicero. "Duty," Whitehead noted, "arises out of the power to alter the course of events."

"Freedom," Cicero said, "is participation in power."

The crowd cheers and Nader smiles.

to Nader, the top 1 percent of the richest Americans have wealth equal to the combined wealth of 95 percent of other Americans: "It used to be said a rising economic tide lifts all boats. Now a rising economic tide lifts all yachts."

• Twenty percent of American children live in poverty; in the Netherlands that figure is 3 percent.

• The minimum wage today is lower, in inflation-adjusted dollars, than in 1979.

• Today's worker works 160 hours longer per year than 25 years ago.

• Bill Gates' wealth equals the combined wealth of the poorest 120 million Americans, or 45 percent of our population. "This is a failure of the political system to defend the people."

• Less than one in 10 workers belongs to a trade union in the private sector.

• Two million Americans are in prisons, 500,000 more than in communist China, which has a 1.3 billion population.

• Forty-seven million people work for less than $10 an hour -- this in a decade of sustained economic growth. "With a wage like that, people can't be considered employed despite the fact that they have jobs."

• "When it comes to corporate greed, the synonym is infinity. They want it all."