Nader's Damage to Gore Most Evident in Oregon By SAM HOWE VERHOVEK
PORTLAND, Ore., Oct. 25 — In the downtown streets of the biggest city in Oregon, it is remarkably easy to find people who say they are truly struggling with how to cast their vote this year. But it is remarkably difficult to find people in that group who see the decision as a choice between Vice President Al Gore and Gov. George W. Bush.
Instead, the choice they find so agonizing is between Mr. Gore and Ralph Nader, the Green Party candidate.
Democratic leaders here and around the country have mounted a ferocious appeal to convince such people that a vote for Mr. Nader is tantamount to a vote for Mr. Bush. But while this argument weighs heavily on many minds here, there are also many voters who will have none of it. Oregon is the closest thing to Nader country, after all, where polls suggest his support is higher than in any other state.
"I'd like to vote for Nader, I really would," explained Kevin McGrorty, 31, the proprietor of Bad Kitty Koffee, a sidewalk stand. "I like what he stands for. I like the questions he's raising. But I've got to vote for Gore. I'd feel horribly guilty if I woke up the day after the election and Bush won, and if I felt that my particular vote had in any way could have swayed things toward him."
But no such conflict troubled one of Mr. McGrorty's customers, Danielle DeDee, a sales clerk at a local gallery and a fiercely pro-Nader voter. She knows her candidate is an extreme long shot on Nov. 7, though she said that was no reason to withhold a vote for him. And though she firmly believes that Governor Bush, of Texas, is "dangerous," especially on environmental issues, that does not mean that she would rather see Mr. Gore become president.
"If Bush gets in, I feel that it might bring things to a head much more quickly," Ms. DeDee said. "Pollution's going to increase in the short term, but I think that will bring a lot more people into the environmental movement a lot more quickly. Sometimes you've got to hit bottom before you come back up."
Oregon has voted for the Democratic presidential nominee in the last three elections.
But with plenty of support in the suburbs and rural regions of the state, Mr. Bush stands a very good chance of winning this state and its seven electoral votes if Mr. Nader drains away critical votes from Mr. Gore in cities like Portland and the college town, Eugene.
The same dynamic is at work in neighboring Washington State, and in some Midwestern states like Minnesota and Wisconsin, and perhaps even in California, the biggest electoral prize of all. But in no other state but Oregon does there seem to be more of a risk for Mr. Gore. That goes a long way toward explaining why the vice president showed up here at a rally on Sunday night, pledging to "fight to protect the environment with all my heart and soul."
Polls this year in Oregon have shown Mr. Nader with support ranging from 5 percent all the way into double digits. An American Research Group poll of 600 likely Oregon voters, taken Oct. 20-24 and released today, showed Mr. Bush with 45 percent, Mr. Gore with 41 percent, and Mr. Nader with 10 percent. (Of self-identified Republicans, just 1 percent said they were for Mr. Nader; among Democrats, the figure was 12 percent.) The margin of sampling error for the entire group surveyed is plus or minus four percentage points.
But whether those who now say they prefer Mr. Nader will actually mark their ballots for him is a different question. Democrats here are banking on the notion that a blitz of rallies, speakers and radio and television advertisements will persuade many of these people to support the vice president in the end.
The advertisements are aimed at voters in states with significant percentages of people who have indicated they support Mr. Nader. They focus on issues such as the environment or the prospects that Supreme Court nominees under a Bush presidency would be far more hostile to abortion rights than those who would be selected if Mr. Gore wins.
The argument that a vote for Mr. Nader could help put Mr. Bush in the White House seems to be backfiring. "It's manipulative," said Joe Reinhorn, a shipping clerk for a computer parts company. "Some of my friends are arguing, `Well, Bush is really bad, and Gore is somewhat bad, so it's important to vote for Gore.' Whatever happened to voting your conscience?"
Mr. Reinhorn and others also said that the main point in supporting Mr. Nader was not so much to elect him president, but to get him 5 percent of the total vote, which would award the Green Party federal campaign funds for the 2004 presidential election.
In some cases, the choice has split households. Susan Harlan, an associate professor of art at Portland State University, said she is veering toward Mr. Nader while her husband backs Mr. Gore.
"I just feel, in the long run, I'm being more honest by voting for Nader," Ms. Harlan said. It also bothers me that we haven't really been allowed to hear more from Nader, that he wasn't in the debates."
She said her husband, a systems analyst, was frustrated with her decision.
"He loves Nader, but he does not want to see George W. Bush in the White House," she explained.
"I appreciate Nader's left-leaningness," said Steve Fosler, who owns an architectural firm. "But a vote for Nader takes a vote away from Gore. It's as simple as that.
Tim Hibbitts, an independent pollster in Portland, has calculated that among those who indicate a preference for Mr. Nader in the polls, about half are unlikely to change their minds, in part because they view both major parties as "two peas in a very corrupt pod." The other half, he said, are more up in the air, and may well decided to weigh in on the Bush-Gore match-up if the race looks to be very close in their state, which it certainly does now.
One such a voter is Sean McCuen, 30, a mover and carpet layer who described himself as "temporarily unemployed."
"If it wasn't so close, I'd go for Nader for sure, just to show my support for what he's talking about," he said. "But if it's close, I want to be realistic. If there's really a chance of Bush getting elected, I guess I'd like to have a say about that. I don't want that to happen."
Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. -- Frederick Douglass --