To SocialistsUnmoderated at yahoogroups.com Cc RedBadBear at yahoogroups.com
From "Michael C. Marino" <action_chair at yahoo.com> Date Sat, 26 Jun 2004 183916 -0700 (PDT) Subject [SocialistsUnmoderated] Less green, more mean, Nader got new friends- racists and Republicans
Less green, more mean, Nader got new friends- racists and Republicans
Nader's Dubious Raiders
Exclusive Ralph's Arizona ballot tactics are worse than this week's Democratic lawsuit alleges. Some petitions piggybacked on a reactionary anti-immigrant initiative -- and others were paid for by a former executive director of the state GOP.
After four decades of tireless crusading for consumer's rights and against corporate influence over government, Ralph Nader has developed an unblemished luster of integrity. However, as Nader forges ahead with his long-shot, independent presidential candidacy in an especially heated election season, he appears to be shedding the conviction that has formed the core of his politics for so long in favor of political expediency.
In its effort to get on the ballot in the key battleground state of Arizona, the Prospect has learned, the Nader campaign hired a petition company that is also gathering signatures for a draconian anti-immigrant initiative pushed by right-wing elements in the state. The initiative, called Protect Arizona Now (PAN), would restrict access to public services by undocumented immigrants.
In addition, according to several sources, the Nader campaign was assisted in its petition drive by an unlikely figure the ultra-conservative former executive director of the Arizona Republican Party, Nathan Sproul. Sources say Sproul -- who is also spearheading an initiative to block public funding from political campaigns in the state -- made payments to the petition contractors working on his public-funding initiative to gather signatures for Nader as well.
Moreover, according to several sources, the signature-gathering drive for PAN is mostly funded by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), a Washington-based anti-immigrant group that has spent tens of millions in the last two decades to roll back the rights of both legal and illegal immigrants living in the United States.
The Arizona ballot drive was never the grassroots effort that Nader characterizes his campaign as. In trying to garner the 14,694 signatures necessary to get on the Arizona ballot, the Nader campaign first unsuccessfully solicited a Republican consulting firm to handle its ballot-qualification bid. This spring, as droves of professional petitioners descended on Arizona like traveling carnival folk to gather signatures for PAN -- and to collect the $2-4 that a petitioner is awarded for each signature delivered -- they also presented signatories with the Nader petition, according to several sources. This petition piggybacking helped Nader get more than the amount of signatures he needed to qualify for the ballot -- most of them from Republicans. In fact, according to a volunteer for the Arizona Democratic Party who has reviewed Nader's signatures, of the more than 21,000 signatures Nader garnered, a whopping 65 percent percent came from Republicans, compared to 18 percent from Democrats.
Nader spokesman Kevin Zeese said, "We only heard of Sproul a week ago from media reports. We received 20,000 signatures, and we paid for 20,000 signatures, so I'd be surprised if any of this is true." continued @ http://www.prospect.org/web/index.ww
Michael Pugliese