2/25/2004

No Green for Nader

Grace Dobush
Daily Kent Stater

Ralph Nader announced Sunday that he is running as an independent, a move that has some local Democrats and Greens re-evaluating their votes.

Patti Fridrich, Green Party member and Kent resident, said many Green Party supporters are now torn between supporting Nader or whomever the Greens select as their candidate. Nader, a consumer advocate, ran for president twice with the Green Party.

The Green Party Presidential Nomination Convention will be in Milwaukee in June. The Green Party convention in Ohio was held Jan. 31, and overall front-runner David Cobb won with almost 40 percent of the vote.

“Some are supporting Kucinich, but that’s as far as they’ll go,” Fridrich said, noting that Kucinich’s platform is the closest to the Greens’.

“(Sen. John) Kerry voted for all the things the Green Party is against,” she said. “Why should we vote for him?”

Julie Gumerman, a junior integrated language arts and English double major and Green Party member, said she is debating whether to vote for Nader, vote Democrat just to oppose Bush, “or maybe not vote at all as a political message,” she said.

“Nader would be a better bet for president than a Democrat would,” Gumerman said. “I don’t see any of the Democrats, except maybe Kucinich, changing what’s going on with America’s foreign policy, free trade and globalization.”

Jason MacDonald, an assistant professor of political science who specializes in American politics, said Nader will have a hard time getting as much of the vote this year as he did four years ago.

The Washington Post reported that Nader won almost 3 million votes in the 2000 election, four times what he received in 1996. Gore lost to Bush in the Florida recall by 537 votes — Nader received about 97,500 votes in Florida.

“Some people believe Nader cost Gore the victory in 2000, and people who supported him last time are less likely to now,” MacDonald said.

The platform Nader ran on in 2000 isn’t applicable this year, MacDonald said.

“In his 2000 campaign, Nader was very adamant that there was no difference between the Republicans and Democrats,” MacDonald said. “He said both were just as responsive to the whims of big business.”

But the public policies that Bush has stalled or killed, such as those dealing with worker safety and environmental issues, and the ones that he has instated, such as the Patriot Act, seem to have proved that there is some difference, MacDonald said.

Combine the visible differences between Republicans and Democrats with the desire to oust Bush and the fact that Nader’s not running with the Green Party — “He’s less likely to have an impact on this election than in 2000,” MacDonald said.

Margaret Stambaugh, College Democrats member and freshman political science major, said she is “very annoyed” Nader is entering the election.

Someone who really cares about the struggles of the working class would not want to take votes from the Democratic candidate and potentially allow the re-election of President Bush, she said.

Stambaugh said voting according to your beliefs instead of by strategy “is all well and good, except we’re busy being screwed over every which way.”

E-mail: gdobush@kent.edu