GOP is working to keep Nader drive alive
August 12, 2004
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BY LYNN SWEET WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF
Ralph Nader may not think he is helping President Bush with his independent run for president.
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Brazen Republicans are not particularly trying to hide the fact that Bush backers are raising money for Nader and assisting Nader petition drives.
A group until recently called Citizens for a Sound Economy, whose chairman is former GOP Majority Leader Dick Armey, is urging its members to help Nader get on the ballot in Wisconsin, Michigan and Oregon, spokesman Chris Kinnan told me.
Last month, the group merged with Empower America, chaired by Jack Kemp, the Republican who was Robert Dole's running mate when he ran for president in 1996. The fused group is now called FreedomWorks, and besides Armey and Kemp, the third leader is C. Boyden Gray, who was White House counsel in the administration of George H.W. Bush.
Armey, Kemp and Gray are three conservative free-market Republicans who want their supporters to sign petitions to put Nader on the ballot. That alone should be sufficient proof to any doubters who think that a vote for Nader is anything but a vote for Bush. Kinnan said they are most active in Wisconsin right now, and they are urging their members to attend Nader events and sign his petition.
In other states:
*The Portsmouth Herald in New Hampshire reported that David Carney, a GOP consultant, hired workers to gather signatures for Nader's petitions.
*The Arizona Republic reported that Nader is being represented in his ballot fight by attorney Lisa Hauser, a lawyer for the Arizona Republican Party who was part of the Bush legal team in the Florida 2000 recount.
*The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported that a GOP consultant, Steve Wark, through a group called Choices for America, helped Nader qualify for the ballot.
*The San Francisco Chronicle analyzed Nader's relatively meager contributions and found at least $23,000 (of contributions of $1,000 or more) in his shoestring campaign coming from people who gave to Bush.
"It is substantial help, and all in targeted states,'' David Jones, the Democratic fund-raiser who is president of TheNaderFactor told me. "It is not by accident that the Republicans are doing this.''
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