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NO-FRILLS NADER POSES THREAT AS A SPOILER

By James Warren

  Like enemy ships passing in the night, Ralph Nader doesn't notice
the chief collector of corporate donations for Senate Republicans,
arch foe of campaign finance reform and buddy of big tobacco, on the
airport people-mover, coming his way.

Nobody symbolizes all that is inimical to Nader, the anti-charismatic
American icon and presidential candidate of the Green Party, more than
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

    "He's the Senate bag man. No senator has shaken down corporations
so brazenly as McConnell," Nader says after being informed of this
missed opportunity, caused because the candidate was too busy
lecturing a passerby about the future of the Supreme Court.

Nobody else recognizes McConnell. But many pay their respects to
Nader, the unrepentant consumer crusader whose no-frills wanderings
about the land threaten to have an impact on the tight presidential
race between Republican Texas Gov. George W. Bush and Democratic Vice
President Al Gore.

In states such as California, Oregon, Washington, Wisconsin,
Connecticut, Alaska and Maine, Nader is registering support in at
least the mid- to high single digits.

In places such as Oregon, Washington and Wisconsin, key electoral
battlegrounds, especially for Gore, such Election Day totals could
possibly swing a state, likely to Bush.

Gore supporters downplay his impact.

Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) concedes the unease with Gore but
thinks Nader will be a catalytic force who brings out many more
Wisconsin voters on Election Day.

Meanwhile, Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) suspects that many Nader
backers in his Seattle district will switch to Gore if they do believe
Nader is a spoiler.

Spoiler. All along, Nader instantly discounts the inevitable,
seemingly Pavlovian question from reporters at every stop about his
undermining Gore because, for sure, he will draw more from the
Democrat than the Republican.

"Spoiler? How can you spoil a system spoiled to the core?" he says
during a local television interview, exactly the sort of free media
attention he, like all long shot, underfunded candidates, craves.

A mix of Democrats disaffected with Gore, independents and even
pro-environment Republicans are intrigued by the iconic true believer
who for nearly 40 years has led often successful crusades against
unsafe cars, food, drugs, smokestacks, pesticides and television sets,
as well as dirty rivers, inaccessible government records and, these
days, burgeoning world trade organizations and agreements.

"He's the most influential private citizen of the 20th Century,"
claims Phil Donahue, the former talk show host and an ardent
supporter.

For Nader, Gore and Bush are two political peas in a pod.

He scoffs at journalists describing "sharp differences" between Gore
and Bush, claiming those exist on precious few matters. They are
joined at the wallet, similarly beholden to corporate America for the
campaign dollars freely flowing their ways, Nader contends.

Nader has a relative pittance of just over $5 million in donations, no
campaign plane, a traveling entourage of one (his 20-something nephew,
his sister's son), precious few ads (and radio ones at that), and an
hourlong stump speech on "the politics of joy and justice." That
speech is much heavier on justice than joy, lacks humanizing touches
about his own life and is so encyclopedic on certain domestic and
world ills, it would inspire apoplexy in any sound bite-sensitive
modern political consultant.

He attacks the growing power of corporations as he calls for universal
health care, full public financing of elections and crackdowns on
corporate "crime and abuse," such as what he flatly calls the
criminality of the Firestone tire scandal.

Bemoaning that American families are undermined as parents work longer
and harder for stagnant wages, Nader goes on at length about repeal of
the Taft-Hartley Act, as if most in an audience have a clue that he
refers to a 1947 amendment to federal labor law, outlawing certain
union tactics, expanding the definition of unfair labor practices and
restricting some strikes.

In an age when the personal anecdote is an oratorical staple, Nader,
66, seldom says a word about himself.

And yet, it all seems to strike some chord.

Without buses, free food, bands or cadres of advance staff to drum up
crowds, he has lured 10,000 and more to arenas across the country
(with the help of some celebrities, such as Donahue and Pearl Jam's
Eddie Vedder, among others), most recently in Chicago and New York.

Clearly, it reflects some unease, even as prosperity dampens the
impact of the anti-corporate, anti-globalism message that both Nader
(who has never even been into a McDonald's) and Reform Party candidate
Pat Buchanan (whose polling support is nearly invisible) make, albeit
starting from wildly different ideological poles.

And like Buchanan's political liaison with the Ross Perot-inspired
Reform Party, Nader's with the Green Party, founded in 1984 and with
few candidates nationwide, reflects mutual pragmatism.

Opposition to globalization is not a high priority for most of the
Green Party's environmentally concerned members, as is also true for
issues such as labor law reform and public funding of elections. But
on the environment, notably, there is obvious accord. And then there
is the cachet of Nader, whose exploits and idiosyncrasies form an
enduring image.

He is at the heart of the citizen-action movement of the last 30
years, having been a righteous scold of government and industry.

Indeed, wherever one treks with him, one unavoidably realizes that he
is consumer activism's version of an academic giant, like a John
Maynard Keynes or Sigmund Freud, having spawned a body of thought and
armies of acolytes.

"He was pivotal to my life," said Sally Foley, a trademark and
copyright attorney at a Nader speech later this day at the Detroit
Economic Club.

In the 1970s, Foley worked on public housing for the elderly with
"Nader's Raiders" in Washington and, "because that was on my resume,"
later got a job doing consumer protection and antitrust enforcement
with the Michigan attorney general.

Foley knows that major laws, including the National Traffic and Motor
Safety Act, the Clean Air Act and the Freedom of Information Act,
partly reflect his handiwork.

It helps explain how, when commentators like PBS' Jim Lehrer question
Nader about his lack of actual government service, he can retort that
"half of Washington has worked for me, the other half I've sued."

Nader is tending to concentrate on traditionally Democratic bastions,
such as Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin, as well
as spending time in the Bush bastion of Texas.

Flying coach on commercial flights, he is picked up by either
volunteers or one of the just under 100 full-time staffers that mark a
guerrilla campaign run from the nation's capital by Theresa Amato, who
is on leave from her job as executive director of the Citizen Advocacy
Center in west suburban Elmhurst.

Then he essentially does what he has reflexively done for decades,
trekking to colleges, universities, community centers and dozens of
television and radio studios. He does so with an unabashed, even
brazen, desire to provoke.

He is thick-skinned. He has been attacked so often as a radical and
utopian that he is freed from the need to compromise, a necessity in
the political class he skewers.

Nothing underscores his natural bent more than the lunchtime
appearance at the Detroit Economic Club, whose members naturally
include many auto industry executives. Their collective absence (one
dealer shows up on the dais) is expected as Nader, who came to fame
with his 1965 attack on the Big Three, "Unsafe at Any Speed," is their
most famous critic.

"The auto safety agencies have become consulting firms for the auto
industry," he tells several hundred people in attendance.

His rhetorical assault is unrelenting.

He asserts that Ford Motor Co. and Bridgestone/Firestone committed
crimes in the tire fiasco, then goes on to bemoan how fuel efficiency
standards have not changed since the 1970s while attempts at a variety
of safety improvements and improving of overall vehicle stability
standards have all been sabotaged.

And as for as the industry's hometown: "You proud of the mass transit,
of the streets, of the taxi cab fleet? I think it's all a disgrace."

There is an arguable irony that his campaign is also testament to the
failures of the citizen action movement, which is both part of the
national fabric and, arguably, less potent than it was years ago.

The concentration of power and wealth he rails against is what he
fought and made initial inroads against. Meanwhile, he concedes that
increased public passivity makes it harder to rouse citizens on many
issues.

Nader's is a potent intellect. He is a voracious newspaper reader who
annotates daily papers, marking up most stories ("energy," "campaign
finance," "Gore") so they can be filed.

He'd be a perfect "Who Wants to Be A Millionaire" contestant, given a
daunting ability to spit out facts on most anything: utilities systems
in California, unions, even his beloved New York Yankees (Lou Gehrig,
whose career symbolized talent and durability, is a hero).

For all his reading, there are topics he has little political use for,
which is why the Nader campaign, even while tackling macro matters
like globalization, is narrow. He says little about abortion, race or
civil rights.

When pressed by Chicago television reporter Mike Flannery about the
huge impact on Illinois farmers of his desired changes in trade
treaties, Nader is short of persuasive.

There is, for sure, the caricature of a weird, monklike ascetic. And
there is something to it. A vegetarian and a bachelor, he doesn't have
a credit card (potential invasion of privacy, he says), car, cell
phone or beeper. He is forever looking rumpled, with his dark suits,
blue button-down Oxford shirts, red necktie and heavily worn shoes.

He has holdings in excess of $4 million (much of it initially gained
through his thousands of speeches, his main source of income) but
lives on about $25,000 a year, giving 80 percent of his earnings back
to his organization and charities.

He lives in a small Washington apartment, without a television, and
still uses manual typewriters, sleeping little and tending to be
ferried places by friends and aides--he does have a driver's license.

Yet the humorless scold image is errant. He is droll and flippant,
ever ready to poke fun at himself. His recent appearance on "Saturday
Night Live" was his fourth.

When WTTW-Ch. 11's Phil Ponce asked him about his experience in
foreign affairs while taping "Chicago Tonight," Nader quickly smiled
and spit out phrases in Spanish, Russian, Chinese and Arabic.

Later, he is in a small room above a Greektown restaurant doing a
joint MTV interview with Pearl Jam's Vedder. He fully appreciates the
incongruity of the pairing. Leaving, he smiles and admits that his
musical tastes run to Joan Baez and Linda Ronstadt.

Nader is on the ballot in 43 states and the District of Columbia and
hopes to corral 5 percent of the national vote so the Green Party can
be automatically eligible for federal funds in the 2004 campaign. If
that happens, he believes, it could become a third-party force.

In stops in Michigan, Illinois and Kentucky, the reasons for potential
Gore chagrin are obvious.

At Teamsters Local 705 in Chicago, whose largest employer is United
Parcel Service, union steward Joe Allen says politically active
members see "Gore as a stopgap at best. Their hearts are with Nader,
even if their votes are with Gore."

In Louisville, Thomas Payne, 47, a worker for the state's Department
of Family and Children, surfaces at a City Hall rally and says he
voted for President Clinton in 1996 and would vote for him again if he
could. But he won't go for Gore.

"Mr. Nader seems to be the only one who is trying to get rid of
corporate money taking over campaigns," Payne says. "I've read about
him since the 1960s and he's always been one of the heroes for the
consumer."

For sure, Nader can't help looking at or touching most products, big
or small, without venturing an opinion. Returning to Washington after
a 48-hour trek, he suspects that his small commuter jet is
Brazilian-made and, as he departs, confirms that fact with the pilot.

"You ought to tell USAir to can it," he tells the pilot.

The presidential candidate then surprises a reporter traveling with
him by indicating he will catch a taxi to go home but, for some
reason, not heading toward the regular taxi stand area at Ronald
Reagan National Airport.

America's most famous consumer activist is going to the upstairs level
where cabs drop off passengers. By circumventing the usual rules,
he'll save the $1.50 airport fee.

Welcome to the politics of joy, justice and thrift.