Nader expects to be on ballot in 45 states

WASHINGTON — Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader is quietly making headway in his third bid for president.

He clinched a major victory Saturday by getting on the California ballot as the nominee of the Peace and Freedom Party. In 2004, Nader wasn’t on the ballot in California — a state receptive to his anti-war, anti-corporate message — and was on the ballot in only 34 states. He said Wednesday that he’s confident of getting on the ballot in 45 states this year. Nader is not on the ballot in Texas.

With the major-party candidates in a close race, Nader could have an impact, perhaps as dramatic as in 2000, when he was the Green Party nominee and received more than 97,000 votes in Florida, which Democratic nominee Al Gore lost by 537 votes to George W. Bush. That gave Bush an Electoral College majority and the White House.

Nader is at 3 percent in one recent poll and 6 percent in another.

True to form, however, he’s complaining about being excluded from the presidential debates, paid for, he noted, by a "corporate duopoly" of the Democratic and Republican parties.

"Why do we ration debates in this country?" he asked. "You can only reach 2 percent of the public without debates."

The Commission on Presidential Debates stipulates that participants must have 15 percent support in national polls to be eligible.

Nader accuses the news media of being in a "cultural rut" by ignoring him.

His critics worry about a repeat of 2000.

Nader, who has called Bush a "raging pit bull," hates the spoiler label that’s been hung on him since that election, saying it’s "a contemptuous word of political bigotry."