WASHINGTON (AP) - Ralph Nader said Monday he won't back off from his latest campaign for the White House even if the major candidates are tied in polls going in to Election Day, a scenario that led many friends and former supporters to urge him not to run again.
A possible repeat of the 2000 election, which ended with George W. Bush defeating Al Gore by razor-thin margins in states where Nader polled thousands of votes, did not deter the consumer advocate from declaring his candidacy Sunday. He suggested a close race might be more detrimental to the president than the Democratic nominee.
"I'd go after Bush even more vigorously as we are in the next few months in ways that the Democrats can't possibly do because they're too cautious and too unimaginative, but they can pick up the vulnerabilities and the failures of the Bush administration that we point out," Nader said Monday on ABC's "Good Morning America."
Nader rejects the spoiler label as a "contemptuous" term used by those who want to deny voters a choice. Declaring Washington a "corporate-occupied territory," he accuses both Democrats and Republicans of being dominated by corporate lobbyists who care little about the needs of ordinary Americans.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20040223/D80T01JO0.html