The Nader campaign has been something of a dud ever since Al Gore started imitating it at his convention. But the Green party candidate could still tip a state or two to Bush.
Consider Oregon, where Bush is competitive with Gore, and Ralph Nader is getting upward of 5 percent of the vote. When Nader and his running mate Winona LaDuke campaigned in Portland's Memorial Coliseum at the end of August, some 11,000 cheering voters turned out and security had to turn several hundred people away. Four days later, only 300 handpicked supporters showed up for a Gore-Lieberman "town hall meeting" -- about the same number as the Nader supporters picketing outside.
Molly Bordonaro, a Bush campaign official in the region, tells THE SCRAPBOOK that Nader's Portland headquarters has "tons of people answering phones and stuffing envelopes," while Gore's has "one guy sitting at a table waiting for the phone to ring."
Gore's troubles in Oregon include his chilly relationship with popular Democratic governor John Kitzhaber, architect of a state health plan that required a federal Medicaid waiver, which Gore opposed when he was still a senator. Kitzhaber returned the favor by endorsing Bill Bradley during the Oregon primary and campaigning heavily for him. Further complicating Gore's Oregon campaign, and fueling Nader's, is the vice president's unwillingness to reveal his position on tearing out dams on the Snake and Columbia Rivers. Dam breaching is now an almost sacramental act of nature worship among environmentalists. Kitzhaber announced his support for dam removal earlier this year. Bush, in virtually every stop in the Northwest, has declared his strong opposition to dam breaching. Gore has avoided saying where he stands.
The beneficiary of all this is Nader, who in 1996 had one of his strongest showings in Oregon -- a state that last voted for a Republican presidential candidate in 1984.