letter urging Ralph Nader to seek the Green Party’s nomination for President
If you would like to sign on to this letter, please send an e-mail to GreenPresident04@aol.com or BrooklynEmperor@aol.com
PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY:
We, the undersigned, urge Ralph Nader to announce his intention to seek the Green Party’s nomination for President.
Nader recently set up his exploratory committee to determine whether he should run for President again, and whether he should run as an independent or seek the Green Party’s nomination. We feel that if Ralph decides to run again he should run on the Green Party line, for several reasons.
Ralph Nader has done more to grow the Green Party than any other individual in this country. He has run as our presidential candidate twice, and has helped the Green Party tremendously in raising funds in between campaigns. He has supported numerous local Green Party candidates, and has attracted media attention that the Green Party would not have received otherwise. Green Party enrollment surged after both of his presidential bids, and is sure to do so again if he runs as a Green next year.
Should Ralph decide to run as an independent, that could be disastrous for the Green Party, and for Ralph himself. Ralph has, on many occasions, stated that he ran for president to build a third party, the Green Party. If he ran as an independent, he would be seen as running against the Green Party. Any candidate the Greens then put forward would have to run against Ralph. This would cause a great deal of confusion for voters, many of whom equate Ralph Nader with the Green Party. Additionally, if Ralph ran as an independent, he would leave nothing behind after the election. There would be no infrastructure energized by the wake of that run, as there was after his last two presidential bids.
The Green Party is stronger than it was four years ago. Many states have ballot status, and many more have large numbers of volunteers ready to work extremely hard on a Presidential campaign. Were Ralph to run as an independent, he would have to find volunteers to place his name on the ballot in all 50 states. That task is not easily accomplished. In 1996 and 2000, Greens worked successfully with other progressives and got Ralph Nader on the ballot. With the experience of battling electoral hurdles in several local races under our belts, the Greens and other progressives form an even stronger volunteer base that should be applied to one campaign, not stretched thin between two.
Any candidate the Democrats nominate is unlikely to run on a platform as strong as the Green Party’s. There will be very little talk about abolishing the death penalty, ending the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, implementing single payer health care, legislating real environmental protection, and many many other ideals that Greens hold dear.
Of the candidates now seeking the Green Party’s nomination for President, we feel that Ralph Nader is the only one who can challenge both parties as strongly as we want to challenge them. It is for these reasons that we ask him to seek the Green Party’s nomination for President in 2004.
