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Ralph Nader

 
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Ralph Nader, Activist / Political Figure

Ralph Nader
Ralph Nader
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  • Born: 27 February 1934
  • Birthplace: Winsted, Connecticut
  • Best Known As: Author of Unsafe at Any Speed and perennial presidential candidate

Ralph Nader gained national fame with his 1965 book Unsafe At Any Speed, which exposed the automobile industry's irresponsibility when it came to designing safe cars. (The book focused on the Chevrolet Corvair, which ceased production shortly thereafter.) Ralph Nader became the best-known consumer advocate in the U.S., lecturing widely and forming non-profit groups like Public Citizen, whose stated goal was to protect consumers against corporate carelessness and greed. His youthful followers became known as "Nader's Raiders." He ran for president in 1996 and 2000 as a candidate for the Green Party. Critics accused Ralph Nader of taking votes away from Democrat Al Gore in the 2000 elections, as Gore narrowly lost to Republican George W. Bush. Undaunted, Nader ran again as an independent candidate in the elections of 2004 and 2008.

Ralph Nader graduated from Princeton in 1955, and from Harvard Law School in 1958... Nader's father immigrated to the U.S. from Lebanon.

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(born Feb. 27, 1934, Winsted, Conn., U.S.) U.S. lawyer and consumer advocate. The son of Lebanese immigrants, he attended Princeton University and Harvard Law School. In 1963 he left his private law practice in Hartford, Conn., to hitchhike to Washington, D.C., where he began public interest work. His concern about unsafe car designs resulted in the best-selling book Unsafe at Any Speed (1965), which led directly to the passage of national auto-safety standards. Since then he and his associates, known as "Nader's Raiders," have performed numerous studies on consumer health, safety, and financial issues and have lobbied for greater government regulation of business and industry in a variety of areas. He was instrumental in the passage of the Freedom of Information Act (1966) and in establishing the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and the Environmental Protection Agency. He also founded the consumer organization Public Citizen and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, an umbrella organization for other public interest research groups. As the Green Party candidate in the 2000 U.S. presidential election, he won 3% of the national vote. Nader also ran for president in 2004 and 2008. His work has had major and lasting effects on many aspects of American life.

For more information on Ralph Nader, visit Britannica.com.

The American social crusader and lawyer Ralph Nader (born 1934) became a symbol of the public's concern over corporate ethics and consumer interests. He inspired investigations that were intended to improve the operations of industries and government bureaus.

Ralph Nader was born on February 27, 1934, in Winsted, Connecticut, to Lebanese immigrants. He graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in 1955 and then went to Harvard Law School, receiving his degree in 1958. Nader served briefly in the U.S. Army, traveled, then opened a law office in Hartford, Connecticut. He also lectured in history and government at the University of Hartford.

Nader was one among many concerned for safety in auto design, but most writers and members of safety and auto associations saw the problem as one in engineering and individual preference in a consumers' market. Nader, while still at Harvard, had studied auto injury cases and was persuaded that faulty design, rather than driver incompetence, was responsible for the staggering accident statistics. He testified before state legislative committees on the subject and wrote articles for magazines.

In 1964 Nader was appointed a consultant to the Department of Labor and undertook to study auto safety in depth. He also worked with Senator Abraham A. Ribicoff's Government Operations Subcommittee, providing it with data on auto accidents. In 1965 he left the department to prepare a book on the subject.

Nader's Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-in Dangers of the American Automobile (1965) appeared while Ribicoff's committee was holding hearings on the subject. Nader, a tall, attractive figure, testifying before the committee, became a target of auto manufacturers then coping with lawsuits by victims of auto accidents who were charging faulty car design. Although new safety laws were inevitable, their character was given new facets by Nader's revelations that he had been personally harassed and his private life investigated by detectives. The admission in March 1966 by General Motors president James M. Roche that his firm had indeed had Nader under surveillance received national television coverage and made Nader a public figure. Unsafe at Any Speed became a best seller and a factor in the legislation which in September became law.

Nader enlarged his investigations of the auto industry and the National Traffic Safety Agency, which was responsible for administering the new law. In November he sued General Motors for $26 million, alleging invasion of privacy. He also began a series of studies in various fields intended to upgrade responsible industrial production and human relations. These included safety in mines, control of oil and gas pipes dangerous to people and the environment, and justice for Native Americans. One cause which harked back to Upton Sinclair's 1905-1906 crusade was Nader's activity in behalf of what became the 1967 Wholesome Meat Act.

Living austerely, working with swiftness and economy, and supplementing with foundation grants his income from royalties, article writing, and lectures, Nader attracted over a hundred young people - soon known as "Nader's Raiders" - from law schools and elsewhere. They helped him gather data about industries and government bureaus. In 1969 he organized his Center for the Study of Responsive Law. Its work resulted in such publications as "The Nader Report" on the Federal Trade Commission (1969) and The Interstate Commerce Commission [sic]: The Public Interest and the ICC (1970), with more publications promised in all social fields. In August 1970 Nader was once more in the headlines, having been awarded $425,000 from General Motors, funds promptly put into his expanded crusade.

From the late 1970s through the early 1990s, Nader's public image faded from his Unsafe at Any Speed heyday. But by 1988, he successfully campaigned to roll back California car insurance rates, then ignited public opinion to block a proposed 50 percent pay hike for members of Congress.

He gained notoriety in 1990 when a Forbes magazine story accused him of working together with trial lawyers for supporting Americans' right to sue. The criticism didn't deter him from other investigations, including safety flaws in the airline industry because of financial instability following deregulation. But his book, Collision Course: The Truth About Airline Safety, with Wesley J. Smith, was panned by some for questionable use of statistics.

After failing to stop the North American Free Trade Agreement (1993), he was nominated as 1996 Green Party candidate for President, winning some support in popular polls. Nader himself had summed up his philosophy: "You've got to keep the pressure on, even if you lose. The essence of the citizens' movement is persistence."

Nader and his coworkers were patently in the Progressive tradition. However, their precise relation to public wants and preferences remained controversial. His critics held that he sought to impose his own standards of production rather than to help determine public interest. Nevertheless, he appeared to the public as a dedicated and valuable citizen whose full achievement was yet to be determined.

Further Reading

Nader and his crusades are treated in G.S. McClellan, ed., The Consuming Public (1968); G. De Bell, ed., The Voter's Guide to Environmental Politics (1970); J.G. Mitchell and C.L. Stallings, ed., Ecotactics (1970), with an introduction by Nader; J. Ridgeway, The Politics of Ecology (1970); A. A. Aaker and G. S. Day, eds., Consumerism (1971); and L. J. White, The Automobile Industry since 1945 (1971). Articles on Nader have appeared in the Ann Arbor News (March 31, 1996); the Nation (January 8, 1996); Business Week (March 6, 1989); and Fortune (May 22, 1989).


(1934- )

Widely recognized for his indictment of the American automobile industry in his book Unsafe at Any Speed (1965), Nader is often seen as an important catalyst in the consumers' rights movement in the United States, playing an influential role in the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency, and other consumer protection bodies. After graduating in 1955 in government and economics at Princeton University, he studied at Harvard Law School, graduating in 1958. It was at the latter that he first became interested in automobile safety. Unsafe at Any Speed was largely directed against General Motors, particularly the Corvair car, which had a record of flipping over. He was also highly critical of the excessive styling of many radiator grilles and the high degree of potential harm that pedestrians might incur if hit. He estimated that styling at General Motors accounted for about $700 per automobile whereas safety accounted for about 23 cents. Nader became something of a public champion when it was discovered that General Motors had hired private detectives to undermine his credibility. The company was forced to apologize before a televised Senate Committee. Nader's campaign resulted in changes to the law, including the National Traffic and Motor Safety Act. A number of themes underpin Nader's subsequent campaigns, including the promotion of consumer cooperatives as a means of gaining greater consumer autonomy in the market place, the devising of means of bringing about government accountability, and more humane business practices.

(1934- ), consumer advocate and activist. With unique vision and effectiveness, Nader invented and led a movement of Americans fighting for what he called "economic self-determination," using "citizen action against the growth of the corporate state and its political and economic disenfranchisement of the public."

Raised by immigrant Lebanese-American parents in Winsted, Connecticut, Nader graduated from Princeton in 1955 and then Harvard Law School. In 1963 he abandoned private practice in Hartford and with one suitcase hitchhiked to Washington, D.C., to open shop as a public crusader. After taking lodgings at the ymca, he "walked across the street and had a hot dog, my last." He quickly researched what was in the hot dog and declared war on the meat-packing industry. Nader soon came to symbolize an unflagging commitment to consumer rights and participatory democracy.

In 1965 his Unsafe at Any Speed lambasted General Motors for producing a Corvair riddled with safety problems and for spending a mere $1 million of its $1.7 billion profits on safety research. GM promptly hired a detective in hopes of unearthing some blackmail material. But the private eye found nothing, and General Motors president John Roche was summoned before a Senate committee to apologize.

During the Corvair fracas, one corporate executive predicted the product safety movement would be a passing fad. But in 1969, riding a crest of Vietnam-inspired activism, Nader sent two hundred of his young "Raiders" into battle on issues ranging from the environment and auto safety to the rights of the disabled, insurance regulation, freedom of information in government, tax reform, public health, and control of Congress by moneyed interests.

"Naderism" soon became a credo for disgruntled consumers. His 1974 and 1975 "Critical Mass" conferences on atomic power, which he labeled a "technological Vietnam," launched a movement that helped reshape global energy policy. The ongoing Critical Mass Energy Project grew out of those conferences, taking its place alongside other Nader-inspired groups such as Congress Watch, the Center for Responsive Law, a nationwide network of Public Interest Research Groups, Public Citizen, the Center for Auto Safety, the National Insurance Consumer Organization, and the Health Research Group. The work of these and other Naderite organizations led directly or indirectly to the formation of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission, deregulation of the airline and trucking industries, at least eight major federal consumer protection laws, and periodic recalls of millions of defective cars and trucks.

In the Reagan-dominated 1980s, Nader's critics argued that his activist credo had run its course. But in 1988 he helped win a California referendum mandating unprecedented insurance rate rollbacks and then used national radio talk shows to hold off a congressional pay hike.

Maintaining the same modest bachelor quarters throughout (his parsimony is legendary), Nader has thus far outlasted six presidencies and a dozen Congresses. "You've got to keep the pressure on, even if you lose," he said. "The essence of the citizens' movement is persistence."

As the 1990s began, Nader added to his agenda making his Connecticut hometown a model democracy. "The most important office in America for anyone to achieve," he said, "is full-time citizen." In a quarter-century of activism, he seemed to have virtually defined that exalted office for America's largest generation.

Bibliography:

David Bollier, Citizen Action and Other Big Ideas: A History of Ralph Nader and the Modern Consumer Movement (1989).

Author:

Harvey Wasserman

See also Liberalism.


Columbia Encyclopedia:

Ralph Nader

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Nader, Ralph ('dər), 1934-, U.S. consumer advocate and political reformer, b. Winsted, Conn. Admitted to the bar in 1958, he practiced law in Connecticut and was a lecturer (1961-63) in history and government at the Univ. of Hartford. In 1965, Nader published Unsafe at Any Speed, a best-selling indictment of the auto industry and its poor safety standards. Largely through his influence, the U.S. Congress passed (1966) a stringent auto safety act. Nader founded (1969) the Center for the Study of Responsive Law, which exposed both corporate irresponsibility and the federal government's failure to enforce regulation of business. He later founded the Center for Auto Safety (with Consumers' Union), Public Citizen, and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, an umbrella for many other such groups. Briefly a presidential candidate in 1992, Nader since has run as the Green party's candidate in 1996 and 2000 and as an independent in 2004 (endorsed by the Reform party but not the Green party) and 2008. In recent years he has been a severe critic of the power of multinational corporations, as in his books The Good Fight and In Pursuit of Justice (both: 2004).

Bibliography

See speeches and writings collected in The Ralph Nader Reader (2000); biographies by R. F. Buckhorn (1972), C. McCarry (1972), and P. C. Marcello (2004).

US Presidents Q&A:

Who is Ralph Nader?

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An environmental and consumer rights advocate, Ralph Nader ran for the presidency on the Green Party ticket in 1996 and 2000. In the 2000 race, Nader ran under the campaign slogan "Not for Sale," calling for corporate responsibility, campaign finance reform, environmental justice, and universal health care. Nader won less than 3 percent of the popular vote. According to the exit polls conducted by Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg, 25 percent of Nader's votes came from Republicans, 38 percent from Democrats, and the remainder from people who would not have voted. Nader received criticism from the Democratic Party for garnering votes in Florida that might have gone to Democratic nominee Al Gore, who narrowly lost the state and the overall 2000 election to Republican George W. Bush, following a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court. In February 2004, Nader announced his decision to run as an independent (not affiliated with any political party) in the 2004 race to "challenge the two-party duopoly" that he believes is damaging to American democracy. Because of his Independent status, Nader had to undergo the time-consuming and expensive process of getting ballot access in all fifty states.

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(b. 1934)

1965Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-in Dangers of the American Automobile. Nader's first book on the safety defects of American cars establishes his reputation as a crusading consumer advocate.

(nay-duhr)

An American lawyer of the twentieth century and a leading advocate for consumers. Nader became prominent in the 1960s with his book Unsafe at Any Speed, which accused the automobile industry of producing dangerous cars. Later, Nader attacked unsanitary conditions in the meat packing industry and called for more attention to railroad and airline safety.

  • Nader initially was known for his focus on immediate and concrete concerns; however, in the 1990s he increasingly called for basic changes in the ways in which business is conducted, and in 2000 he ran for president as the candidate of the Green Party.
  • Nader's assistants, often university students, are known as “Nader's Raiders.”


  • Considered the father of the consumer protection movement, Ralph Nader has had a great effect on U.S. law and public policy of the late twentieth century. Nader's advocacy on behalf of consumers and workers hastened into reality many features of the contemporary political landscape. The work of this lawyer and irrepressible gadfly of the powers that be, which began in the mid-1960s, has led to the passage of numerous consumer protection laws in such areas as automobiles, mining, insurance, gas pipelines, and meatpacking, as well as the creation of government agencies such as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Nader himself has founded many well-known consumer advocacy groups, including the Public Interest Research Group, the Clean Water Action Project, the Center for Auto Safety, and the Project on Corporate Responsibility. His goal in these efforts, he has said, is "nothing less than the qualitative reform of the industrial revolution."

    Nader was born February 27, 1934, in Winsted, Connecticut, to Nadra Nader and Rose Bouziane Nader, Lebanese immigrants who owned and operated a restaurant and bakery. He is the youngest of five children. He attended the Gilbert School and Princeton University on scholarships. At Princeton, he entered the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and he graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 1955. During an era of conformity, his challenges to school authorities and procedures at Princeton made him stand out. At one point, he protested the use of the poisonous insecticide DDT on campus trees.

    After Princeton, Nader attended Harvard Law School, where he edited the Harvard Law Record, and graduated with distinction in 1958. It was at Harvard that he first became interested in auto safety. After studying auto injury cases, in 1958 he published his first article on the subject, "American Cars: Designed for Death," in the Harvard Law Record. It contained a thesis that he would bring to national attention in the mid-1960s: auto fatalities result not just from driver error, as the auto industry had maintained, but also from poor vehicle design. Nader followed his law degree with six months of service in the Army and then a period of personal travel through Latin America, Europe, and Africa. Upon his return, he established a private law practice in Hartford, created an informal legal aid society, and lectured from 1961 to 1963 at the University of Hartford.

    Having worked on a local level for auto safety regulations in the years subsequent to his graduation from Harvard, Nader decided to go to Washington, D.C., in 1964, where he hoped to have more influence. Through his friendship with Daniel P. Moynihan, then serving as assistant secretary of labor, Nader worked as a consultant at the Labor Department and wrote a study that called for federal responsibility for auto safety.

    Nader left the Labor Department in May 1965 and devoted himself to completing what would become his most celebrated book, Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-in Dangers of the American Automobile. The book was published later that year and quickly became a best-seller. In it, Nader painted a grim picture of motor vehicle injuries and fatalities, noting that 47,700 people were killed in auto accidents in 1964. He made an eloquent appeal for federal safety standards on autos that would both prevent accidents from occurring and better protect passengers in the event of an accident. The book also communicated a philosophy regarding public regulation of technology that would cause him to do battle on many another issue. "A great problem of contemporary life," he wrote, "is how to control the power of economic interests which ignore the harmful effects of their applied science and technology." Nader has devoted his life to solving this problem.

    Taking some of his inspiration from the civil rights movement, Nader stood up to the most powerful companies in the world. His book targeted the safety problems of the Chevrolet Corvair, a product of the world's largest company, General Motors (GM). He convincingly marshaled evidence that the driver could lose control of the Corvair even when it was moving slowly, thus making it "unsafe at any speed." The Goliath of GM did not take kindly to the stones thrown by this David, and the company began a campaign of harassment and intimidation intended to abort Nader's efforts. Congressional committee hearings later, in 1966, revealed that GM's campaign against Nader involved harassing phone calls and attempts to lure Nader into compromising situations with women. The company formally apologized before Congress for these tactics.

    Politicians in Washington, D.C., and the U.S. public were receptive to Nader's ideas. In 1966, in his State of the Union address, President Lyndon B. Johnson called for a national highway safety act. Later that year, Congress passed the Highway Safety Act (80 Stat. 731 [23 U.S.C.A. §401 note]) and the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act (80 Stat. 718 [15 U.S.C.A. §1381 note]). The latter created a new government body, later named the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, that oversaw the creation of federal safety standards for automobiles and was also empowered to authorize recalls of unsafe vehicles. In subsequent years, these laws and others for which Nader had advocated helped to bring about a marked decrease in traffic fatalities per vehicle mile. As the Washington Post exclaimed, on August 30, 1966, "[A] one-man lobby for the public prevailed over the nation's most powerful industry."

    Nader's first work in the area of auto safety remains his most famous consumer advocacy. However, he has remained a tireless proponent of consumers' and workers' rights on many different fronts. Shortly after his triumph with auto regulation, Nader initiated a publicity campaign that helped pass the Wholesome Meat Act, 81 Stat. 584, 19 U.S.C.A. 1306 (1967), which established stricter federal guidelines for meatpacking plants. By the late 1960s, he began to mobilize college students who joined him in his investigations of public policy and the effectiveness of government regulations. These young forces came to be called Nader's Raiders, and many of them eventually rose to positions of influence in the government and in public policy organizations. By the mid-1970s, the various groups Nader had created, including Public Interest Research Groups in many states, were doing research and financing legal action in relation to myriad public policy issues, including tax reform, consumer product safety, and corporate responsibility.

    During Ronald Reagan's presidency in the 1980s, Nader's influence in Washington, D.C., declined, particularly as the Reagan administration dismantled much of the government regulation Nader had helped establish. He did not give up his cause, however. In the late 1980s, he was again in the media spotlight, this time through his attempts to lower car insurance rates in California and to block a proposed congressional pay increase. During the 1980s and 1990s, he also addressed the savings and loan bailout problem, well before it became high on the nation's agenda; opposed the use of chlorinated fluorocarbons, which damage the ozone layer; and worked to prevent limitations on damages that consumers may receive from corporations through civil lawsuits.

    Nader has written and edited dozens of books in his career. These include The Consumer and Corporate Accountability (1973), Corporate Power in America (1973), Working on the System: A Comprehensive Manual for Citizen Access to Federal Agencies (1974), Government Regulation: What Kind of Reform? (1976), The Big Boys: Power and Position in American Business (1986), and Collision Course: The Truth about Airline Safety (1994).


    Quotes By:

    Ralph Nader

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    Quotes:

    "There can be no daily democracy without daily citizenship."

    "Obviously, the answer to oil spills is to paper-train the tankers."

    "For almost seventy years the life insurance industry has been a smug sacred cow feeding the public a steady line of sacred bull."

    "When strangers start acting like neighbors... communities are reinvigorated."

    "Sanctions against polluters are feeble and out of date, and are rarely invoked."

    "Today the large organization is lord and master, and most of its employees have been desensitized much as were the medieval peasants who never knew they were serfs."

    See more famous quotes by Ralph Nader

    Wikipedia on Answers.com:

    Ralph Nader

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    Ralph Nader
    Nader speaking at BYU's Alternate Commencement
    Personal details
    Born February 27, 1934 (1934-02-27) (age 77)
    Winsted, Connecticut, U.S.
    Political party Independent
    Other political
    affiliations
    Green (affiliated non-member)
    Reform (affiliated non-member)
    Peace & Freedom (affiliated non-member)
    Natural Law (affiliated non-member)
    Populist Party of Maryland (created to support him in 2004)
    Vermont Progressive Party (affiliated non-member)
    Alma mater Princeton University,
    Harvard University
    Occupation Attorney, consumer advocate, and political activist
    Religion Eastern Orthodox Christian[1][2]
    Signature
    Website nader.org
    Military service
    Service/branch United States Army
    Years of service 1959

    Ralph Nader (play /ˈndər/; born February 27, 1934)[3][4] is an American political activist, as well as an author, lecturer, and attorney. Areas of particular concern to Nader include consumer protection, humanitarianism, environmentalism, and democratic government.[5]

    Nader came to prominence in 1965 with the publication of his book Unsafe at Any Speed, a critique of the safety record of American automobile manufacturers in general, and most famously the Chevrolet Corvair. In 1999, an NYU panel of journalists ranked Unsafe at Any Speed 38th among the top 100 pieces of journalism of the 20th century.[6]

    Nader is a five-time candidate for President of the United States, having run as a write-in candidate in the 1992 New Hampshire Democratic primary, as the Green Party nominee in 1996 and 2000, and as an independent candidate in 2004 and 2008. Some people claim that Nader acted as a spoiler in the 2000 U.S. presidential election, while others, including Nader, dispute this claim.[7][8][9][10][11][12]

    Contents

    Background and early career

    Earnest young man in coat, tie, and unruly dark hair, speaking an gesturing
    Nader in 1975

    Nader was born in Winsted, Connecticut. His parents, Nathra and Rose (née Bouziane) Nader, were immigrants from Lebanon[13] and members of the Eastern Orthodox Church.[1] His family's native language is Arabic,[13] and he has spoken it along with English since childhood. His sister, Laura Nader, is an anthropologist. His father worked in a textile mill and later owned a bakery and restaurant where he talked politics with his customers.[14]

    Nader graduated from The Gilbert School in 1951, followed by Princeton University four years later and then Harvard Law School.[15] He served six months on active duty in the United States Army in 1959, then became a lawyer in Hartford, Connecticut. He was a professor of history and government at the University of Hartford from 1961 to 1963. In 1964, Nader moved to Washington, D.C., where he worked for Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan and also advised a United States Senate subcommittee on car safety. Nader has served on the faculty at the American University Washington College of Law.[16][when?]

    Automobile safety activism

    Nader's first consumer safety articles appeared in the Harvard Law Record, a student publication of Harvard Law School, but he first criticized the automobile industry in an article he wrote for The Nation in 1959 called "The Safe Car You Can't Buy."[17]

    Ralph Nader lectures at Florida State University 1980s.ogv
    Ralph Nader lectures at Florida State University, 1980s

    In 1965, Nader wrote Unsafe at Any Speed, a book which claimed that many American automobiles were unsafe. The first chapter, "The Sporty Corvair - The One-Car Accident," pertained to the Corvair manufactured by the Chevrolet division of General Motors, which had been involved in accidents involving spins and rollovers. There were over 100 lawsuits pending against GM in connection with accidents involving the popular compact car. These lawsuits provided the initial material for Nader's investigations into the safety of the car.[18]

    A 1972 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration safety commission report conducted by Texas A&M University concluded that the 1960–1963 Corvairs possessed no greater potential for loss of control than its contemporaries in extreme situations.[19] Additionally, according to Crash Course by Paul Ingrassia, Corvairs were environmentally friendly due to their smaller size and lighter weight, and Nader's safety-focused activism negatively affected the cause for eco-efficiency.[20] However, former GM executive John DeLorean asserted in On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors (1979) that Nader's criticisms were valid.[21]

    In early March 1966, several media outlets, including The New Republic and The New York Times, reported that GM had tried to discredit Nader, hiring private detectives to tap his phones and investigate his past and hiring prostitutes to trap him in compromising situations.[22][23] Nader sued the company for invasion of privacy and settled the case for $425,000. Nader's lawsuit against GM was ultimately decided by the New York Court of Appeals, whose opinion in the case expanded tort law to cover "overzealous surveillance."[24] Nader used the proceeds from the lawsuit to start the pro-consumer Center for Study of Responsive Law.

    Nader's advocacy of automobile safety and the publicity generated by the publication of Unsafe at Any Speed, along with concern over escalating nationwide traffic fatalities, contributed to the unanimous passage of the 1966 National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act. The act established the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and marked a historic shift in responsibility for automobile safety from the consumer to the manufacturer. The legislation mandated a series of safety features for automobiles, beginning with safety belts and stronger windshields.[25][26][27]

    Activism

    Hundreds of young activists, inspired by Nader's work, came to DC to help him with other projects.[citation needed] They came to be known as "Nader's Raiders" and, under Nader, investigated government corruption, publishing dozens of books with their results:

    • Nader's Raiders (Federal Trade Commission)
    • Vanishing Air (National Air Pollution Control Administration)
    • The Chemical Feast (Food and Drug Administration)
    • The Interstate Commerce Omission (Interstate Commerce Commission)
    • Old Age (nursing homes)
    • The Water Lords (water pollution)
    • Who Runs Congress? (Congress)
    • Whistle Blowing (punishment of whistle blowers)
    • The Big Boys (corporate executives)
    • Collision Course (Federal Aviation Administration)
    • No Contest (corporate lawyers)
    • Destroy the Forest (Destruction of ecosystems worldwide)
    • Operation: Nuclear (Making of a nuclear missile)
    Nader speaks out against the Iraq War at a September 15, 2007, anti-war protest

    In 1971, Nader co-founded the nongovernmental organization (NGO) Public Citizen with fellow public interest lawyer Alan Morrison as an umbrella organization for these projects. Today, Public Citizen has over 225,000 members [28] and investigates congressional, health, environmental, economic and other issues. Nader wrote, "The consumer must be protected at times from his own indiscretion and vanity."[29]

    In the 1970s and 1980s Nader was a key leader in the antinuclear power movement. "By 1976, consumer advocate Ralph Nader, who later became allied with the environmental movement, 'stood as the titular head of opposition to nuclear energy'."[30][31] The Critical Mass Energy Project was formed by Nader in 1974 as a national anti-nuclear umbrella group.[32] It was probably the largest national anti-nuclear group in the United States, with several hundred local affiliates and an estimated 200,000 supporters.[33] The organization's main efforts were directed at lobbying activities and providing local groups with scientific and other resources to campaign against nuclear power.[32][34] Nader advocates the complete elimination of nuclear energy in favor of solar, tidal, wind and geothermal, citing environmental, worker safety, migrant labor, national security, disaster preparedness, foreign policy, government accountability and democratic governance issues to bolster his position.[35]

    Nader was also a prominent supporter of the Airline Deregulation Act.[36]

    Ecology

    Nader spent much of 1970 pursuing a campaign to educate the public about ecology. Nader said that the rivers and lakes in America were extremely contaminated. He joked that "Lake Erie is now so contaminated you're advised to have a typhoid inoculation before you set sail on some parts of the lake."[37]

    He also added that river's state of contamination affected humans because many residents get their water supply from these contaminated rivers and lakes. "Cleveland takes its water supply from deep in the center of Lake Erie. How much longer is it going to get away with that?"[37]

    Nader told how some rivers are contaminated so badly that they can be lit on fire. "The Buffalo River is so full of petroleum residuals, it's been classified an official fire hazard by the City of Buffalo. We have the phenomenon now known as flammable water. The Cuyahoga River outside of Cleveland did catch fire last June, burning a base and some bridges. I often wonder what was in the minds of the firemen as they rushed to the scene of the action and pondered how to put this fire out. But we're heading in river after river: Connecticut River, Hudson River, Mississippi River, you name it. There's some rivers right outside of Boston, New Hampshire and Maine where if a person fell into 'em, I think he would dissolve before he drowned."[37]

    Non-profit organizations

    Throughout his career, Nader has started or inspired a variety of nonprofit organizations,with most of which he has maintained close associations :

    • Citizen Advocacy Center
    • Citizens Utility Boards
    • Congress Accountability Project
    • Consumer Task Force For Automotive Issues
    • Corporate Accountability Research Project
    • Disability Rights Center
    • Equal Justice Foundation
    • Foundation for Taxpayers and Consumer Rights
    • Georgia Legal Watch
    • National Citizens' Coalition for Nursing Home Reform
    • National Coalition for Universities in the Public Interest
    • Pension Rights Center
    • PROD (truck safety)
    • Retired Professionals Action Group
    • The Shafeek Nader Trust for the Community Interest
    • 1969: Center for the Study of Responsive Law
    • 1970s: Public Interest Research Groups
    • 1970: Center for Auto Safety
    • 1970: Connecticut Citizen Action Group
    • 1971: Aviation Consumer Action Project
    • 1972: Clean Water Action Project
    • 1972: Center for Women's Policy Studies
    • 1973: Capitol Hill News Service
    • 1980: Multinational Monitor (magazine covering multinational corporations)
    • 1982: Trial Lawyers for Public Justice
    • 1982: Essential Information (encourage citizen activism and do investigative journalism)
    • 1983: Telecommunications Research and Action Center
    • 1983: National Coalition for Universities in the Public Interest
    • 1988: Taxpayer Assets Project
    • 1989: Princeton Project 55 (alumni public service)
    • 1993: Appleseed Foundation (local change)
    • 1994: Resource Consumption Alliance (conserve trees)
    • 1995: Center for Insurance Research
    • 1995: Consumer Project on Technology
    • 1997: Government Purchasing Project (encourage purchase of safe products)
    • 1998: Center for Justice & Democracy
    • 1998: Organization for Competitive Markets
    • 1998: American Antitrust Institute (ensure fair competition)
    • 1998: Commercial Alert (protect family, community, and democracy from corporations)
    • 1999: Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest
    • 2000: Congressional Accountability Project (fight corruption in Congress)
    • 2001: Citizen Works (promote NGO cooperation, build grassroots support, and start new groups)
    • 2001: Democracy Rising (hold rallies to educate and empower citizens)

    In 1980, Nader resigned as director of Public Citizen to work on other projects, lecturing on the growing "imperialism" of multinational corporations and of a dangerous convergence of corporate and government power.[38]

    Presidential campaigns

    Ralph Nader has been a frequent contender in U.S. presidential elections, always as an independent candidate or a third party nominee. His activism on behalf of third parties goes back to 1958, when he wrote an article for the Harvard Law Record critiquing U.S. electoral law's systemic discrimination against them.[39]

    Presidential campaign history

    1972

    Ralph Nader's name appeared in the press as a potential candidate for president for the first time in 1971, when he was offered the opportunity to run as the presidential candidate for the New Party, a progressive split-off from the Democratic Party in 1972. Chief among his advocates was author Gore Vidal, who touted a 1972 Nader presidential campaign in a front-page article in Esquire magazine in 1971.[40] Psychologist Alan Rockway organized a "draft Ralph Nader for President" campaign in Florida on the New Party's behalf.[41] Nader declined their offer to run that year; the New Party ultimately joined with the People's Party in running Benjamin Spock in the 1972 Presidential election.[42][43][44] Spock had hoped Nader in particular would run, getting "some of the loudest applause of the evening" when mentioning him at the University of Alabama.[45] Spock went on to try to recruit Nader for the party among over 100 others, and indicated he would be "delighted" to be replaced by any of them even after he accepted the nomination himself.[46] Nader received one vote for the vice-presidential nomination at the 1972 Democratic National Convention.

    1992

    Nader stood in as a write-in for "none of the above" in both the 1992 New Hampshire Democratic and Republican Primaries[47] and received 3,054 of the 170,333 Democratic votes and 3,258 of the 177,970 Republican votes cast.[48] He was also a candidate in the 1992 Massachusetts Democratic Primary, where he appeared at the top of the ballot (in some areas, he appeared on the ballot as an independent).

    1996

    Nader was drafted as a candidate for President of the United States on the Green Party ticket during the 1996 presidential election. He was not formally nominated by the Green Party USA, which was, at the time, the largest national Green group; instead he was nominated independently by various state Green parties (in some states, he appeared on the ballot as an independent). However, many activists in the Green Party USA worked actively to campaign for Nader that year. Nader qualified for ballot status in 22 states,[49] garnering 685,297 votes or 0.71% of the popular vote (fourth place overall),[50] although the effort did make significant organizational gains for the party. He refused to raise or spend more than $5,000 on his campaign, presumably to avoid meeting the threshold for Federal Elections Commission reporting requirements; the unofficial Draft Nader committee could (and did) spend more than that, but the committee was legally prevented from coordinating in any way with Nader himself.

    Nader received some criticism from gay rights supporters for calling gay rights "gonad politics" and stating that he was not interested in dealing with such matters.[51] However, more recently, Nader has come out in support of same-sex marriage.[52]

    His 1996 running mates included: Anne Goeke (nine states), Deborah Howes (Oregon), Muriel Tillinghast (New York), Krista Paradise (Colorado), Madelyn Hoffman (New Jersey), Bill Boteler (Washington, D.C.), and Winona LaDuke (California and Texas).[53]

    2000

    In the 2006 documentary An Unreasonable Man, Nader describes how he was unable to get the views of his public interest groups heard in Washington, even by the Clinton Administration. Nader cites this as one of the primary reasons that he decided to actively run in the 2000 election as candidate of the Green Party, which had been formed in the wake of his 1996 campaign.

    Nader's supporters, with Christopher Hitchens speaking, protest his exclusion from the televised debates in 2000.

    In June 2000 The Association of State Green Parties (ASGP) organized the national nominating convention that took place in Denver, Colorado, at which Greens nominated Ralph Nader and Winona LaDuke to be their parties` candidates for President and Vice President.[54][55]

    On July 9, the Vermont Progressive Party nominated Nader, giving him ballot access in the state.[56] On August 12, the United Citizens Party of South Carolina chose Ralph Nader as its presidential nominee, giving him a ballot line in the state.[57]

    In October 2000, at the largest Super Rally of his campaign,[58] held in New York City's Madison Square Garden, 15,000 people paid $20 each[59] to hear Mr. Nader speak. Nader's campaign rejected both parties as institutions dominated by corporate interests, stating that Al Gore and George W. Bush were "Tweedledee and Tweedledum". A long list of notable celebrities spoke and performed at the event including Susan Sarandon, Ani DiFranco, Ben Harper, Tim Robbins, Michael Moore, Eddie Vedder and Patti Smith. The campaign also had some prominent union help: The California Nurses Association and the United Electrical Workers endorsed his candidacy and campaigned for him.[60]

    In 2000, Nader and his running mate Winona LaDuke received 2,883,105 votes, for 2.74 percent of the popular vote (third place overall),[61] missing the 5 percent needed to qualify the Green Party for federally distributed public funding in the next election, yet qualifying the Greens for ballot status in many states.

    Nader's actual influence on the 2000 election is the subject of considerable discussion, and there is no consensus on Nader's impact on the outcome. Nader's votes in New Hampshire and Florida vastly exceeded the difference in votes between Gore and Bush, as did the votes of all alternative candidates.[62] Exit polls showed New Hampshire staying close, and within the margin of error without Nader[63] as national exit polls showed Nader's supporters choosing Gore over Bush by a large margin,[64] well outside the margin of error. Winning either state would have given Gore the presidency, and while critics claim this shows Nader tipped the election to Bush, Nader has called that claim "a mantra — an assumption without data."[65] Nader supporters argued that Gore was primarily responsible for his own loss.[66] Nader critic Eric Alterman disagreed, writing: "One person in the world could have prevented Bush's election with his own words on the Election Day 2000."[67] Nation columnist Alexander Cockburn cited Gore's failure to win over progressive voters in Florida who chose Nader, and congratulated those voters: "Who would have thought the Sunshine State had that many progressives in it, with steel in their spine and the spunk to throw Eric Alterman's columns into the trash can?"[68] Still others argued that even if Nader's constituents could have made the swing difference between Gore and Bush, the votes Nader garnered were not from the Democrats, but from Democrats, Republicans, and discouraged voters who would not have voted otherwise.[69]

    The "spoiler" controversy

    In the 2000 presidential election in Florida, George W. Bush defeated Al Gore by 537 votes. Nader received 97,421 votes, which led to claims that he was responsible for Gore's defeat. Nader, both in his book Crashing the Party and on his website, states: "In the year 2000, exit polls reported that 25% of my voters would have voted for Bush, 38% would have voted for Gore and the rest would not have voted at all."[70] (which would net a 13%, 12,665 votes, advantage for Gore over Bush.) Michael Moore at first argued that Florida was so close that votes for any of seven other candidates could also have switched the results,[8] but in 2004 joined the view that Nader had helped make Bush president.[10][71] When asked about claims of being a spoiler, Nader typically points to the controversial Supreme Court ruling that halted a Florida recount, Gore's loss in his home state of Tennessee, and the "quarter million Democrats who voted for Bush in Florida."[72][73]

    A study in 2002 by the Progressive Review found no correlation in pre-election polling numbers for Nader when compared to those for Gore. In other words, most of the changes in pre-election polling reflect movement between Bush and Gore rather than Gore and Nader, and they conclude from this that Nader was not responsible for Gore's loss.[74]

    An analysis conducted by Harvard Professor B.C. Burden in 2005 showed Nader did "play a pivotal role in determining who would become president following the 2000 election", but that:

    "Contrary to Democrats’ complaints, Nader was not intentionally trying to throw the election. A spoiler strategy would have caused him to focus disproportionately on the most competitive states and markets with the hopes of being a key player in the outcome. There is no evidence that his appearances responded to closeness. He did, apparently, pursue voter support, however, in a quest to receive 5% of the popular vote."[7]

    However, Jonathan Chait of The American Prospect and The New Republic notes that Nader did indeed focus on swing states disproportionately during the waning days of the campaign, and by doing so jeopardized his own chances of achieving the 5% of the vote he was aiming for.

    Then there was the debate within the Nader campaign over where to travel in the waning days of the campaign. Some Nader advisers urged him to spend his time in uncontested states such as New York and California. These states – where liberals and leftists could entertain the thought of voting Nader without fear of aiding Bush – offered the richest harvest of potential votes. But, Martin writes, Nader – who emerges from this account as the house radical of his own campaign – insisted on spending the final days of the campaign on a whirlwind tour of battleground states such as Pennsylvania and Florida. In other words, he chose to go where the votes were scarcest, jeopardizing his own chances of winning 5 percent of the vote, which he needed to gain federal funds in 2004.[75]

    When Nader, in a letter to environmentalists, attacked Gore for "his role as broker of environmental voters for corporate cash," and "the prototype for the bankable, Green corporate politician," and what he called a string of broken promises to the environmental movement, Sierra Club president Carl Pope sent an open letter to Nader, dated 27 October 2000, defending Al Gore's environmental record and calling Nader's strategy "irresponsible."[76] He wrote:

    You have also broken your word to your followers who signed the petitions that got you on the ballot in many states. You pledged you would not campaign as a spoiler and would avoid the swing states. Your recent campaign rhetoric and campaign schedule make it clear that you have broken this pledge... Please accept that I, and the overwhelming majority of the environmental movement in this country, genuinely believe that your strategy is flawed, dangerous and reckless.[77]

    2004

    Nader announced on December 24, 2003, that he would not seek the Green Party's nomination for president in 2004, but did not rule out running as an independent candidate.

    Meeting with John Kerry

    Ralph Nader and Democratic candidate John Kerry held a widely publicized meeting early in the 2004 Presidential campaign, which Nader described in An Unreasonable Man. Nader said that John Kerry wanted to work to win Nader's support and the support of Nader's voters. Nader then provided more than 20 pages of issues that he felt were important and he "put them on the table" for John Kerry. According to Nader the issues covered topics ranging from environmental, labor, healthcare, tax reform, corporate crime, campaign finance reform and various consumer protection issues. Nader reported that he asked John Kerry to choose any three of the issues and highlight them in his campaign and if Kerry would do this, he would refrain from the race. For example, Nader recommended taking up corporate welfare, corporate crime—which could attract many Republican voters, and labor law reform—which was felt Bush could never support given the corporate funding of his campaign.[78] Several days passed and Kerry failed to adopt any of Nader's issues as benchmarks of his campaign, so on February 22, 2004, Nader announced on NBC that he would indeed run for president as an independent, saying, "There's too much power and wealth in too few hands."

    A Kerry aide who had attended the meeting had a different recollection. "He made more the point that he had the ability to go after Bush in ways that we could not, He did not at all say to Kerry, 'I'm here to make you better on things.' That was not his tone at all."

    The New York Times quoted Nader saying after the meeting "Gore was petrified wood, He was stiff as a board, he didn't want to have these kinds of meetings. He didn't want to have meetings like this when he was vice president three years before the election. Kerry is much more open." Nader himself said he had deliberately steered clear of disagreement, telling the Times, "When you go in looking for common ground, it takes up most of the time, doesn't it?"[79]

    The campaign

    Nader's 2004 campaign ran on a platform consistent with the Green Party's positions on major issues, such as opposition to the war in Iraq. He has detailed the legal reasons George W. Bush and Dick Cheney fit the criteria for war criminals, and why they should have been immediately impeached.[80]

    Due to concerns about a possible spoiler effect as in 2000, many Democrats urged Nader to abandon his 2004 candidacy. The Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Terry McAuliffe, stated that Nader had a "distinguished career, fighting for working families," and that McAuliffe "would hate to see part of his legacy being that he got us eight years of George Bush." Nader replied to this, in filmed interviews for An Unreasonable Man, by arguing that, "Voting for a candidate of one's choice is a Constitutional right, and the Democrats who are asking me not to run are, without question, seeking to deny the Constitutional rights of voters who are, by law, otherwise free to choose to vote for me." Nader's 2004 campaign theme song was "If You Gotta Ask" by Liquid Blue.

    In May 2009, in a new book, Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny, Theresa Amato, who was Nader's national campaign manager in 2000 and 2004, alleged that McAuliffe offered to pay off Nader to stop campaigning in certain states in 2004. This was confirmed by Nader, and neither McAuliffe nor his spokeswoman disputed the claim.[81]

    In the 2004 campaign, Democrats such as Howard Dean and Terry McAuliffe asked that Nader return money donated to his campaign by Republicans who were well-known Bush supporters, such as billionaire Richard Egan.[82][83] Nader's reaction to the request was to refuse to return any donations and he charged that the Democrats were attempting to smear him.[82] Nader's vice-presidential running mate, Peter Camejo, supported the return of the money if it could be proved that "the aim of the wealthy GOP donors was to peel votes from Kerry."[82] According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Nader defended his keeping of the donations by saying that wealthy contributors "are human beings too."[82]

    Nader received 463,655 votes, for 0.38 percent of the popular vote, placing him in third place overall.[84]

    2008

    Nader campaigning in October 2008

    In February 2007, Nader criticized Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton as "a panderer and a flatterer."[85] Asked on CNN Late Edition news program if he would run in 2008, Nader replied, "It's really too early to say...."[86] Asked during a radio appearance to describe the former First Lady, Nader said, "Flatters, panders, coasting, front-runner, looking for a coronation ... She has no political fortitude."[87] Some Greens started a campaign to draft Nader as their party's 2008 presidential candidate.[88]

    After some consideration, Nader announced on February 24, 2008, that he would run for President as an independent. His vice-presidential candidate was Matt Gonzalez.[89]

    Nader received 738,475 votes, for 0.56 percent of the popular vote, earning him a third place position in the overall election results.[90]

    Personal life

    Nader was raised in the Eastern Orthodox Church.[1] He has never married. Karen Croft, a writer who worked for Nader in the late 1970s at the Center for Study of Responsive Law, once asked him if he had ever considered getting married. She reports: "He said that at a certain point he had to decide whether to have a family or to have a career, that he couldn't have both. That's the kind of person he is. He couldn't have a wife — he's up all night reading the Congressional Record."[91]

    Personal finances

    According to the mandatory fiscal disclosure report that he filed with the Federal Election Commission in 2000, Nader owned more than $3 million worth of stocks and mutual fund shares; his single largest holding was more than $1 million worth of stock in Cisco Systems, Inc. He also held between $100,000 and $250,000 worth of shares in the Magellan Fund.[92] Nader said he owned no car and owned no real estate directly in 2000, and said that he lived on US $25,000 a year, giving most of his stock earnings to many of the over four dozen non-profit organizations he had founded.[93][94]

    Television appearances

    In 1988, Nader appeared on Sesame Street as "a person in your neighborhood." The verse of the song began "A consumer advocate is a person in your neighborhood." Nader's appearance on the show was memorable because it was the only time that the grammar of the last line of the song—"A person who you meet each day"—was questioned and changed in the show. Nader refused to sing the prescriptively improper line, and so a compromise was reached, resulting in Ralph Nader singing the last line as a solo with the modified words: "A person whom you meet each day."[95] In the same episode, Nader tests "Bob"'s sweater, with permission, and destroys it, telling Bob "Your aunt . . . knitted you a lemon!"

    He hosted an episode of NBC's Saturday Night Live in 1977 and appeared in a 2000 episode.[citation needed]

    He was interviewed on Da Ali G Show by Sacha Baron Cohen.[citation needed]

    During his 2008 presidential campaign, Nader appeared on NBC's Meet The Press, CNBC with John Harwood, CNN with Rick Sanchez, PBS's The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, and Fox News Channel with Shepard Smith.[96] He was interviewed by Triumph the Insult Comic Dog on Late Night with Conan O'Brien in 2008. Also that year he appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher. In 2011, he appeared multiple times on the Fox Business Network primetime show Freedom Watch with Andrew Napolitano, including a January 19, 2011 joint appearance with Ron Paul.[citation needed]

    Works

    See also

    Notes

    • An Unreasonable Man (2006). An Unreasonable Man is a documentary film about Ralph Nader that appeared at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival.
    • Burden, Barry C. (2005). Ralph Nader's Campaign Strategy in the 2000 U.S. Presidential Election 2005, American Politics Research 33:672-99.
    • Ralph Nader: Up Close This film blends archival footage and scenes of Nader and his staff at work in Washington with interviews with Nader's family, friends and adversaries, as well as Nader himself. Written, directed and produced by Mark Litwak and Tiiu Lukk, 1990, color, 72 mins. Narration by Studs Terkel. Broadcast on PBS. Winner, Sinking Creek Film Festival; Best of Festival, Baltimore Int'l Film Festival; Silver Plaque, Chicago Int'l Film Festival, Silver Apple, National Educational Film & Video Festival.
    • Bear, Greg, "Eon" — the novel includes a depiction of a future group called the "Naderites" who follow Ralph Nader's humanistic teachings.
    • Martin, Justin. Nader: Crusader, Spoiler, Icon. Perseus Publishing, 2002. ISBN 0-7382-0563-X

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