Politics

Debate Frenzy For Greens

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

October 2, 2000 / 9:18 AM EDT / CBS

Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader is hammering away at the two major parties – and big business – on a campaign swing through New England.

The consumer advocate told about 1,500 supporters in Portland, Maine, Sunday night that “too much power is in the hands of giant corporations.”

Just two days before the first debate, Nader lambasted George W. Bush and Al Gore, saying it was unethical of the two major political parties to bar him from the debates, which he described as a critical avenue of access to voters.

“The keys to the gate to those tens of millions of Americans are held by the very two parties that small parties are trying to challenge,” Nader told a cheering audience over over 10,000 earlier Sunday at Boston's Fleet Center.

“Never again should we allow this to happen,” Nader said to thunderous applause.

Gore and Bush square off Tuesday in Boston in the first of three debates.

The Commission on Presidential Debates, set up by Democrats and Republicans to manage the debate process, excluded Nader and other third-party candidates last Tuesday. It said earlier that to qualify, they would have to be on the ballot in enough states to have a theoretical chance of winning the election and show around 15 percent support in national public opinion surveys.

According to the latest version of one such poll, Nader is the choice of 3 percent of the electorate.

That Reuters/MSNBC poll, conducted by John Zogby, surveyed 1,205 likely voters between Thursday and Saturday. It found Gore leading Bush by 45 percent to 43 percent.

Libertarian Party hopeful Harry Browne polled 1 percent, as did the Reform Party's Pat Buchanan, and seven percent of the respondents were undecided. The margin of error was plus or minus three percentage points.

Nader, whose corporate-bashing rhetoric has led some to brand him an extremist, denounced that label and sought to turn it back on his accusers.

“Extremism is when corporate interests corrupt, buy and sell our political representatives and destroy our democracy,” he said. “It is not extremism to fight to stop this sort of destruction and hijacking of our government.”

Nader said Bush and Gore were equally tainted by so-called soft-money contributions and had corrupted the political system by deferring to moneyed interests

He called Bush “a corporation running for president disguised as a person” and accused Gore of having an “atrocious record” on environmental issues. “Everywhere you follow the tracks of Al Gore, there is betrayal,” he said.

“I'll see you all down at the debate,” he called to supporters as he left the stage.

It was not Nader’s first reference to crashing debates. Sunday on NBC, Nader joked he would try to crawl onstage fr Tuesday’s affair.