Ralph Nader is running for president.
That's the message the three-time Independent candidate sought to drill into the heads of about 300 people at the University of Montana on Wednesday.
He complained about being ignored by the national media, saying as many as 60 percent of voters don't even know he is running.
"If you don't get on those debates, and you're not a mega-billionaire, there is no way you can reach tens of millions of people," Nader told the crowd.
Nader will be on the ballot in 45 states, but has made appearances in all 50, of which Montana is the last.
After 45 years as a consumer advocate, including being instrumental in the formation of the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Consumer Protection Agency, Nader has widespread name recognition n but has never had the funding to garner mainstream support.
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An Associated Press-Gfk poll conducted between Oct. 16 and Oct. 20 has Nader and his running mate, Matt Gonzalez, receiving support from 1 percent of likely voters. The poll includes interviews with 800 likely voters and has a margin of error of 3.5 percent.
During the 2000 election, Nader pulled in 2.74 percent of the vote, and in 2004 he received 0.38 percent.
Terence Gotz, who attended the rally not as a Nader supporter but as an "interested observer," does not think the candidate has any chance and will not vote for him, but said that Nader's campaign is not necessarily about winning.
"It's about the realistic nature of what he's trying to do," Gotz said. "He's trying to create a conversation and a dialogue."
Others at the rally did think Nader is worth their vote, and their money. One attendee even publicly donated $1,000 to Nader's campaign after already filing an absentee ballot with a vote for Barack Obama.
"I feel pretty sheepish, but I voted for Obama already," said Meade Morgan. "If I could've taken it back after watching the debates, I would have voted for Nader."
Nader spent considerable time addressing supporters such as Meade, who were, or are, likely to support Obama in the general election. He sought to separate himself from Obama, calling him a "flip-flopper," and the "poster boy for the military industrial complex."
"Our candidacy is one that draws a very bright line between what we stand for, what we've fought for, and Obama and McCain," he said. "Do not be beguiled by what may be the biggest political con game in our history, the Barack Obama campaign."
He said all this while railing against what he called the "least-worst" method of voting.
Still, a woman at Wednesday's event told Nader he had her heart, but Obama had her vote.
What Nader said he does stand for is national health care, securing a living wage for workers and ending corporate influence in Washington.
Some people still accuse Nader of acting as a spoiler during the 2000 election. But Nader responds by saying that if Democratic nominee Al Gore had paid more attention to these issues he would have been elected.
"To this day, they play the blame game," Nader said. "We pressured him to make more progressive speeches."
In 2000, Nader ran under the Green Party ticket, but dropped the party in 2004 and has since run as an Independent.
"They're not organized and there's too much internal bickering that I cannot stand," he said, talking by phone from Oregon earlier in the week. "They don't have the organizational discipline."
With all the pressure Nader has gotten to not run in the past two elections, so as to avoid the spoiler syndrome, he still says this is the most effective way to be an activist.
"All that I have accomplished … cannot be done today," he said in a pre-rally news conference Wednesday. "Washington has been shut down by corporate power."
Nader said his campaign has also been shut down by the mainstream media, calling it "political bigotry."
"The kinds of clothes the candidates wear get more press than the Nader/Gonzalez campaign," he said earlier in the week. "The whole thing is a corrupt mess."
