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Saturday, September 18, 2004
Judge Orders Nader Off N.M. Ballot
By Dan McKay and Andy Lenderman
Journal Staff Writers
Ralph Nader was knocked off the New Mexico ballot Friday when a district judge ruled that he cannot run as an independent candidate in the state this fall.
District Judge Wendy York said that, because Nader is affiliated with political parties in other states, he cannot run for president as an independent in New Mexico.
Nader spokesman Kevin Zeese said the campaign would appeal the decision.
"This is a very grave threat to all third parties and increases the chokehold of the two-party system that forces voters into 'lesser-evilism' voting," Zeese said.
The decision rocked the tight race for New Mexico's five electoral votes.
Some Democrats feared Nader's candidacy would attract Democratic votes, thus hurting Democratic challenger John Kerry and helping President Bush. Kerry, coincidentally, was in Albuquerque on Thursday and Friday.
Nader is on the ballot in 36 states and Washington, D.C., Zeese said. However, there are challenges in eight of those.
State Democratic Chairman John Wertheim said he was pleased by the decision.
"The Republican-backed effort to put Nader on the ballot in New Mexico is going to fail on legal grounds," he said.
York on Friday heard arguments by attorneys for Nader and the plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging Nader's New Mexico candidacy.
Four of the plaintiffs were Democrats, including Vanessa Alarid, executive director of the state Democratic Party. Abraham Gutmann, a registered Green who ran for the U.S. Senate in 1996, was also a plaintiff.
Their attorneys argued that Nader should be barred from the ballot because he didn't have enough valid signatures and because he was ineligible to be an independent candidate.
York said the plaintiffs "failed to establish that Mr. Nader's petitions contain insufficient valid signatures."
But she agreed that he can't appear on the ballot as an independent.
"Mr. Nader is asking this court to declare that he is without party affiliation while, at the same time, running for president of the United States in other states under a political party name," York, who is a Democrat, said in a letter to attorneys explaining her decision.
Nader is running elsewhere as a Reform Party candidate or for other minor parties, according to the lawsuit.
York said she planned to issue a formal order next week.
Harry Kresky, representing Nader, said candidates generally have a broad right to be on the ballot and that Nader isn't affiliated with any party in New Mexico, making him eligible to be an independent.
Kresky, an attorney from New York, paced around the courtroom as he made his arguments and drew laughs by mispronouncing "Bernalillo County" several different ways.
But Kresky's discussion of the petition signatures was apparently effective. He suggested he was ready to go line-by-line through Nader's 31,000 petition signatures to show the candidate had enough valid ones to be on the ballot.
The plaintiffs "haven't demonstrated that one signature is invalid," Kresky said.
The executive director of the Republican Party of New Mexico called the ruling ridiculous.
"What do you have to do in this state to have a judge rule according to the law?" director Greg Graves said. "... These judges and the Democrats are basically making this state a place to live where there's one set of rules for them and another set of rules for everybody else."
Others disagreed.
"Gov. Richardson has said many times that Ralph Nader had to follow the rules like any other candidate," Richardson spokesman Billy Sparks said.
