After four decades of tireless crusading for consumer's rights and against corporate influence over government, Ralph Nader has developed an unblemished luster of integrity. However, as Nader forges ahead with his long-shot, independent presidential candidacy in an especially heated election season, he appears to be shedding the conviction that has formed the core of his politics for so long in favor of political expediency.
In its effort to get on the ballot in the key battleground state of Arizona, the Prospect has learned, the Nader campaign hired a petition company that is also gathering signatures for a draconian anti-immigrant initiative pushed by right-wing elements in the state. The initiative, called Protect Arizona Now (PAN), would restrict access to public services by undocumented immigrants.
In addition, according to several sources, the Nader campaign was assisted in its petition drive by an unlikely figure: the ultra-conservative former executive director of the Arizona Republican Party, Nathan Sproul. Sources say Sproul -- who is also spearheading an initiative to block public funding from political campaigns in the state -- made payments to the petition contractors working on his public-funding initiative to gather signatures for Nader as well.
Moreover, according to several sources, the signature-gathering drive for PAN is mostly funded by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), a Washington-based anti-immigrant group that has spent tens of millions in the last two decades to roll back the rights of both legal and illegal immigrants living in the United States.
The Arizona ballot drive was never the grassroots effort that Nader characterizes his campaign as. In trying to garner the 14,694 signatures necessary to get on the Arizona ballot, the Nader campaign first unsuccessfully solicited a Republican consulting firm to handle its ballot-qualification bid. This spring, as droves of professional petitioners descended on Arizona like traveling carnival folk to gather signatures for PAN -- and to collect the $2–4 that a petitioner is awarded for each signature delivered -- they also presented signatories with the Nader petition, according to several sources. This petition piggybacking helped Nader get more than the amount of signatures he needed to qualify for the ballot -- most of them from Republicans. In fact, according to a volunteer for the Arizona Democratic Party who has reviewed Nader's signatures, of the more than 21,000 signatures Nader garnered, a whopping 65 percent percent came from Republicans, compared to 18 percent from Democrats.
Nader spokesman Kevin Zeese said, "We only heard of Sproul a week ago from media reports. We received 20,000 signatures, and we paid for 20,000 signatures, so I'd be surprised if any of this is true."
"As people make their decision on who they're going to vote for based on candidates' ideals and how they present themselves, the methods by which Ralph Nader tried to get on the ballot in Arizona should make voters question what his real motives are in running for president," said Sarah Rosen, press secretary for the Arizona Democratic Party, which is challenging Nader's petitions in the state and trying to knock him off the ballot.
Nader's bid for the Arizona ballot began this spring when members of his campaign sought a contract with Arno Political Consultants, a California-based Republican consulting firm that has handled past ballot-qualification efforts for GOP icons like Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, as well as anti-immigrant groups like U.S. English.
Arno's client list also comprises a virtual Who's Who of the corporate cartels Nader routinely rails against, including Occidental Petroleum, Phillip Morris, and Wal-Mart. Arno Political Consultants rebuffed the Nader campaign's request. "I thought it would be bad for us to go in with anyone like Nader," said the company's co-director, Michael Arno. "And even though I don't know [George W.] Bush personally, I have a relationship with some of the people close to him, so I didn't want to be part of anything that could be seen as nefarious. I have too much respect for the process." Despite the rejection, Arno says, he has been repeatedly approached by members of Nader's campaign this month to handle their ballot qualification effort in New Mexico. He has refused these appeals as well.
Arno referred Nader's campaign to Jenny Breslyn, owner of the Florida-based petition contractor JSM Inc., who promptly accepted a contract with the Nader campaign. Breslyn was already in Arizona at the time, subcontracted by Arno to oversee PAN's ballot-qualification effort. Breslyn's signature gatherers bundled Nader's petitions with the PAN petitions; as a result, signatures from Republicans, whom polls show are far more likely than Democrats to support PAN, came pouring in for Nader.
Not only did the bundling of Nader's petitions with PAN apparently help Nader's ballot-qualification effort, but by pumping more prize money into an already lucrative signature-hunting season for professional petitioners, the Nader campaign may have inadvertently helped PAN. "Petitioners are carrying bunches of petitions out there. So one way or another, the petitions benefit from each other," explained Arno. "The more petitions you put in their hands, the more chance you give [petitioners] of making money. In general terms, everybody benefits when there's more money around."
Nader's Arizona campaign coordinator, Cheryl Rohrick, claimed she was unaware Nader petitions were bundled with PAN petitions. "I didn't know if they [Breslyn's petitioners] were gathering signatures for other initiatives and neither did [Nader campaign manager] Theresa Amato," Rohrick said. Though Rohrick stated her personal opposition to PAN, Nader has yet to publicly denounce the initiative.
Nor has Nader denounced the covert assistance his Arizona ballot-qualification effort received from Sproul, who is currently running the No Taxpayer Money For Politicians" initiative, a right-wing effort to ban candidates from receiving public financing. According to several sources, two of the contractors Sproul hired to oversee petition gathering for No Taxpayer Money For Politicians -- Aaron "A.J." James, who directs Voters' Outreach of America, and Diane Burns -- were also paid by Sproul to get as many signatures as possible for Nader.
"Aaron [James] told me he was out there getting signatures for Nader. So I can only assume that Diane [Burns] was too," said Derek Lee, who, as owner of Lee Petitions, was part of the traveling petition carnival that descended on Arizona this spring. "The only thing I can tell you for sure is that Aaron was working with Nathan [Sproul] on this Nader thing. I've heard that from a number of people but they put the hush-hush on it real quick."
Reached by phone, Burns and James were clearly nonplussed; when asked if they were hired by Sproul to get signatures for Nader, both immediately hung up. Neither responded to follow-up interview requests.
According to a source who monitored petitioning in Arizona this spring, Sproul covered his tracks by having his secretary deliver Burns and James' Nader petitions to Breslyn, who was operating out of "a low-end motel" in Scottsdale. Upon receiving the petitions, the source says, Breslyn mixed them in with her own. Breslyn did not deny receiving petitions from Sproul: "I wasn't there [at the motel] all the time. I can't discuss my clients with you," Breslyn said. "I don't really even know Mr. Sproul. He is not one of my regular clients. I don't like to give interviews," she continued.
Sproul rejected an interview request. However, on June 8, he commented, "I'm not being paid by anybody to do petitions [for Nader], and I've not paid anybody to do petitions."
Sproul's machinations are nothing new: According to Rob Boston of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, when Sproul was the Arizona field director for the Christian Coalition in the early 1990s he encouraged members to run for Republican precinct committee chairs and mislead voters about their Christian Coalition affiliation.
Though Sproul's efforts helped Nader qualify for the Arizona ballot by an overwhelming margin, their victory may be short-lived. On Wednesday, two Democratic voters supported by the Arizona Democratic Party filed a lawsuit alleging, among other things, that more than 14,000 of Nader's signatures were invalid because they came from unregistered voters and convicted felons, who are barred from voting by Arizona state law. The lawsuit also alleges that several petition contractors -- including Diane Burns -- falsified their home addresses, thus disqualifying them as registered voters. "According to what we've found and according to the laws of the state, Ralph Nader simply does not qualify for the ballot," stated Rosen of the Arizona Democratic Party.
Rumors are circulating through Arizona's political circles that the Democratic lawsuit could include subpoenas for people from Sproul's shop. Sproul and his employees are keeping mum, but if and when the subpoenas arrive, it may be time for at least one of them to talk.
Max Blumenthal is a freelance writer based in LosAngeles. Visithis blog at www.maxblumenthal.blogspot.com.
