Nader
When asked about the Congressional Black Caucus' rejection of Nader, he played the race card! How interesting.
And in the Boston Globe:
Major Bush fund-raiser donates to Nader campaign
Democrats see strategy as bid to hurt Kerry
By Anne E. Kornblut, Globe Staff | July 1, 2004
WASHINGTON -- Billionaire Richard J. Egan built his reputation in politics as a major donor and fund-raiser for the Bush campaign, steering hundreds of thousands of dollars into Republican coffers in recent years. But now it appears Egan and his relatives are bankrolling a new candidate: independent presidential contender Ralph Nader.
Egan, cofounder of EMC Corp. in Hopkinton, has given Nader the maximum $2,000 allowed under the law, according to federal elections documents that also show a $4,000 contribution to Nader from Egan's son and daughter-in-law, John R. and Pamela C. Egan. An independent campaign finance watchdog group lists the Egan-Managed Capital company -- another family business in Massachusetts -- as among the biggest contributors to the Nader campaign.
Donors often cross party lines to support candidates based on specific regional or business issues, but the Egans' sudden interest in Nader seems to reflect a more sophisticated strategy by Republicans to draw support away from Democratic challenger John F. Kerry by bolstering his third-party rival. For months, Democrats have accused Republicans of conspiring to put Nader on enough ballots to tip the election -- a theory that gained credence this week as two conservative groups in Oregon admitted making phone calls urging supporters to help win Nader a spot on the ticket in that evenly divided state.
Yesterday, a watchdog group in Washington filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission accusing the Oregon groups of breaking campaign laws with their efforts on Nader's behalf. The complaint also names the Bush and Nader campaigns, saying that reports of the Bush campaign using its resources to help Nader, and Nader's acceptance of the assistance, would amount to illegal campaign activity. Both groups and the two campaigns denied breaking the law, calling the accusations ''frivolous."
The complaint points ''to no evidence of us doing anything wrong in Oregon -- if some Republican-leaning groups supported our convention it was done independent of us, and they offer nothing to disprove that," Nader spokesman Kevin Zeese said.
