"He's had an enormous influence historically," says Steve Brobeck, a consumer historian and director of the Consumer Federation of America. As the crusader who built his David-and- Goliath career taking on major corporations — automobiles, airlines, insurance — Nader is accustomed to being simultaneously loved and maligned.
"You know what he's done for us? He has raised our expectations," says Nader protege Harvey Rosenfield, head of California's Proposition 103 Enforcement Project. "People trust that man because they know he's not for sale."
Nader began to earn that reputation 30 years ago, when he was catapulted into the national spotlight as a young Harvard law graduate whose stinging book Unsafe at Any Speed challenged the safety of the Chevrolet Corvair and American cars in general.
When General Motors unwisely hired a private detective to try to discredit him, the ploy backfired. A Senate subcommittee looked into GM's snooping. "It could have been scripted in Hollywood," says John Richard of Nader's Center for Study of Responsive Law. "GM overreacted and got caught."
Nader's next moves laid the groundwork for the contemporary consumer movement. He attracted waves of young activists to Washington as "Nader's Raiders," investigating government foot- dragging (starting with the Federal Trade Commission) and business fraud, and instigating reform in everything from water pollution to nursing-home abuse.
New laws were enacted — the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act, the Consumer Product Safety Act, the Freedom of Information Act and many more. Nader and his associates began forming advocacy groups (more than 50 at last count) to oversee enforcement and lobby for more. "I like to think of myself as a Johnny Appleseed, getting consumer groups started and letting them grow on their own," Nader says.
The Nader-led activity pumped life into a Washington vacuum, says Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen, Nader's largest watchdog group, formed in 1971. "There were no citizen groups in 1965 that lobbied, when he started investigating the automobile industry," she says. "There were government officials and industry representatives and Ralph."
Nader's emphasis has gradually switched from exposés to long-range networks of public interest research groups (PIRGs) and Citizen Utility Boards (CUBs), which are statewide citizen action groups. Any conversation with him gravitates back to the theme of citizen power. In interviews, he whips out a little green CUB flyer that is mailed to all Illinois utility customers. "In Illinois they helped pass a utility reform package and saved ratepayers $3 billion," he says. "Every state needs something like this."
As a Princeton undergraduate, Nader questioned the spraying of the pesticide DDT on campus. "The groundskeepers would spray it on with huge hoses — we'd even wipe it off our faces it was so thick. The next morning there would be dead birds on the sidewalk."
Nader made the connection, but when he approached the editors of the Princeton newspaper with the story, he was brushed off. "They told me that we had brilliant biology professors and chemists at Princeton and if there was a connection between DDT and the birds' deaths, they would know about it. That was one of the best lessons I had at Princeton."
He sometimes finds himself fighting lonely battles. He was the only major witness last summer to testify before Congress in opposition to the nomination of Stephen G. Breyer to the Supreme Court, saying Breyer's opinions showed a pro-business, anti- consumer bent. He has vigorously opposed both the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), maintaining they will undercut environmental and minimum wage standards in the United States.
Asked to enumerate his most important accomplishments, Nader first offers a checklist of what he calls "transient victories," items such as seat belts, air bags, crash-worthy cars, better labeling on food, lower levels of lead in the environment.
And there have been the victories of what he calls "silent revolutions," in America's smoking and eating habits that have occurred despite the pressures of the marketplace. As Nader's empire has blossomed into a sophisticated network of consumer organizations, he has stuck to his no-frills lifestyle (he is a semi-vegetarian). He rents a small apartment and doesn't own a car.
He foresees the emergence of a third party. "Ross Perot broke the myth of the two-party system and proved that 19 million voters can wave bye-bye to the traditional parties." He considers both the Republicans and the Democrats to be fossils. "Just remember they have no membership, they have no grass-roots — it's all electronic combat — raising money, writing checks and putting these absolutely ridiculous 30-second ads on TV."
Not only has health care disappeared from the national agenda, he notes, the candidates campaigning on the "crime issue" are talking about street crime, ignoring the kind of corporate crime Nader wants to hear critiqued: "The looting of pension funds, the bank debacle, occupational hazards, consumer frauds — these are all taboo campaign issues."
Nader campaigned in two 1992 New England presidential primaries, encouraging voters to write "None of the Above" on the ballot. Many wrote his name instead, and "interestingly, they were divided between Republicans and Democrats," he says. He spent about ten days in New Hampshire and was largely ignored by the press. But ordinary people responded.
With a few clumsy handwritten "Write in Ralph" signs hanging behind him, Nader would begin his speeches with: "Hello, I'm None of the Above, and I'm not running for president." Then he would deliver an incisive lecture on the real malaise of the country, on which politicians have sold out the voters, and on what ought to be done about corporate politics. He argued that a None of the Above option on the ballot would allow voters to take part in the process while dismissing the usual suspects. His motive was to generate public discussion of his "Concord Principles," which outline tools for a new democracy. "We had no television, it was just 300 or 400 people in auditorium after auditorium," he says. "They would stay until 11:00 at night for big discussions. This business of the media pandering to the lowest common sensibility of the audience is a self-fulfilling prophecy."
Nader has a large following in California. It was here in 1988 that he led the successful Proposition 103 campaign against the insurance industry that demanded an overhaul of the business and reduction of rates. The insurance industry spent $64 million protecting its interests, the Nader forces $500,000. Nader is currently drawing large crowds with other calls for political reform, including CALPIRG's campaign reform finance law that would set strict limits on the amount of campaign financing given to a candidate from any one source, and would require the state's legislators to raise 75 per cent of funds in their own districts and among their own constituents. Today most of their money comes from out of their districts, and often from out of state. Campaign finance reform remains highly popular with the public.
Writing in the Village Voice, James Ridgeway said: "Nader's campaign for citizens government — linking populist and anticorporate sentiments — could act as a catalyst for a far more open and independent presidential race. Nader is incredibly idealistic at a moment when America has lost its sense of direction, and he might be just the antidote to U.S. politics that the country needs. His vision of a government run by ordinary people in the public interest is what Americans say they want. It appeals to those with libertarian sentiments as well as to those on the left of more traditional liberal views. Its roots are in the American experience, and it takes back the debate from the absurdities of the political right, not to mention what remains of the so-called left. Its real enemy is the multinational corporation. The Nader candidacy could open up a real debate about the future course of democracy — a direct contrast to the phony right-wing revolution rhetoric preached by Gingrich as he builds up his corporate slush fund."