Report: Nader's AZ Petition Drive Piggybacked On Anti-Immigrant Initiative

[Beloved Citizen]

American Prospect 6/25

Nader's Dubious Raiders - Exclusive: Ralph's Arizona ballot tactics are worse than this week's Democratic lawsuit alleges. Some petitions pggybacked on a reactionary anti-immigrant initiative, and others were paid for by a former executive director of the state GOP.

By Max Blumenthal

(From the article) 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 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 came from Republicans, compared to 18 percent from Democrats.


Can it be that Nader's hatred of the Democratic Party is so great he's stooped to working with some of the most vile and racist elements in America today?

Read the rest at:

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleID=7954

[Gman]

1. So Nader has aligned his self with a radical RW anti-immigrant group

I guess 'ol Ralphie isn't as pure as the driven snow, savior of liberalism that a lot of people want the rest of us here at DU to believe. Looks like Ralphie's true colors are starting to finally emerge.

I, for one, am not surprised, nor am I the least bit disillusioned. I always figured Nader for a carnival hawker, sheister con-man. A lot of good people have been duped by Nader. Should the impossible happen and Nader get elected, Nader's administration would make Georgie boy's look like liberal Democrats.

So Ralphie's really a RW'er. Who'd a thunk it?

[TexasSissy]

2. I wouldn't call that initiative a draconian anti-immigrant initiative.

One similar to it was passed in CA a few years ago, then struck down by the courts, I think.

The cost of paying for services for the undocumented immigrants is heavy in states that have a lot of them. They are primarily in the southwest.

I don't know how I would vote on such an initiative, since it hasn't been presented here. But I've heard arguments on both sides of the fence, and I see them both. However, I tend to fall on the side that is favor of not paying for those services. The financial burden on a state with a lot of undocumented immigrants is very heavy; plus, there's an aspect of unfairness in it, in that undocumented immigrants would, and do, get free medical and other services that I, a working U.S. citizen either could not get or would have to pay dearly for. It's a complicated issue.

[Gman]

3. You may have heard of this thing called "The Statue of Liberty"

and on it is inscribed:

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door."

[Beloved Citizen]

4. Nader's apologists...

...are starting to sound an awful lot like the one's that make excuses for Shrub.