The Nader Factor: Behind the scenes with the Greens
November 6, 2000
By Henry Payne & Diane Katz
Copyright 2000 National Review Online

Ferndale, MI - A couple of tables at Xhedo's Café once easily accommodated the aging activists and their college protégés who met weekly as the Detroit Green party.

No longer.

Dozens of the new party faithful - union Joes chief among them - now congregate in the auditorium of Zion Lutheran Church, a curious coalition of labor and environmentalists united in their disdain for Al Gore and the Democratic party.

In this year's tight presidential race, the disaffection of even a few voters could well mean the difference between victory and defeat. Here, as in critical West Coast states, the ability of Green-party presidential candidate Ralph Nader to pull support from the Democratic base is a matter of keen interest.

Michigan's Greens could barely muster 2,000 signatures four years ago to get Ralph Nader on the presidential ballot. This year, some 400 volunteers, lunch-bucket toughs allied with tofu types, amassed the necessary 54,000 signatures with relative ease, an achievement that amazed party leaders. They simply failed to appreciate, they now admit, how deeply opposition against Al Gore is running.

At a time of record-low unemployment, Gore should be a voter magnet in an industrial state like Michigan. But a chunk of the traditional Democratic base evidently is repelled by the vice president's centrist position on global trade. These are men and women haunted by the prospect of foreign competition and comparative advantage, fearful that the competitive shakeout of the 1980s will return again to wreak havoc in the factories and factory towns where they and their families build Fords and Chevys.

"Free trade is going to be the downfall of the American worker," says Mark Dagle, a pipefitter and member of the AFL-CIO who recently joined the Green brigade.

The eight-percent showing Nader was registering in Michigan two months ago has eroded in recent weeks, what with union leaders and the Gore campaign warning that a Green vote will benefit Bush.

But Dagle and his compatriots relish their role as potential spoilers. And while he harbors no illusions about Nader's chance for victory, a Gore defeat, Dagle said, "will send a message that the next Democrat will have to be a real Democrat. He won't take his base for granted."

As much as Gore needs the support of voters like Dagle, there's not a whole lot he can do to appease them. The Clinton/Gore administration has consistently championed the North American Free Trade Agreement, normalization of trade relations with China and the World Trade Organization.

Teamsters president James Hoffa and UAW president Stephen Yokich both flirted openly with Nader before issuing a late endorsement for Gore. While the vice president clearly covets their support, his positions on trade exposed that labor no longer is the only voice in the room. And passage of the WTO left many union members feeling that they've been locked out altogether.

But unionists remain wary about their new affiliation with the Greens. The party of Nader, after all, is no friend of the heavy manufacturing upon which their livelihoods depend. It is an article of faith among environmental diehards, in fact, that the automobile is the enemy driving all manner of ecological catastrophe, from urban sprawl to global warming.

UAW member Ron Halstead, who circulated petitions for Nader, says both sides are attempting to overcome the tension. He recalls, for example, a recent meeting of union and Green party officials in which an UAW boss urged environmentalists "to be considerate of our members whose livelihoods depend on the auto industry." And there's hope to be found in other developments as well, he said.

"Look at the reality of what we accomplished in Seattle," Halstead said, referring to the protests that disrupted the WTO meetings. "Union members and environmentalists were unified there, walking side by side in the streets against unfair trade."

He also cites the expanding "diversity" of labor. UAW membership has shrunk by half in the past 15 years, and new union members increasingly are drawn from the service sector. Consequently, these newer, younger unionists have been reared with an environmental consciousness foreign to their fathers.

Craig Harvey, an EPA engineer and president of Michigan's Huron Valley Green party, sees no contradictions in a green/labor alliance. Instead he sees "a growth opportunity."

For now, that growth seems to rest largely on Nader's persona as an honest man, a trait that appeals to greens and disaffected Democrats alike. Nader supporters agree that Gore's rhetoric on their issues should make him a favorite - but they simply do not trust him. Indeed, they see him as a traitor.

"Gore talks one way but acts another. He will stretch the truth as far as it will go. Nader is so intelligent and has so much integrity," says unionist Dagle.

Harvey adds that Gore has been fatally compromised by corporate donations. "He will always go with the tide of corporate money," he says. Does he believe that even the author of the doctrinaire Earth in the Balance would compromise his environmental convictions for money? "Gore has done more to harm the environment than any vice president in history," Harvey answers forcefully.

What the two factions plainly share is a dark vision of corporate America. (Notwithstanding all the Nikes, Levis, and Cokes in evidence at a Green party gathering last week. Or the nearly $1.2 million worth of stock their candidate holds in Cisco Systems, a company with 15 manufacturing partners in China.)

The 2000 election, says UAW member Ken Mathenia, president of the Flint Green party, is about "saving our democracy from corporate takeover."