Terry McAuliffe’s Attempt to Bribe Ralph Nader is Product of “Two-Party Tyranny”

The Democrats didn’t run as an actual opposition party in 2004, but they did try to bribe a man who did. When that failed, they tried to keep Nader off the ballot. That’s democracy?

By Jeremy Scahill

As chair of the Democratic National Committee during the 2004 election, Terry McAuliffe engaged in actions that reveal exactly how the Democratic Party establishment views the “democratic electoral process.”

According to a new book by Theresa Amato, independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader’s campaign manager in 2000 and 2004, McAuliffe attempted to essentially bribe the Nader campaign to stand down in key states. In Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny, Amato charges “the DNC and its state party affiliates embarked on an effort, unprecedented in U.S. history, to force Nader out of the 2004 presidential election,” according to a press release for the book:

“[O]n June 23, 2004, Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe promised unspecified “resources” to Ralph Nader’s 2004 presidential campaign, if Nader would agree not to run in 19 so-called “battleground” states. Chairman McAuliffe also said that the DNC supported litigation to remove Nader from the ballot in those states, including a lawsuit filed in Arizona that same day.”

Amato alleges that during one conversation, McAuliffe repeatedly said, “Stay out of 19 states.” Nader, of course, refused to take the bribe. “When you get a call like that, first of all it’s inappropriate,” Nader told the Washington Post. “The other thing is if you don’t immediately say no, it’s like taffy, you get stuck with it.” Nader continued to fight for ballot access and votes in those states and the campaign of intimidation continued, as Amatos release describes:

Pennsylvania was among the hotly-contested 2004 states where the Democrats and their allies successfully strong-armed Nader off the ballot. In 2008, as part of an ongoing grand jury investigation, the Pennsylvania Attorney General has charged 12 members or employees of the Pennsylvania House Democratic Caucus with using taxpayer money and resources for improper political purposes–including keeping 2004 Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader off the state’s ballot. Criminal charges against the Pennsylvania state workers are still pending.

According to the Washington Post, “McAuliffe isn’t denying the charge:”

His spokeswoman Elisabeth Smith said in a statement McAuliffe “was concerned that Ralph Nader would cost John Kerry the election as he did Al Gore in 2000 and give us another four years of George W. Bush.”

“It looks like Ralph Nader misses seeing his name in the press,” Smith said. “Terry’s focused on talking with Virginians about jobs, not feeding Ralph Nader’s ego.”

Whoa. McAuliffe was “concerned” that Nader would “cost John Kerry the election as he did Al Gore.” So that justifies election tampering and attempted bribery?

McAuliffe’s actions are part of the broader false narrative that Nader “lost” the 2000 election and that his runs for office somehow are responsible for Republican candidates winning. First of all, Bush stole the 2000 election in Florida and the Democrats refused to engage in an actual fight against that theft. Secondly, the Democrats wouldn’t have had to worry about Nader if they actually acted like an opposition party and had spined up in the 2000 and 2004 elections and ran on an actual anti-war, pro-worker, progressive platform that provided a real alternative to the Republicans. John Kerry ran on a Bush-lite platform and lost an election that Sponge Bob might have won.

McAuliffe, who recently chaired Hillary Clinton’s failed bid for the presidency, is trying to move from the back rooms of Democratic Party power politics to elected office, running for governor in Virginia. In defending his run in the extremely competitive race, McAuliffe has waxed poetic about how “anyone is entitled to run for office” and “the more people who run for office, the better it is.”

Right, just don’t run for office if you aren’t running as a member of the corporate duopoly or the Democrats will try to bribe you and then fight to keep your name off the ballot.

This should become a major issue in the Virginia gubernatorial race (we’ll see about that) and McAuliffe should be called to accounts for his actions. But, it is important to remember that he was acting in his capacity as the chair of the Democratic National Committee, which makes it all the more disturbing.