I’ve noticed in all three of Ralph Nader’s presidential campaigns that the candidate appears to enjoy his role. It’s not just that Nader likes being a spoiler, though this much is obviously true, but also that Nader gets to be a candidate for president without a lot of questions.
Whereas the real candidates are constantly hounded for their positions on issues and their public records, which are closely reviewed for potential inconsistencies, recreational candidates with no realistic chance at success, like Nader, get the best of both worlds. He gets some of the public attention afforded to presidential candidates, without the burdensome scrutiny that comes with a serious run for the nation’s highest office.
It’s campaigning without consequences. No one cares about Nader’s flip-flops, ignorance, or ethical lapses because reporters generally have better things to do — like follow the real candidates.
It’s all the more reason to be thrilled with yesterday’s story on the front page of the Washington Post about Nader’s apparent disregard for campaign ethics laws.
Since October, Ralph Nader has run his campaign for president out of the same downtown Washington offices that through April housed a public charity he created — an overlap that campaign finance specialists said could run afoul of federal laws.
Tax law explicitly forbids public charities from aiding political campaigns. Violations can result in a charity losing its tax-exempt status. In addition, campaign law requires candidates to account for all contributions — including shared office space and resources, down to the use of copying machines, receptionists and telephones.
Records show many links between Nader’s campaign and the charity Citizen Works. For example, the charity’s listed president, Theresa Amato, is also Nader’s campaign manager. The campaign said in an e-mail to The Washington Post that Amato resigned from the charity in 2003. But in the charity’s most recent corporate filing with the District, in January, Amato listed herself as the charity’s president and registered agent.
The office suite housing the campaign, the charity and other sub-tenants had a common receptionist for greeting visitors.
Oops.
It’s a pretty sordid tale, which Nader probably assumed he could get away with since — as he certainly knows — he’s not a real candidate.
It looks like there will likely be some consequences this time around.
“I think this is wrong,” said [said Frances R. Hill, a noted specialist who teaches tax and campaign finance law at the University of Miami School of Law]. “This suggests that Citizen Works is supporting Nader for president. It can’t do this. It isn’t just the rent. It is the things like the copiers, the telephones, the light bill, the heating, the furniture, the computers. At the hyper-technical level, all those questions matter.”
The FEC can be expected to review these issues when it audits the Nader campaign, said Larry Noble, a former FEC general counsel who is executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics. All campaigns that receive federal financing are audited.
“One of the things the FEC is going to have to unravel is whether or not Citizen Works subsidized the campaign,” said Noble, who worked for a Nader group in the 1970s. The arrangement suggests a closeness that makes it “hard to tell where the campaign begins and the nonprofit organization ends,” he said. “It clearly presents problems — tax problems and campaign finance problems.”
Would this be an inconvenient time to note the irony of Nader running as a campaign finance reform advocate who claims to work on behalf of cleaner government?