Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Nader camp denies that GOP helped

While Republicans around the country have quietly been involved in trying to get third-party presidential candidate Ralph Nader on the ballot, a conservative Las Vegas political consultant has no problem admitting his role.

His claim, though, has been challenged by the Nader campaign, and the conflict in stories is becoming a political whodunit.

Steve Wark, a Republican campaign consultant and former state party executive director, said he raised $30,000 -- from friends and Republicans like the state party chairwoman -- to pay for the signature-gathering effort for Nader.

Republicans hope to give Bush an advantage against presumptive Democratic candidate John Kerry. In 2000 Bush won in part because Nader was on the ballot and took votes that likely would have gone to Al Gore.

Regardless of who takes credit, it looks as if Nader will be on the Nevada ballot.

Clark County Registrar of Voters Larry Lomax said Thursday that it appears more than 73 percent of the 11,000 signatures turned in to his office are valid. Nader needs just 5,000 signatures to make the ballot.

But the story of how those signatures got there is still unclear.

Wark said this week that he helped raise about $30,000 for Choices for America.

The group is a nonprofit organization based in Union, Mo., that has helped put Nader and other third-party candidates on the ballot, Wark said.

Yet the Nader campaign denies that Wark or Choices for America were involved in the Nevada drive.

"The more I think about the story, the less it makes sense to me," Nader spokesman Kevin Zeese said.

Zeese claims that the Nader campaign bankrolled the signatures on its own, giving $15,000 to JSM Inc., a company based out of Florida that routinely conducts signature-gathering operations in states around the country.

"We never saw any check (from Choices for America)," Zeese said. "Our signature guys promise they never saw any check. There were no signatures unaccounted for."

Calls to Jennifer Breslin, head of JSM, were not returned.

Wark agrees that JSM circulated the petitions, but he said the money he collected went to Choices for America, which then passed it on to JSM.

Wark speculated that all of the money might have been used for the signatures. JSM was paid up to $3 per signature.

"They had at least 20 people on the ground from California for a week and a half," he said. "If Nader did contribute, then he probably contributed to the room and board. But I never talked to anybody from the Nader campaign."

Wark said he got involved in the effort a few weeks ago, when he told a friend in the business that he was looking for a way to help put Nader on the ballot and increase President Bush's odds of winning the state.

He said he soon got a call from Breslin.

"She said, 'I'm in town to collect signatures for the Nader folks, and they gave me your name to help us make sure the petition is correct,' " Wark said. "I said, 'Sure.' "

Breslin told him to send money to Choices for America, he said.

Choices for America is a nonprofit organization founded on April 22, according to the Missouri Secretary of State's Web site. The name listed in conjunction with the group is Charles Hurth III, an attorney in Union, Mo., about 50 miles southwest of St. Louis. Calls to his office were not returned.

The group's nonprofit designation is given to organizations that do social work and education, so it does not have to file federal campaign information.

Such groups do need to be careful not to be overtly political, however, said Sheila Krumholz, research director for the Center for Responsive Politics. A majority of their activities cannot be partisan, she said.

The groups, however, often do outreach, including voter registration.

Republicans across the country have openly encouraged their members to sign petitions to support Nader, but rarely have they been so open about funding the effort.

Wark said he told his mother-in-law, Republican Party Chairwoman Earlene Forsythe, who then "cranked out e-mails to folks and got a little response."

But mostly, he said, he raised the money from non-partisans, Democrats and Republicans he knew in Clark County. He estimated he received at least 30 or 40 checks.

Democrats have been dismissive of the effort.

"It shows how desperate Republicans are that George Bush can't win this election outright on his own," Sean Smith, spokesman for the Kerry campaign in Nevada, said.

Wark claims that the effort was "not a Republican-organized event."

"The Republican establishment did not participate in this at all," he said. "It would have been easier if they did."

The Clark County chairman of the Republican Party, Brian Scroggins, said he knew there were Republicans working to help the Nader effort, but he tried to stay out of it.

"I just figured it wouldn't be too kosher to have the county chairman put Nader on the ballot," he said.

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