Nader setting up write-in campaign

RALEIGH -- Ralph Nader doesn't want to be written off.

The independent presidential candidate will be in Raleigh for a rally today, partly to help gather the 500 signatures necessary to petition the State Board of Elections.

Nader's name will still not appear on the ballot, though the petition will allow him to run as a write-in candidate.

He said North Carolina's ballot access laws are "about the hardest of any state in the union." He estimated it would have cost more than $270,000 to gather the signatures necessary to get his name on the ballot.

As a write-in candidate in 2004, Nader received 1,805 votes in North Carolina -- or about one-tenth of one percent of the ballots cast by state voters in the presidential race that year.

Still, he said, tenacity is important in politics, drawing a lesson from an unlikely source: former conservative Sen. Jesse Helms, who died last week.

"I think his legacy is that no matter how wrong you are on how many issues, if you stick to it you can win," he said in a phone interview.

Nader said that Helms had "enormous determination and stamina" when pushing his causes, something he does not think current liberal senators have.

"They don't have that stick-to-it-iveness that Jesse Helms had," he said. "They're not hungry to win the way Jesse Helms was."

As in his 2000 and 2004 campaigns, Nader is again arguing that the Democratic and Republican parties both represent "business as usual" and are essentially the same on issues such as free trade and corporate influence.

Nader was asked whether he thought Democratic candidate Al Gore would have started the Iraq war if Gore had become president.

"I don't think a crazy pit bull would have started the Iraq war," he said. "We have a criminal president who has launched a criminal war of aggression that is violating the Constitution, federal statutes and international treaties."

But Nader said the 2000 election result was not his fault.

"They shouldn't scapegoat third parties," he said. "Third parties have every right to run in our system."