Free & Equal asks: Will the Real Terry McAuliffe Please Stand Up?

Terry McAuliffe’s Record as Former DNC Chairman Contradicts Candidate McAuliffe’s Rhetoric in Virginia’s 2009 Democratic Gubernatorial Primary

In her soon-to-be-released book, Grand Illusion, The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny (The New Press 2009), lawyer Theresa Amato charges that on 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.

“Stay out of my 19 states.”

In Grand Illusion, Amato, the national manager of Nader’s lightning-rod 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns, recounts how, after Nader rebuffed Chairman McAuliffe’s offer, 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. Amato says McAuliffe repeated over and over during a conversation: “Stay out of 19 states.”

McAuliffe’s 2004 attempt to confine Nader to 31 states, revealed an exclusionary and censorious Terry McAuliffe that is hard to reconcile with gubernatorial candidate McAuliffe’s professed support for ballot access and democratic participation as a candidate in Virginia’s 2009 Democratic gubernatorial primary.

Earlier this year, candidate McAuliffe told WTOP radio’s Mark Plotkin that “anyone is entitled to run for office,” and “the more people who run for office, the better it is.” McAuliffe’s campaign blog also claims that he stands for “getting people engaged in the democratic process.”

“Terry McAuliffe the candidate is not the Terry McAuliffe I knew as Chairman of the DNC in 2004″ says Amato.

“Candidate McAuliffe claims to fight for voter rights and against disenfranchisement,” Amato notes, “but McAuliffe’s DNC attempted to deny millions of voters their free choice of voting for Ralph Nader and Peter Miguel Camejo during the 2004 presidential election.”

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