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.”

“Such a contrast invites explanation at the very least,” says Christina Tobin, chairman of Free and Equal Elections. “Perhaps candidate McAuliffe would now make amends by pledging to support free and equal elections and one reasonable federal standard for ballot access for federal office for all parties.”

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.

Part personal memoir, part political history, part exposé and part impassioned call for electoral reform, Grand Illusion provides a blow-by-blow account of some of the 24 harassing complaints that the Democrats and their allies filed within 12 weeks to remove Nader from the ballot in 18 states. At least 95 lawyers from 53 law firms nationwide joined the effort to stifle Nader’s insurgent campaign.
Nader prevailed in most states, but Grand Illusion will make citizens wonder: How democratic is an electoral process that forces millions of American voters to choose between just two parties, while freezing out competing candidacies and new ideas?

To prevent such abuse and manipulation of the electoral process in the future, in Grand Illusion Amato proposes a number of practical and easy-to-implement reforms, to replace 50 different, and in some cases discriminatory state ballot access laws. Amato also recounts details of behind-the-scenes conversations with presidential candidate John Kerry, and with Howard Dean, who followed McAuliffe as DNC chairman.

Nader filed a federal lawsuit in 2007 and an FEC complaint in 2008 against McAuliffe, the DNC and others who helped finance and coordinate the attempt to suppress Nader’s 2004 presidential candidacy. Both actions are still pending

Free & Equal Elections is a non partisan organization dedicated to eliminating restrictive ballot access laws that target Independent and Third-Party Candidates.

Free & Equal will challenge these laws, through lobbying of state legislators, court challenges, and initiatives.

 

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