Ralph Nader (; born February 27, 1934) is an American lawyer and political activist involved in consumer protection, environmentalism, and government reform causes. He has been a presidential candidate repeatedly. His 1965 book Unsafe at Any Speed, which criticized the automotive industry for its safety record, helped lead to the passage of the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act in 1966.
The son of Lebanese immigrants to the United States, Nader attended Princeton University and Harvard Law School. He quickly developed an interest in vehicle designs that were hazardous and contributed to elevated levels of car accidents and fatalities. Published in 1965, Unsafe at Any Speed became a highly influential critique of the safety record of American automobile manufacturers, focusing on General Motors' Chevrolet Corvair automobile in particular.
Following the publication of Unsafe at Any Speed, Nader led a group of volunteer law students—dubbed "Nader's Raiders"—in an investigation of the Federal Trade Commission, leading directly to that agency's overhaul and reform. In the 1970s, Nader leveraged his growing popularity to establish a number of advocacy and watchdog groups including the Public Interest Research Group, the Center for Auto Safety, and Public Citizen. Two of Nader's most notable targets were the Chevy Corvair and the Ford Pinto.
Nader made four bids to become President of the United States, running with the Green Party in 1996 and 2000 and as an independent in 2004 and 2008. In each campaign, Nader said he sought to highlight under-reported issues and a perceived need for electoral reform. He won nearly three million votes at the 2000 United States presidential election, but there were allegations that his campaign that year helped Republican candidate George W. Bush win a close election against Democratic candidate Al Gore.
A two-time Nieman Fellow, Nader is the author or co-author of more than two dozen books and was the subject of a documentary film on his life and work, An Unreasonable Man, which debuted at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival. He has been repeatedly named to lists of the "100 Most Influential Americans", including those published by the magazines Life, Time, and The Atlantic. He was described by The New York Times as a "dissident".
Contents
Early life and education
Ralph Nader was born on February 27, 1934, in Winsted, Connecticut, to Rose (née Bouziane) and Nathra Nader, both of whom were Antiochian Greek Christian immigrants from Mount Lebanon and the Beqaa Valley in Southeastern Lebanon. After settling in Connecticut, Nathra Nader worked in a textile mill before opening a bakery and restaurant. Ralph Nader occasionally helped at his father's restaurant; he also worked as a newspaper delivery boy for the local paper, the Winsted Register Citizen. Nader graduated from The Gilbert School in 1951, going on to attend Princeton University. Though he was offered a scholarship to Princeton, his father forced him to decline it on the grounds that the family was able to pay Nader's tuition and the funds should go to a student who could not afford it. Nader graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a Bachelor of Arts from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in 1955 after completing a senior thesis titled "Lebanese Agriculture".
After graduating from Princeton, Nader enrolled at Harvard Law School, though he quickly became bored by his courses. While at Harvard, Nader would frequently skip classes to hitchhike across the U.S. where he would engage in field research on Native American issues and migrant worker rights. He earned a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) from Harvard in 1958. Nader identified with libertarian philosophy in his youth, but gradually shifted away in his early 20s. Although Nader acknowledged that he "didn't like public housing because it disadvantaged landlords unfairly", his viewpoint changed when he "saw the slums and what landlords did". After graduating from Harvard, Nader served in the U.S. Army as a cook and was posted to Fort Dix.
Career
Early history
In 1959, Nader was admitted to the bar and began practice as a lawyer in Hartford, Connecticut, while also lecturing at the University of Hartford and traveling to the Soviet Union, Chile, and Cuba, where he filed dispatches for the Christian Science Monitor and The Nation. In 1964, he moved to Washington, D.C., taking a position as a consultant to Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
Unsafe at Any Speed
Nader gained national attention with the 1965 publication of his journalistic exposé Unsafe at Any Speed. The book, critical of the automotive industry, argued that many American automobiles were generally unsafe to operate. For the book, Nader researched case files from more than a hundred lawsuits then pending against General Motors' Chevrolet Corvair to support his assertions.
The book became an immediate bestseller, but also prompted a backlash from General Motors (GM), which attempted to discredit Nader. GM tapped Nader's phone in an attempt to obtain salacious information and, when that failed, GM hired prostitutes in an attempt to catch him in a compromising situation. Nader, by then working as an unpaid consultant to United States Senator Abe Ribicoff, reported to the senator that he suspected he was being followed. Ribicoff convened an inquiry that called GM CEO James Roche who admitted, when placed under oath, that the company had hired a private detective agency to investigate Nader. Nader sued GM for invasion of privacy, settling the case for $425,000 and using the proceeds to found the activist organization known as the Center for the Study of Responsive Law.
A year following the publication of Unsafe at Any Speed, Congress unanimously enacted the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act. Speaker of the United States House of Representatives John William McCormack said the passage of the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act was brought about by the "crusading spirit of one individual who believed he could do something: Ralph Nader".
"Nader's Raiders", Public Citizen and Center for Auto Safety
In 1968, Nader recruited seven volunteer law students, dubbed "Nader's Raiders" by the Washington press corps, to evaluate the efficacy and operation of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The group's ensuing report, which criticized the body as "ineffective" and "passive" led to an American Bar Association investigation of the FTC. Based on the results of that second study, Richard Nixon revitalized the agency and sent it on a path of vigorous consumer protection and antitrust enforcement for the rest of the 1970s.
Nader's Raiders became involved in such issues as nuclear safety, international trade, regulation of insecticides, meat processing, pension reform, land use, and banking.
Following the publication of the report, Nader founded the watchdog group Public Citizen in 1971 to engage in public interest lobbying and activism on issues of consumer rights. He also served on its board of directors until 1980.
Nader founded the Center for Auto Safety, which for 40 years, published an annual guide on new car safety ratings, preventative maintenance and repair costs, fuel economy, insurance costs, warranty coverage, and complaints: "The Car Book".
1970s–1990s
By the early 1970s Nader had established himself as a household name. In a critical memo written by Lewis Powell to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Powell warned business representatives that Nader "has become a legend in his own time and an idol of millions of Americans".
Ralph Nader's name appeared in the press as a potential candidate for president for the first time in 1971, when he was offered the opportunity to run as the presidential candidate for the New Party, a progressive split-off from the Democratic Party. Chief among his advocates was author Gore Vidal, who touted a 1972 Nader presidential campaign in a front-page article in Esquire magazine in 1971. Nader declined the advances.
In 1973, Ralph Nader was plaintiff in the case against acting attorney general Robert Bork, who under orders of President Richard Nixon had fired special prosecutor Archibald Cox in the so-called Saturday Night Massacre, an action that was ultimately ruled illegal by federal judge Gerhard Gesell.
In 1974, Nader received the S. Roger Horchow Award for Greatest Public Service by a Private Citizen.
In the 1970s, Nader turned his attention to environmental activism, becoming a key leader in the antinuclear power movement, described by one observer as the "titular head of opposition to nuclear energy". The Critical Mass Energy Project was formed by Nader in 1974 as a national anti-nuclear umbrella group, growing to become the largest national anti-nuclear group in the United States, with several hundred local affiliates and an estimated 200,000 supporters. The organization's main efforts were directed at lobbying activities and providing local groups with scientific and other resources to campaign against nuclear power.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, through his ongoing work with Public Citizen, Nader continued to be involved in issues of consumer rights and public accountability. His work testifying before Congress, drafting model legislation, and organizing citizen letter-writing and protest efforts, earned him direct credit for the enactment of the Freedom of Information Act, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, Clean Water Act, Consumer Product Safety Act, and Whistleblower Protection Act.
Presidential campaigns
Ralph Nader's name appeared in the press as a potential candidate for president for the first time in 1971, when he was offered the opportunity to run as the presidential candidate for the New Party, a progressive split-off from the Democratic Party in 1972. Chief among his advocates was author Gore Vidal, who touted a 1972 Nader presidential campaign in a front-page article in Esquire magazine in 1971. Psychologist Alan Rockway organized a "draft Ralph Nader for President" campaign in Florida on the New Party's behalf. Nader declined their offer to run that year; the New Party ultimately joined with the People's Party in running Benjamin Spock in the 1972 presidential election. Spock had hoped Nader in particular would run, getting "some of the loudest applause of the evening" when mentioning him at the University of Alabama. Spock went on to try to recruit Nader for the party among over 100 others, and indicated he would be "delighted" to be replaced by any of them even after he accepted the nomination himself. Nader received one vote for the vice-presidential nomination at the 1972 Democratic National Convention.
In the 1980 presidential election, the progressive-oriented Citizens Party approached Nader with the prospect of running as their presidential nominee. Nader declined their offer, stating "I will never run for president". The party ended up nominating biologist Barry Commoner instead.
Nader stood in as a write-in for "none of the above" in both the 1992 New Hampshire Democratic and Republican primaries and received 3,054 of the 170,333 Democratic votes and 3,258 of the 177,970 Republican votes cast. He was also a candidate in the 1992 Massachusetts Democratic primary.
Nader was drafted as a candidate for President of the United States on the Green Party ticket during the 1996 presidential election. He was not formally nominated by the Green Party USA, which was, at the time, the largest national Green group; instead he was nominated independently by various state Green parties (in some states, he appeared on the ballot as an independent). However, many activists in the Green Party USA worked actively to campaign for Nader that year. Nader qualified for ballot status in 22 states, garnering 685,297 votes or 0.71% of the popular vote (fourth place overall), although the effort did make significant organizational gains for the party. He refused to raise or spend more than $5,000 on his campaign, presumably to avoid meeting the threshold for Federal Election Commission reporting requirements. The unofficial Draft Nader committee could (and did) spend more than that, but the committee was legally prevented from coordinating in any way with Nader himself.
Congressional Accountability Project
Nader founded the Congressional Accountability Project to "oppose corruption in the U. S. Congress".
Later activities
Nader condemned the 2011 military intervention in Libya. He branded President Barack Obama as a "war criminal" and called for his impeachment.
In June 2019, Nader, who lost his 24-year-old grandniece in the Ethiopian Airlines crash, claimed that the Boeing 737 Max "must never fly again... it's not a matter of software. It's a matter of structural design defect: the plane's engines are too much for the traditional fuselage". Nader also called for Boeing top leaders to resign and said that the Federal Aviation Administration "has been in the pockets of the Boeing company for years".
In 2002, Nader founded the D.C. Library Renaissance Project, which has sought to halt the development of the West End Library in Washington, D.C., alleging that it "violated affordable housing guidelines, undervalued the land, and didn't conform to the city's Comprehensive Plan". The legal obstacles presented by the Library Renaissance Project have cost the D.C. government over one million dollars in legal fees. Nader has opposed the privatized development of D.C. libraries despite community support, citing a lack of oversight and competitive bidding process.
In 2009, Nader published his first work of fiction, Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!. Many of the characters were fictionalized versions of real-life persons including Ted Turner and Warren Buffett. The book's principal villain, a "conservative evil genius" named Brovar Dortwist, represents Grover Norquist. According to Norquist, Nader had called him prior to the book's publication and said he "wouldn't be too unhappy, because the character was principled".
The novel met with mixed reviews with The Wall Street Journal noting that the book "reads less like a novel ... than a dream journal" with a plot that victoriously concludes with "American society thoroughly Naderized", though The Globe and Mail called it "a powerful idea by the perfect person at a fortuitous time".
Nader also branched out into fiction with the fable collection Animal Envy in 2016.
During the 2012 United States presidential election, Nader moderated a debate for third-party candidates at Washington, D.C.'s Busboys and Poets. The debate was attended by Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, Libertarian Gary Johnson, Rocky Anderson of the Justice Party and Constitution Party candidate Virgil Goode. He later moderated a similar debate in a studio appearance broadcast by Russia Today.
Personal life
Nader, whose family was Antiochian Greek Orthodox Christian, recalled that during his childhood his family had been "embraced" by a Methodist church where he attended Sunday school. In addition to English, Nader also speaks Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, Chinese, and conversational Arabic.
Nader defines his ideology not as left-wing or right-wing but as a "moral empiricist". He has lived in Washington D.C. since the 1960s, but is domiciled in Connecticut, where he is registered to vote. Nader has expressed admiration for Robert La Follette, Eugene Debs, and Edmund Burke.
His siblings are Laura (a professor of social and cultural anthropology at U.C. Berkeley), Claire, and late brother Shafeek. After his older brother Shafeek died of prostate cancer in 1986, Nader developed Bell's palsy, which paralyzed the left side of his mouth for several months. He commented on his partial facial paralysis to audiences during this time with the quip that "at least my opponents can't say I'm talking out of both sides of my mouth". Nader's grandniece Samya Stumo was among the 157 people killed in the crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 in March 2019.
Nader is a lifelong fan of the New York Yankees.
Personality and character traits
Rupert Cornwell of The Independent described Nader as an "ascetic ... bordering on self-righteous". Despite access to respectable financial assets, he lives in a modest apartment and spends $25,000 annually on personal bills, conducting most of his writing on a typewriter. According to popular accounts of his personal life, he does not own a television, relies primarily on public transportation, and over a 25-year period, until 1983, exclusively wore one of a dozen pairs of shoes he had purchased at a clearance sale in 1959. His suits, which he reports he purchases at sales and outlet stores, have been the repeated subject of public scrutiny, being variously described as "wrinkled", "rumpled", and "styleless". A newspaper story once described Nader as a "conscientious objector to fashion".
Nader has never married. Karen Croft, a writer who worked for Nader in the late 1970s at the Center for Study of Responsive Law, once asked him if he had ever considered marriage, to which he responded that he had made a choice to dedicate his life to career rather than family.
Finances
According to the mandatory fiscal disclosure report that he filed with the Federal Election Commission in 2000, Nader owned more than $3 million worth of stocks and mutual fund shares; his single largest holding was more than $1 million worth of stock in Cisco Systems, Inc. He also held between $100,000 and $250,000 worth of shares in the Magellan Fund.
Nader said he owned no car and owned no real estate directly in 2000, and said that he lived on $25,000 a year, giving most of his stock earnings to many of the over four dozen non-profit organizations he had founded.
Nader owns shares in Amazon and believes the corporation should be paying shareholders a dividend. He also believes that there should be an "antitrust investigation" looking into the company's business practices.
Nader is also an Apple Inc. shareholder. In 2018, he wrote an open letter to Tim Cook criticizing Apple's $100 billion share buyback.
Media appearances
Film
In the 2005 Jim Carrey film Fun with Dick and Jane, Nader makes a cameo appearance as himself.
The Steve Skrovan documentary film An Unreasonable Man is about the life of Ralph Nader and uses both archival footage and original interviews. It debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in 2006.
Periodicals
Nader was featured on the cover of the January 22, 1968, issue of Newsweek; the December 12, 1969, issue of Time; the June 1971 issue of Esquire; and the August 2016 issue of Pacific Standard.
Television
Nader has been a guest on multiple episodes of Saturday Night Live, Real Time with Bill Maher, The Daily Show, The O'Reilly Factor, Meet the Press, Democracy Now!, and The Late Show with David Letterman. In 2003 he appeared on Da Ali G Show and, in 2008, was interviewed by Triumph the Insult Comic Dog on Late Night with Conan O'Brien.
In 1988, Nader appeared on Sesame Street as "a person in your neighborhood", the episode also featuring Barbara Walters and Martina Navratilova. Nader's appearance on the show was memorable because it was the only time that the grammar of the last line of the song – "a person that you meet each day" – was questioned and changed. Nader refused to sing a line which he deemed grammatically improper, so a compromise was reached by which Nader sang the last line solo, with the modified words: "a person whom you meet each day".