Hey, I'm Just Bragging Because We're Doing It

While many Democrats are complaining about Ralph Nader--if you want chapter and verse, this Eric Altermann post is a good place to start--my partners and I are actually doing something about it. My law firm is suing Nader to knock him off the ballot in Arizona. There are a number of interesting legal questions in the case, and one really interesting political question--who are the Republicans going to pay to represent Nader to try to keep him on the ballot here? I'm not kidding. Nader may be under the total delusion that he'll take votes from Bush, but the Republicans sure don't think so.

Here's my partner Andy Gordon in today's ABC News The Note:

Yesterday two Arizona voters -- with the support of the Arizona Democratic Party -- filed a legal challenge to independent Ralph Nader's bid to get on a state's Nov. 2 presidential ballot. The suit states more than 70 percent of the 21,512 signatures Nader's campaign filed June 9 were defective. Nader needed 14,694 valid signatures to qualify him for the ballot. According to the suit only 6,045 are valid. Further, it alleges all the petitions should be thrown out because Nader named a "placeholder" as his vice presidential candidate and required paperwork was not filed with the nominating petitions. LINK and LINK

The Washington Post's Dan Balz and Hamil Harris point out that after largely ignoring Nader in 2000, Democrats have adopted a different strategy: taking him on. LINK

Andy Gordon, the attorney who headed up the pro-bono legal effort to file the Arizona suit, tells ABC News, when word of his project began to spread "calls came pouring in" to help. LINK

But Nader spokesguy Zeese says he and the campaign are not worried.
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Watch this space for more news about Schultz v. Nader.
(Revised with additional links after initial posting.)