Democrats vow to fight Nader

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Democratic officials reacted with dismay, anger and talk of political retaliation yesterday after Ralph Nader announced his decision to run for president as an independent, which could rob thousands of critical votes from their party's nominee.

Vowing to play political hardball with the Nader campaign, Florida Democratic Chairman Scott Maddox called Mr. Nader "the Benedict Arnold of modern democracy" and said he would look for ways to challenge and maybe block the liberal antibusiness gadfly's attempts to get on the state ballot.

"We are going to be looking at [the state-ballot certification] process very closely as we go forward, very closely, to make sure he is following the law," Mr. Maddox said in an interview with The Washington Times. "I would imagine that he will receive assistance in collecting signatures from Republican operatives so that he can pull votes away from our Democratic nominee," Mr. Maddox said in an interview with The Washington Times.

"He is a spoiler in this race. He is moving to feed his own ego to the detriment of the nation," he said.

As Mr. Nader made his presidential candidacy official today at a Washington news conference, other Democratic officials said they, too, were exploring all of their options in response to his entry into the race and did not rule out challenging his ballot petitions elsewhere in the country.

"At this point, it's premature as to what we are going to do," said the Democratic National Committee's chief spokeswoman Debra DeShong. "It's a whole new ballgame. It remains to be seen what kind of campaign he's going to run."

Asked whether the party was planning to take steps to challenge Mr. Nader's efforts to get on major state ballots, Ms. DeShong would say only that "it's much too early to be discussing situations like that."

Democrats maintained yesterday that Mr. Nader probably would not do as well as he did in 2000 when he ran in nearly all 50 states on the Green Party ticket, winning enough votes in two pivotal states -- New Hampshire and Florida -- that cost Al Gore the presidency.