Matt Gonzalez joins Ralph Nader's ticket

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | 2/29/8 | Zachary Coile,Cecilia M. Vega

[SmithL]

Ralph Nader's choice of San Francisco lawyer and activist Matt Gonzalez as his running mate isn't likely to propel the consumer advocate to victory in his fifth presidential campaign since 1992.

But it offers Gonzalez - a former president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors who narrowly lost his 2003 bid to be the first Green Party mayor of a major U.S. city - a platform to try to influence the debate in the presidential race.

It's a role with some risks. Although the 42-year-old Gonzalez is a hero to the Bay Area left, many local progressives - including several of his closest allies - are backing Democrat Barack Obama for president. If Gonzalez is seen as playing a spoiler role in November, it could tarnish his image.

A Nader-Gonzalez ticket "could serve an important function in framing the issues," said Rich DeLeon, a professor emeritus at San Francisco State University and expert on local progressive politics. "But if they start campaigning in swing states like Missouri and Ohio and Florida ... there could be a real uproar about that."

Nader announced his choice at a news conference in Washington on Thursday, describing his running mate as someone who shares his "sense of justice and opposition to corporate state control over our society."

Nader, 74, said the two had bonded during a 2005 campaign against the war in Iraq in which they traveled up and down California.

[SmithL]

Follow-up to: Nader chooses Matt Gonzalez as his running mate

[SmithL]

the two had bonded during a 2005 campaign

How very precious.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Two lawyers.

[SlapHappyPappy]

Even more proof that Nader is not the least bit serious about his campaign.

[davisfh]

That does it for me! I’m voting the Nader ticket!!

[Wagonboy]

I can imagine the selection process... Ralph sitting in his kitchen in his underwear with a cup of coffee and a long list of liberal fascists, Marxists, Stalinists, eco-freaks, N.O.W. officers, Code Pink thugs, union thugs and race baiting pimps.

Down the list goes, call after call.

“Hello, this is Ralph Nader. Is Cindy Shehan there please?”

Every one of them turns his offer down. Most remind him of the stab in the back he gave to leftists everywhere when he was an accomplice in the stolen election of 2000.

Way down at the bottom of the list, just below Michael Moore and right above the deceased Norman Mailer, he hits on the name of Matt Gonzalez.

“Hi, Matt? It’s Ralph. Hey, man, listen. Will you be my running mate as I campaign for the Presidency of the United States? You will? Cool! OK. I’ll call you later so we can like make plans and stuff so we can take back this country from the corporations and military industry. Thanks, man.” -Wb