Ralph Nader

American political activist and consumer protections advocate

• Born: February 27, 1934
• Place of Birth: Winsted, Connecticut

Early Life

The son of Lebanese immigrants, Ralph Nader was introduced to politics at an early age. His father, Nathra, often engaged his customers in political discussions at the restaurant that the family owned and operated, and young Nader became attuned to the problems and concerns of ordinary citizens through these discussions. After graduating magna cum laude from Princeton University in 1955, Nader entered Harvard Law School, where he began his lengthy career as a consumer advocate by writing articles on consumer product safety for the Harvard Law Journal. Nader received his law degree from Harvard in 1958, and after spending six months in the US Army, he began work as an attorney in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1959.

Nader expanded upon his interest in consumer safety as an attorney and law professor in the early 1960s, exposing deficiencies in the safety of American-made automobiles. His early research into the topic led to the publication of a 1959 article in the magazine The Nation, “The Safe Car You Can’t Buy,” which revealed the development of an automobile at the Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory that had been proven to protect its occupants from serious injury in crashes occurring at speeds of up to fifty miles per hour. Nader cited this information as evidence that many deaths and serious injuries in automobile accidents were the result of poor design rather than excessive speed. He rapidly developed a reputation as an expert in automobile safety and was called to testify before state legislative committees in Massachusetts and Connecticut.

Life’s Work

Nader rose to national prominence with his book Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-in Dangers of the American Automobile (1965), a study of unsafe design and manufacturing practices in the American automobile industry. The book, a seminal work of the consumer rights movement, was instrumental in the enactment of the Traffic Safety Act of 1966, which provided for the establishment of uniform governmental safety standards for automobiles sold in the United States.

Unsafe at Any Speed was particularly critical of the Chevrolet Corvair, a popular compact sports car of the early 1960s. Nader alleged that the Corvair contained many safety flaws of which its manufacturers should have been aware. These flaws included, most notably, a suspension system that caused the car to handle poorly, making it particularly susceptible to accidents if a driver lost control of steering.

According to Nader, automobile designers often ignored or overlooked such safety issues in an effort to emphasize speed and aesthetic appeal. General Motors, the manufacturer of the Corvair, responded by launching a campaign to discredit Nader by hiring detectives to investigate his personal life and allegedly hiring prostitutes to lure him into incriminating behavior. Their efforts were unsuccessful, prompting Nader to file a lawsuit against the company. General Motors was forced to apologize publicly to Nader and, ultimately, to settle the lawsuit for a sum reportedly exceeding $400,000.

Using the proceeds of his out-of-court settlement from General Motors, Nader expanded his consumer advocacy work in 1969, assembling a team of students and volunteers to assist him in exposing consumer abuses and government corruption. By then, Nader had established himself as a leader of a nascent consumer movement, exposing unsanitary practices in the meat-packing industry, unsafe working conditions in coal mines, and the potential dangers of the insecticide dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane, or DDT. His work inspired the passage of numerous legislative measures, such as the Wholesome Meat Act of 1967, the Natural Gas Pipeline Safety Act of 1968, and the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969. With his army of activists, who came to be known as Nader’s Raiders, Nader expanded his efforts to expose corporate and governmental abuses.

At the height of their strength and influence, Nader’s Raiders numbered in the hundreds, and their work was unprecedented in its breadth and zeal. As a result of their investigation of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the FTC was forced to reorganize. Their exposure of corruption in the Food and Drug Administration and the Interstate Commerce Commission led to similar reforms. The safety of consumer products and services from railroads to color television sets were called into question. Several government regulatory agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency and the Consumer Product Safety Commission, owe their existence to Nader and his team, who were officially organized in 1971 into a nongovernmental organization known as Public Citizen. In 1970, Nader had created the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), a student-run organization that encouraged college and university students to advocate for consumer causes.

The success of Public Citizen further catapulted Nader to national prominence, as his well-established reputation for austerity and incorruptibility grew. Although known as a consumer advocate, he vehemently opposed excessive material consumption both in his personal life and in the public sphere. Nader did not own an automobile, and he was said to possess only two suits, both of them grey. Simple wooden planks supported by cinder blocks served as bookshelves in his office. He rejected grants from foundations and other organized interests, preferring contributions from individual citizens. His organizations conducted their investigations with very limited budgets and little waste. Much of his activism, however, concerned issues not related to consumerism. The dozens of nonprofit organizations that Nader founded following his resignation from Public Citizen in 1980 were devoted to a variety of issues, including the rights of women, environmental conservation, and adequate legal representation for the poor.

Although the political empowerment of citizens was a primary focus of his activism, Nader himself avoided involvement in elective politics until the early 1990s, preferring instead to effect policy changes through his various nongovernmental organizations. A movement to draft Nader onto the ballot for US president in 1972 had failed. (Nader had never authorized these attempts to place his name in the race.) Although he considered organizing a third party devoted to consumer rights and governmental reform in the early 1990s, his participation in the election of 1992 was limited to a write-in candidacy in the New Hampshire primary.

In 1996 the Green Party, a minor political party in the United States but popular in Europe, whose platform emphasized environmental issues, nominated Nader as its presidential candidate and placed him on a number of state ballots. Although he received less than 1 percent of the popular vote, his campaign raised the national profile of the Green Party and called attention to his agenda of citizen empowerment and increased governmental control over multinational corporations.

Nader again ran on the Green Party ticket in the 2000 presidential election. Claiming that few differences existed between the major-party candidates for president, Nader received more than 2.8 million votes, including 97,421 votes in the state of Florida, far exceeding the 647-vote margin between Republican front-runner George W. Bush and Democratic candidate Al Gore. In the midst of a contentious recount, the US Supreme Court declared Bush the winner of the national election in its Bush v. Gore ruling. As a result, many Americans subsequently attributed the Bush victory to the candidacy of Nader.

Nader again announced his candidacy for president as an independent in 2004, despite the efforts of some Democrats to dissuade him from running. Advocating a familiar platform of governmental reform and citizen empowerment, Nader received less than half a million votes. Campaign donation records indicate that a large number of donations to the Nader campaign came from donors who gave comparable amounts to the Bush campaign. In 2007, Nader raised the possibility of launching another presidential campaign in 2008, and he continued to insist that few differences existed between the candidates of the two major American political parties. Nader ran as an independent candidate in the 2008 presidential election, receiving approximately 738,000 votes, or 0.56 percent of the popular vote, placing him third after Democratic candidate Barack Obama and Republican candidate John McCain. While Nader did not run in the 2012 presidential election, he encouraged voters to support a progressive candidate who could challenge the incumbent Obama in the primaries and expressed his support for third-party candidates Jill Stein and Rocky Anderson.

In early 2014, Nader began hosting a weekly radio talk show, The Ralph Nader Radio Hour, broadcast on the Pacifica Network. On the program, Nader and his cohosts conduct interviews and hold discussions centered around the week's news. The following year, he founded the American Museum of Tort Law in Winsted, Connecticut, and in 2016 he was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame in Dearborn, Michigan. At the same time, he had continued to write, publishing such books as Breaking through Power: It's Easier Than We Think (2016),To the Ramparts: How Bush and Obama Paved the Way for the Trump Presidency, and Why It Isn't Too Late to Reverse Course (2018), and The Rebellious CEO: 12 Leaders Who Did It Right (2023). Meanwhile, in an effort to further publicly communicate his frustration with the status quo and his thoughts regarding congressional issues, he began the print publication Capitol Hill Citizen in 2022.

Significance

Nader virtually single-handedly revitalized the American consumer movement, spurring organized activism through nongovernmental organizations and the use of investigatory journalism. His work, a reaction to the consumerism and corporate culture of the 1950s, is both a reflection of the spirit of activism of the 1960s and a blueprint for the proliferation of grassroots efforts to effect political and societal change during the 1960s and 1970s. The efforts of Nader and his associates to expose abuse and negligence in both the public and private sectors resulted in an increased emphasis upon safety and accountability in American business and government during the late twentieth century.

However, Nader has often been the subject of criticism from opponents as well as former associates for his alleged egotism and harsh management style. In addition, Nader has often been criticized for allegedly superficial research and slanted arguments. Some detractors have suggested that his conclusions regarding safety flaws in the Corvair were biased, although many industry insiders have supported his claims.

Bibliography

Holchschild, Thomas R., and Michael Wallace. "Three's a Crowd? The Nader Vote in the 2000 Presidential Election in the US Metropolitan Areas." Social Science Journal, vol. 48, no. 4, 2011, pp. 575–88.

Marcello, Patricia Cronin. Ralph Nader: A Biography. Greenwood, 2004.

Martin, Justin. Nader: Crusader, Spoiler, Icon. Basic, 2003.

Nader, Ralph. "The Defeatist Democrats." Nation, 25 Mar. 2013, pp. 6–8.

Nader, Ralph. In Pursuit of Justice: Collected Writings, 2000–2003. Seven Stories, 2004.

Nader, Ralph. The Ralph Nader Reader. Seven Stories, 2000.

Nader, Ralph. "Ralph Nader Would Like to Stop Having to Explain Why the Spoiler Coverage Is Stupid." Interview by Jacob Rosenberg. Mother Jones, 15 Apr. 2024, www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/04/ralph-nader-third-party-politics-2024-interview/. Accessed 21 Aug. 2024.

Nader, Ralph. The Seventeen Solutions: Bold Ideas for Our American Future. Harper, 2012.

Nader, Ralph. The Seventeen Traditions: Lessons from an American Childhood. Harper, 2007.

Parry, Manon. "Ralph Nader: Public Health Advocate and Political Agitator." American Journal of Public Health, vol. 101, no. 2, 2011, p. 257.

"Ralph Nader Fast Facts." CNN, 8 Feb. 2024, www.cnn.com/2013/03/08/us/ralph-nader-fast-facts/index.html. Accessed 21 Aug. 2024.

Ward, Ian. "Ralph Nader Thinks People Aren’t Paying Attention to His Progressive Agenda." Politico, 4 Sept. 2022, www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/09/04/ralph-nader-really-really-wants-you-to-pay-attention-to-him-00053368. Accessed 21 Aug. 2024.