WASHINGTON – Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader selected longtime Green Party activist Peter Camejo to be his running mate on Monday, a move sure to boost his chances of winning the Green Party’s endorsement this week and its access to ballot lines in 22 states, but not in Washington state.
“He is a man who has put his principles in practice, who has fought the struggles of the civil rights movement, the labor rights movement in the ’60s and ’70s, who has in many ways been an exemplar of the combination of the mind, the word and the deed,” Nader said in introducing Camejo.
Camejo, an investment adviser from Folsom, Calif., had been one of two leading contenders for the Green Party’s presidential nomination.
“I think the central issue of this campaign is the war in Iraq,” Camejo said. “All of you know (Democrat John) Kerry is complaining about how Bush has carried out the invasion and the occupation but not what he keeps doing.”
The announcement came before the Green Party convention beginning Wednesday in Milwaukee. Nader, who ran as the Green Party candidate in 2000, is not seeking the party’s nomination but he has pursued an endorsement from the third party.
Camejo received more than 212,000 votes as the Green Party candidate for California governor during the 2003 recall drive that led to the ouster of Democratic Gov. Gray Davis and the election of actor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Nearly 400,000 people voted for Camejo in 2002 when Davis was re-elected.
Camejo ran for president as the Socialist Workers Party nominee in 1976.
As a gubernatorial candidate in California, Camejo supported abortion rights, gun licensing, universal health care and a moratorium on the death penalty.
An environmental activist, Camejo has been a director of EarthShare, a coalition of more than 40 major environmental groups. In his campaign for governor, he supported greater use of alternative fuel technology and issuing a bond for clean air, parks and water conservation programs. He also called for phasing out nuclear power plants and for a ban on all oil drilling along the California coast.
Camejo, 64, was born in New York and is a first-generation Venezuelan American. A biography provided by the Nader campaign said Camejo was a social activist in his teens and marched in Selma, Ala., with Martin Luther King Jr. He also protested the Vietnam War and supported labor protests by migrant farm workers.
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