Ralph Nader Accuses Terry McAuliffe of Attempted Bribery

Yesterday, perennial presidential candidate Ralph Nader made a rather explosive claim about Terry McAuliffe, the former head of the DNC who is now running for Governor in Virginia. His charge? That in 2004-- just four years after Nader had played the spoiler role in the contest between Al Gore and George W. Bush by drawing tens of thousands of Florida votes away from the Democratic candidate--McAuliffe approached Nader with a proposition as to how to avoid a repeat:

He said McAuliffe, who was the Democratic National Committee chairman at the time, had offered Nader's campaign an unspecified amount of money, believed to be party funds, to spend in 31 states in exchange for an agreement to withdraw from 19 battleground states where he could potentially hurt Democrat John Kerry.

Interestingly, McAuliffe and his aides have not immediately denied that the bribes were suggested. Here's McAulliffe spokeswoman Elisabeth Smith:

"It looks like Ralph Nader misses seeing his name in the press. Terry's focussed on talking with Virginians about jobs, not feeding Ralph Nader's ego."

While the relative size of Nader's ego (save for comparison to McAuliffe's) is something that most Democrats can agree upon, the fact remains that if McAuliffe did offer this deal, he was treading on incredibly shaky ethical ground. Though there may not have been anything technically illegal about using Democratic party funds to pay Nader to "stay out" of 19 battleground states, it's quite clear that such an arrangement would more than likely have remained hidden from both Nader's supporters and from members of the two major parties. In other words, the fix might really have been in.