It seems everyone who supported Al Gore has been pretty angry at Green Party candidate Ralph Nader lately. Though the closeness of the election and Democrats’ repetition of “A vote for Nader is a vote for Bush” whittled the Nader vote down to under 3 percent of the 2000 popular vote, it seems Nader did succeed in being the spoiler of this election. The vote in Florida was unbelievably close, with George W. Bush winning by 1,725,930,537,154 or any other number of votes you might want to make up. Nader received 97,000 votes in Florida.Reading the results of Voter News Service exit polls conducted on Election Day, one thing is clear: Nader voters are young. Nationwide, polls show 5 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds voted for the Green Party candidate, compared to 2 percent of those over 30. In Florida, 4 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds cast their votes for Nader, while only 1 percent of 30-year-olds and above did. Young people, especially males (who voted Nader in higher numbers than females), also tend to be the same people who buy CDs with “Parental Warning: Explicit Lyrics” stickers on them. Al Gore’s wife, Mary Elizabeth “Tipper” Gore co-founded the Parents’ Music Resource Center with other politicians’ wives in 1985. The PMRC was able to convince the music industry in 1990 to use a voluntary system of warning labels for CDs with very violent or sexually-oriented content.Though other PMRC members were also responsible for the warning stickers, including Susan Baker, wife of former Secretary of State and Bush friend James A. Baker, the labels are widely called “Tipper Stickers.”Tipper is hated by a lot of people for the warning stickers, especially by liberals who consider the labels censorship. There are many Web sites devoted to Tipper bashing, including “The Beat The Hell Out Of Tipper Gore Page!” at www.geocities.com/SoHo/Loffs/8112/tipper.htm, where the surfer is told, “Click on Tipper to knock out her teeth!” At another site, “Tipper Gore: Enemy of Freedom,” at members.localnet.com/~pfc8488/tipper.htm, Tipper Stickers are compared to “Nazi book burnings,” and the site warns: “Don’t Be Fooled By Her Innocent Smile And Relaxed Attitude. This Woman Is PURE EVIL.”This summer, practically no one had even heard of Ralph Nader. At the beginning of the school year, Nader and Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan were both polling around 1 percent of the vote; Buchanan ended up with under 1 percent of the popular vote. Nader traveled around the country, mostly to rev up students on college campuses. He preached to crowds about the evil of Democrats, attracting many students who think Democrats are fine but Tipper is the evil one. In September, once Nader’s support jumped above Buchanan’s, he began to get more mainstream support from independents who simply want a third choice. Eventually he was polling at up to 6 percent support, until the Democrats began their “A vote for Nader is a vote for Bush” scare tactics. Making matters worse for Gore was Hillary Clinton. She has easily been the most politically involved first lady, choosing a West Wing office over charity work. And now it seems she’s using her husband as a jumping-off point for her own political career, which many are speculating will culminate in a run for president. Lots of hesitant Gore-supporters may have decided not to vote for Al for fear of a future President Tipper.In such a ridiculously close election, it’s easy to point to any sigh, smirk or cough as a reason for Gore’s loss. But many Democrats have chosen to scapegoat Nader, and he would never have received the support he got without the mass hatred of would-be first lady.While it’s true that Gore lost Florida by much fewer than 1 percent of Nader’s votes in that state — and though not every Nader voter was also a Gore supporter, it is fair to say that at least 1 percent more of the 97,000 Nader voters preferred Gore than Bush — just consider it payback. After all, in 1992, every state whose electoral votes went to Clinton, with the exceptions of his home state and the District of Columbia, he won within the margin of Perot.

Jocelyn Marcus is a junior in English from Ames. She is wire editor of the Daily.