Nader, Ralph (b. 1934)

American consumer advocate and political activist

Ralph Nader, the father of the modern consumer rights movement in the United States, was born in 1934 in Winsted, Connecticut, to public-spirited immigrant parents from Lebanon who distrusted powerful people and big business. A bookish child in a tight-knit family, he was very close to his older brother and two sisters, and to his parents, who ran a small, modestly successful restaurant. Nader promised his father that he would never register as a partisan of either major party, and he never did. He ran for president in the 1992, 1996, and 2000 elections as a third-party candidate.

Nader's work as an advocate, lobbyist, and litigant in the 1960s and 1970s sparked the passage of important federal legislation in product, traffic, and workplace safety, government openness, corporate regulation, and many other fields. He founded many of the “good government” groups, both in Washington, D.C., and the states, that work on behalf of consumers, monitor government agencies, and support the expansion of government regulation over corporations. At the height of his power in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Ralph Nader was a visionary leader who resuscitated the sleepy issues of consumer rights, corporate responsibility, and government accountability and propelled them to the top of the nation's domestic agenda.

Since the 1980s, however, Nader has been a victim of his own success. His legislative victories were partially responsible for a countermobilization by corporations to check the agenda of the social forces he had awakened. However, the opposition has energized him to find a firmer political base to promote, in his words, “the sovereignty of the people” against the “corporate takeover” of democracy. As the tenor of Washington politics has shifted to the right, he has sought to expand his reach, running for president as a third-party challenger in the last three elections. His move into electoral politics has drawn a new generation of followers to his cause, but also many critics, who argue that Nader's inability to reach workable compromises with centrist Democrats splintered the progressive coalition, leaving the conservatives and corporations that Nader rails against triumphant. Whatever the controversies that surround Nader's evolving leadership tactics, he has maintained a consistent Brandeisian vision, fearful that the concentration of power in corporations or government will threaten democratic institutions. A consistent theme in his work has been a distrust of commercialism and market values, wedded to the idea that democratic life must promote noneconomic values such as liberty, equality, safety, and democratic participation.