By: Jennifer Saba Bonnie Raitt and Tim Robbins, Ralph Nader backers four years ago, are throwing their support behind John Kerry's campaign in a newspaper-advertising buy to run in swing states.
The ad, sponsored by The Unity Campaign, urges those who live in key areas to "vote strategically" and "vote Kerry," with testimonials from former Nader supporters like Noam Chomsky and Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry's.
The $30,000 media buy will run the next two weeks in more than 20 alternative newsweeklies in 10 states through the Alternative Weekly Network. The size and frequency of the ads will be heavier in states like Florida, Iowa, Maine, Wisconsin, New Mexico, Michigan, Maine, and New Hampshire, where Nader's polling could tip the scales.
"No one has gone after these millions of likely voters," said John Pearce, founder of TheUnityCampaign.org, in a statement. "With almost every prominent member of Ralph Nader's own, hand-picked 'Citizens Committee' for his 2000 campaign publicly uniting behind John Kerry in battleground states, we have a message that needs to get out. The alternative newsweekly papers were the perfect vehicle to reach these swing voters. If enough potential Nader voters hear about this, Kerry will pick up tens of thousands of battleground state votes."
The idea behind the ad came from John Weiss, publisher of the Colorado Springs Independent. Weiss mobilized progressive organizations to run ads in alternative weeklies after he ran a similar ad imploring people to vote for Kerry in his paper.
Pearce said that The Unity Campaign was getting extremely deep discounts on this buy, which would normally total six figures.
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