Ron Paul urges third-party votes

WASHINGTON – Rep. Ron Paul, the Texas libertarian who developed a big following in his failed bid for the GOP presidential nomination, has rejected entreaties to endorse his party’s nominee and instead is urging his supporters to vote for one of several third-party candidates in the field.

At a news conference Wednesday with three third-party candidates, Paul said he had been urged by former Sen. Phil Gramm to back Sen. John McCain. “Absolutely no,” Paul said he told Gramm.

“It might diminish my credibility,” said Paul, who was a distant also-ran in the GOP primaries and caucuses but inspired intense enthusiasm among his supporters and amassed a campaign war chest of almost $35 million, raised mostly via the Internet. “I don’t like the idea of getting 2 or 3 million people angry at me.”

It was a setback for McCain as he has tried to unify the GOP with the selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a favorite of his party’s conservative wing. But some analysts say there is little opening for any of the third-party candidates Paul urged voters to consider – independent candidate Ralph Nader, Green Party nominee Cynthia McKinney and Constitution Party candidate Chuck Baldwin, who appeared with Paul. Former Rep. Bob Barr, nominee of the Libertarian Party, skipped the event and held his own news conference later.

Third-party candidates tend to do best when there is significant dissatisfaction with the major party nominees – as was the case in 1992, when H. Ross Perot drew enough GOP votes to undercut George H.W. Bush, and in 2000, when Nader drew crucial votes from the Democratic candidate, Al Gore.

“This doesn’t strike me as a year where people in either party are dissatisfied with their candidate,” said G. Calvin Mackenzie, a political science professor at Colby College in Waterville, Maine.

But because analysts expect the presidential election to be extremely close, there is potential for one of the outsiders to be a spoiler.