Ralph Nader (born February 27, 1934, Winsted,Connecticut, U.S.) is an American lawyer andconsumer advocate who was a four-time candidate for theU.S. presidency (1996, 2000, 2004, and 2008). For coverage of the 2008 election,seeUnited States Presidential Election of 2008.

The son of Lebanese immigrants, Nader graduated fromPrinceton University in 1955 and received alaw degree fromHarvard University in 1958. Nader soon became interested in unsafe vehicle designs that led to high rates of automobile accidents and fatalities. He became a consultant to theU.S. Department of Labor in 1964, and in 1965 he publishedUnsafe at Any Speed, which criticized the American auto industry in general for its unsafe products and attackedGeneral Motors’ (GM’s) Corvair automobile in particular. The book became abest seller and led directly to the passage of the 1966National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act, which gave the government the power to enact safety standards for all automobiles sold in the United States.

GM went to exceptional lengths to discredit Nader, including hiring a private detective to follow him. Nader sued for invasion of privacy, and the case was settled after GM admitted wrongdoing before a U.S.Senate committee. With the funds he received from the lawsuit and aided by impassioned activists, who became known asNader’s Raiders, he helped establish a number ofadvocacy organizations, most notablyPublic Citizen. Nader’s Raiders became involved in such issues asnuclear safety,international trade, regulation ofinsecticides,meat processing, pension reform, land use, andbanking.

Although Nader and his associates did not invent the idea of consumer advocacy, they did radically transform its meaning, focusing on fact-finding research, analysis, and governmentallobbying for new laws on key consumer issues. Nader was also instrumental in the passage in 1988 of California’s Proposition 103, which provided for a rollback of autoinsurance rates.

Nader ran for president of the United States in 1996 but collected less than 1 percent of the vote. In2000 he was nominated by theGreen Party as its U.S. presidential candidate. His campaign focused on universal health care, environmental andconsumer protections,campaign finance reform, and strengthened labour rights. Realizing that he had little hope of winning the election, Nader concentrated on obtaining 5 percent of the national vote, the minimum necessary to secure federal matching funds for theGreen Party for future presidential campaigns. Nader eventually fell well short of this goal, receiving only 2.7 percent of the national vote, but he may have aided Republican candidateGeorge W. Bush—who narrowly won the presidency over DemocratAl Gore—by attracting votes that otherwise might have gone to Gore, especially in the key state ofFlorida. In 2004, despite pleas by many Democrats that he not run, Nader campaigned for the presidency as an independent. Although he received only 0.3 percent of the vote in that election and his petition signatures were challenged because of thealleged use of state resources in their proceedings, he again ran for president in2008 and won about 0.5 percent of the popular vote.

In addition to his political campaigns, Nader continued his consumer activism. In the late 1990s he became a vocal critic ofMicrosoft, which he claimed was a monopoly. In 2014 he launched the Ralph Nader Radio Hour, a weekly news and interview show. The following year he realized a longtime dream, as theAmerican Museum of Tort Law opened inWinsted, Connecticut; it was the first law museum in the United States. The documentaryAn Unreasonable Man (2006) chronicles Nader’s career.