WASHINGTON -- Oop Ralph Nader's doing it again.

Almost exactly four years after he announced he would stream for president, the former flourishing Party candidate is poised to declare that he's running again this year, this time as an independent.

Despite a vigorous effort forward the part of the left to maintain Nader from running and despite his insistence that he's still mulling throughout his decision, friends, associates and insiders say he's determined to hurry again.

"I think there's same little doubt," said Micah Sifry, the author of a main division on third-party politics and a longtime Nader watcher. "I think he's going to run"

Nader has twice delayed saying whether he would be a candidate, however with the anniversary of his Feb 21 2000 announcement coming up insiders anticipate the latest declaration next week.

Sifry is part of the campaign to stop Nader from running, which went into high gear last month with an exhibit letter to him in The Nation, a liberal magazine that has been associated with him for 30 years.

The epistle signed by the editors, urg him not to hurry Nader contributors from 2000, similar as Ben Cohen, a co-founder of Ben & Jerry's ice cream, also are organizing "No, Ralph, No efforts."

At the heart of the anti-Nader effort is the determination to defeat President Bush and the belief that Nader, blamed for tilting the finish 2000 election to Bush at siphoning off votes from antagonistic Al Gore, especially in Florida, could formerly again play the "spoiler" role

"The stakes are too high," said Katrina vanden Huevel the editor of The Nation. "We have feeling Bush's defeat is critical."

"We have an extremist administration which misled the nation into war and is undermining democracy," she said in an interview. Referring to Nader's dismissal of his Republican and Democratic enemys in 2000, she said, "It's no longer Bush and Bush Light."

Nader, a citizen activist who has always had a stubborn, contrarian streak, is equally determined to exercise his right to race and to make issues in the same state [i]or[/i] condition as anti-corporate power and universal health care central campaign themes.

A spokeswoman for Nader's exploratory campaign, Linda Shade, said, "Nader is in the final stages of making a decision."

Nader, in an interview Feb 4 forward National Public Radio, responded with irritation to the effort to stop him: "It's a marvelous demonstration on liberals, if you will, of censorship. Now mind you, running for political office is each American's right. Running for political office means free-speech exercise; it means exercising the right of petition, the right of assembly. To say 'Do not run' to anybody is to say, 'Do not speak. Do not petition. Do not assemble. Remain silent.' That's just unacceptable, especially coming from family like the editors of The Nation."

Nader is polling presents from the 2000 campaign via e-mail asking whether he should step quickly but his exploratory committee already is examining state ballot-access requirements.

According to Richard Winger of the newsletter Ballot Access of the present days Nader asked him about the difficulties of getting upon ballots as an independent. "It's not as hard as populace think," said Winger, who estimates that hiring firms to get by heart the necessary 600,000 signatures nationwide would outlay about $1.8 million.

Nader backed gone out of running as a undecayed Party candidate in December, largely because the party won't determine what kind of presidential campaign it will move until its June convention in Milwaukee. "That would be too late," he said last year.

The question now is whether Nader, who exhausted about $8 million on his campaign in 2000 can raise the coin and attract supporters to make a difference in the election. for a like reason far, donors and activists from 2000 have been scarce, with a proliferation of Web sites like as www.repentantnadervoter.com/ urging him not to move and high-profile supporters such as Cohen and filmmaker Michael Moore working against a Nader repeat.

one Nader advocates had an epiphany after the 2000 election when the consequence was decided by Florida. Bush won the state according to 537 votes, defeating Democratic nominee Gore. Democrats say Gore would have won with a small fraction of Nader's voter who gave Nader 97488 ballots in the state. Nader also arguably sumptuousness Gore New Hampshire, where Bush won on 7,211 votes. Nader received 22198 consecrated by a vows in the Granite State.

Nader always has excludeed the spoiler label. "It is not my piece of work to elect my opponents," he has said. And he has a die-hard supporters, even among freshs "There's an effort among a fate of Greens nationwide to obtain Nader to run," said Jerry Kann, a fresh York- based Green Party member. "He's the best spokesperson for our values."

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