CHEYENNE -- In a wobbly world, it's comforting to find a constant.

One constant who visited Cheyenne last week was Ralph Nader, who remains at 74 an articulate, persistent anti-establishment candidate for president.

I deeply appreciated Nader's efforts as a robust advocate for safe cars, having once owned a red Corvair with white leather seats.

It was a cute car, and I loved whipping around town in it.

But I didn't keep it long after a couple of wild rides on the highway demonstrated the remarkable instability of the steering system.

Since then, Nader has remained at the edge of the national stage, still drawing the young idealists and irritating others -- the establishment others.

They regard Nader as a troublemaker and wish he would go away. They claim the motive for his repeated runs for the presidency, an office he cannot win, is to get publicity.

He brought his low-rent campaign to Cheyenne without an entourage to pitch the need for better ballot access for third-party and independent candidates and the public, and to include these candidates in the presidential debates.

His second theme was the environmental and social evils of burning coal to produce electricity. Pretty cheeky to bring that message into a leading coal-producing state.

It was refreshing to learn that he hasn't caved, he hasn't softened his crusader persona over the years.

He is as vocally anti-establishment, anti-corporate as ever, and his targets includes both major political parties.

The night before his campaign stop at the State Capitol in Cheyenne, he pulled in about 4,000 people at Denver University's Magness Arena.

As the Democratic convention continued at the Pepsi Center, this group went to see and hear Nader and his running mate, Matt Gonzalez, and actors Val Kilmer and Sean Penn and some band music.

One online account said the participants were a group of the young and disaffected, and it was more of an Everyone Else meeting than a Nader political rally.

Nader, meanwhile, got the spoiler label in the 2000 general election when his campaign vote totals shaped the outcome and may have cost Al Gore the presidency.

Nader doesn't like the description. During his Cheyenne news conference, he said that when the word "spoiler" is only applied to third-party and independent candidates, it is a "word of political bigotry. It's as if we're second-class citizens."

"We have to get over that word and compete for the votes by competing in debates and improving ballot access laws,” he said.

Nader was critical of Wyoming's voter registration laws and pointed out that other states allow people to register in grocery stores and other easily accessible places.

Those states are under the National Voters Registration Act.

Wyoming is exempt from the requirements of the national law because the state allows people to register to vote at the polls, said Peggy Nighswonger, the elections division administrator at the secretary of state's office.

This allows the state to purge the registration lists after every general election. These voters are notified by mail that they will be purged if they don't register again.

Those states under the National Voter Registration Act cut off voter registration 20 or 30 days before an election.

So in that respect, Wyoming is more lenient than other states.

Nader said he wished his home state of Connecticut allowed the ballot initiative process as Wyoming does.

In Wyoming, the requirements to get on the ballot with an initiative law are notoriously tough. So tough, in fact, that few have made it during the decades the law has been in effect.

But that's another crusade.

Contact Joan Barron at joan.barron@trib.com or by phone at 307-632-1244.