day after Green Party candidate Ralph Nader was turned away from the presidential debate - ticket in hand - neither regrets nor recriminations were offered by the Commission on Presidential Debates.
Nader said his being denied admission by a debate commission representative and three police officers was no less than ''the beginning of the end of the Commission on Presidential Debates.''
But Janet Brown, the commission's executive director, defended the decision to deny Nader access because he was using a ticket originally given to someone else.
''The tickets were distributed to a list of people that the commission had, and Mr. Nader was not on that list and that's why he was not allowed to come in,'' she said.
''I don't know who gave Mr. Nader the ticket or how he got it.''
Nader said the police officers and debate commission representative met him when he stepped off the shuttle bus at the University of Massachusetts at Boston.
''Imagine that, a private company - controlled by the two major parties and funded by beer, tobacco, auto, and other corporations - misused police power to exclude me from the premises, even though I had a ticket to enter issued by the debate commission themselves,'' Nader said.
At a rally yesterday with 600 people at the University of Hartford, Nader called for an end to the commission sponsoring presidential debates and threatened legal action. Speaking later in New London, Nader demanded an apology from the commission, and said he wants the group to donate $25,000 to the Harvard Law School's clinic for electoral reform, or else he may sue.
Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.
