he federal judge assigned to hear Ralph Nader's lawsuit against the Commission on Presidential Debates has recused himself from the case because of ties to commission co-chairman Paul Kirk.
US District Judge Richard G. Stearns said in an order of recusal issued Tuesday that he was recruited by Kirk in 1979 to work in the presidential campaign of Senator Edward M. Kennedy.
Stearns worked under Kirk's supervision until the 1980 Democratic National Convention.
Stearns said he was confident he could handle the case fairly, but added his ties to Kirk might give the public reason to doubt his impartiality.
Nader, the Green Party presidential nominee, sued the commission for excluding him from the site of the presidential debate on Oct. 3 even though he had a ticket to watch in a side room at the University of Massachusetts at Boston.
The commission didn't allow Nader to participate in the debate because he hadn't reached a threshold of 15 percent of the vote in polls.
Kirk and Frank J. Fahrenkopf Jr., the cochairmen of the commission, are codefendants in the suit along with the Massachusetts state police.
