Hillary then Barack and then Ralph?

Ralph Nader: Getty ImagesApparently Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama won’t be the only presidential contenders to visit Oregon over the next week.

Next Tuesday, Oregon’s favorite consumer advocate Ralph Nader will be in Portland, campaigning in a city where he was able to attract almost 10,000 people (at $7 a ticket nonetheless) to a Memorial Coliseum rally back in 2000. He won 5 percent of the Oregon vote that year, but it was the last time he was able to make it onto the state’s ballot.

The omission prompted Nader to file a lawsuit—which is still pending—against the Democratic National Committee; he blamed the DNC for sabotaging his chances in Oregon, but that hasn’t stood in the way of his return.

Nader told The Oregonian that his campaign is still trying to figure out how to qualify for the Oregon ballot, even though he holds no delusions of grandeur for a third party candidate.

"The conventional view of third parties is 'you can't win -- what are you doing this for?' " Nader said in a telephone interview with The Oregonian.

He keeps running, however, because the function of third parties "is to put social justice agendas on the table and eventually they will prevail . . .You lose and you lose until eventually somebody somewhere prevails."

Nader will take that message on a six-stop West Coast tour. He will be in Portland at the Benson High School auditorium at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday.