Close Vote Costs Nader the Green Nomination

Before Saturday's vote, delegates milled through the ballroom of the Midwest Airlines Center, many sipping organic coffee and nibbling on vegan snacks.

As they waited for the candidates to speak, tension between the Nader and Cobb camps was evident.

A female delegate from Michigan, wearing a green Nader pin on her shirt, was walking to her seat when a male delegate from North Carolina stopped her. He wore a green Cobb pin.

The two faced off and begin shouting at one another: "Cobb!" "Nader!" "Cobb!" "Nader!"

By midafternoon, when the votes were tallied and finalized, the shouts among those delegates remaining were overwhelmingly for Cobb.

"We've finally grown up!" cheered David Newland, a Green Party congressional candidate and an alternate delegate from Michigan. "We don't need a media darling to represent us. We can represent ourselves."

Raised in a small town in Texas, Cobb grew up poor and worked numerous jobs until he graduated from law school in 1993. He joined the Greens in 1996, and led the effort to get Nader on the Texas ballot in 2000.

Cobb relocated to Humboldt County in January 2003 to work as a community activist. He launched his presidential bid in January, and said he had raised about $40,000 so far.

"The most important thing to me is the health of the Green Party," Cobb said. "Candidates come and go, but the Green Party must still be here long after Ralph Nader and David Cobb are gone."