PORTLAND — Consumer activist and perennial presidential candidate Ralph Nader vowed Tuesday that he’ll be on Oregon’s presidential ballot in November, or else.

Nader, 74, accused Secretary of State Bill Bradbury of engineering a formal attempt to keep him off the ballot in 2004, and said Tuesday that Bradbury “was not going to get away with it anymore...We will go after (him) with litigation and public protest.” He later added he was considering a “temporary restraining order” against Bradbury.

Nader used to be able to count on a strong base in Oregon, drawing 10,000 people to a rally at Memorial Coliseum in Portland in 2000, and gaining 5 percent of the presidential vote in the state that year.

But four years later, with many Democrats blaming him for the first four years of the Bush presidency, he failed to gain much traction in Oregon, and didn’t make the ballot despite three separate attempts.

Scott Moore, a spokesman for Bradbury, pointed out that a lawsuit Nader had filed against Bradbury after the 2004 race was decided in Bradbury’s favor by the Oregon Supreme Court, and that the U.S. Supreme Court had declined to reconsider the case.

“Secretary Bradbury did not try to keep Ralph Nader off the ballot in 2004,” Moore said. “You have to follow the rules in order to get there, and they failed in that regard in a couple of ways.”

There are three ways to get on the Oregon ballot: Be the nominated candidate of a major or minor party, collect 18,368 signatures on a petition, or attract 1,000 people to a “nominating convention.”

Nader told reporters he had not decided which way he’d try to make the fall ballot, and that part of the reason he was in Portland was to “see what is possible.”

But he implied that he doesn’t trust Bradbury’s office to properly verify the signatures his supporters would collect, and said Democrats could arrange to cut off admission to his nominating convention after 1,000 entrants, then have some attendees leave without signing his petition.

“If Nader is able to follow the law and get the required amount of support, then of course he will be on the ballot,” Moore said.

Nader said he is gunning for the presidency again because none of the remaining major party candidates are successfully addressing corporate abuses, withdrawal from Iraq within six months, movement to a single-payer health care system and reassessing American aid to Israel in light of the Palestinian conflict.

He said his campaign was “on its way” to raising $1 million, and he hoped to raise $10 million by November.