157 Facts About Mike Gravel

Maurice Robert "Mike" Gravel was an American politician and writer who served as a United States Senator from Alaska from 1969 to 1981 as a member of the Democratic Party, and who later in life twice ran for the presidential nomination of that party.

Mike Gravel served in the Alaska House of Representatives from 1963 to 1967, and became Speaker of the Alaska House.

Mike Gravel conducted a campaign for the Democratic nomination in 1972 for Vice President of the United States, and then played a crucial role in obtaining Congressional approval for the Trans-Alaska pipeline in 1973.

Mike Gravel was re-elected to the Senate in 1974, but was defeated in his bid for a third term in the primary election in 1980.

An advocate of direct democracy and the National Initiative, Mike Gravel staged a run for the 2008 Democratic nomination for President of the United States.

Mike Gravel's campaign failed to gain support, and in March 2008, he left the Democratic Party and joined the Libertarian Party to compete unsuccessfully for its presidential nomination and the inclusion of the National Initiative into the Libertarian Platform.

Mike Gravel ran for president as a Democrat again in the 2020 election, in a campaign that ended four months after it began.

Mike Gravel was born on May 13,1930, in Springfield, Massachusetts, one of five children of French-Canadian immigrant parents, Alphonse and Marie Mike Gravel.

Mike Gravel's parents were part of the Quebec diaspora, and he was raised in a working-class neighborhood during the Great Depression, speaking only French until he was seven years old.

Mike Gravel was educated in parochial schools as a Roman Catholic.

Mike Gravel completed elementary school in 1945 and his class voted him "most charming personality".

Mike Gravel then boarded at Assumption Preparatory School in Worcester, Massachusetts, where his performance was initially mediocre.

Mike Gravel's grades improved measurably in his final year and he graduated in 1949.

Mike Gravel studied for one year at Assumption College, a Catholic school in Worcester, then transferred for his sophomore year to American International College in Springfield.

Around May 1951, Mike Gravel saw that he was about to be drafted and instead enlisted in the US Army for a three-year term so that he could get into the Counterintelligence Corps.

In Germany, Mike Gravel conducted surveillance operations on civilians and paid off spies.

Mike Gravel worked as a Special Agent in the Counterintelligence Corps until 1954, eventually becoming a first lieutenant.

Mike Gravel moved to New York "flat broke" and supported himself by working as a bar boy in a hotel, driving a taxicab, and working in the investment bond department at Bankers Trust.

Mike Gravel "decided to become a pioneer in a faraway place," and moved to pre-statehood Alaska in August 1956, without funds or a job, looking for a place where someone without social or political connections could be a viable candidate for public office.

Mike Gravel then was employed as a brakeman for the Alaska Railroad, working the snow-clearing train on the Anchorage-to-Fairbanks run.

Mike Gravel joined the Anchorage Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, and continued a sporadic relationship with the movement throughout his life.

Mike Gravel became active in the United States Junior Chamber, and by early 1958, his duties included handing out awards for farmer of the year.

Mike Gravel went on a 44-state national speaking tour concerning tax reform in 1959, sponsored by the Jaycees, often dressing for events as Paul Revere.

Mike Gravel was selected from some two thousand applications for this position.

At several stops Mike Gravel stated that the "tide of socialism" had to be stopped.

The tour over, Mike Gravel married Rita Jeannette Martin at the First Methodist Church of Anchorage on April 29,1959.

Mike Gravel was a native of Montana who had attended Billings Business College before moving to Alaska two years prior and becoming a secretary in the office of the Anchorage city manager.

Mike Gravel had been named Anchorage's "Miss Fur Rendezvous" of 1958.

Mike Gravel ran without avail for the City Council in Anchorage in 1960.

Alaska had very crowded primaries that year: Mike Gravel was one of 33 Democrats, along with 21 Republicans, who were running for the chance to compete for the 14 House seats allocated to the 8th district.

Mike Gravel served in the Alaska House of Representatives from January 28,1963, to January 22,1967, winning reelection in 1964.

Mike Gravel co-authored and sponsored the act that created the Alaska State Commission for Human Rights.

Mike Gravel was the chief architect of the law that created a regional high school system for rural Alaska; this allowed Alaska Natives to attend schools near where they lived instead of having to go to schools run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the lower 48 states.

Mike Gravel denied later press charges that he had promised but not delivered on other committee chairmanships.

Mike Gravel did not run for reelection in 1966, instead choosing to run for Alaska's seat in the US House of Representatives, losing the primary to four-term incumbent Democrat Ralph Rivers by 1,300 votes and splitting the Democratic Party in the process.

In 1968, Mike Gravel ran against 81-year-old incumbent Democratic United States Senator Ernest Gruening, a popular former governor of the Alaska Territory who was considered one of the fathers of Alaska's statehood, for his party's nomination to the US Senate.

Mike Gravel's campaign was primarily based on his youth and telegenic appearance rather than issue differences.

Mike Gravel hired Joseph Napolitan, the first self-described political consultant, in late 1966.

Mike Gravel visited many remote villages by seaplane and showed a thorough understanding of the needs of the bush country and the fishing and oil industries.

Mike Gravel benefited from maintaining a deliberately ambiguous posture about Vietnam policy.

In Man for Alaska, Mike Gravel argued that "the liberals" would come to West Germany's defense if it was attacked, and that the same standard should apply to the United States' allies in Asia.

Mike Gravel beat Gruening in the primary by about 2,000 votes.

On November 5,1968, Mike Gravel won the general election with 45 percent of the vote to Rasmuson's 37 percent and Gruening's 18 percent.

When Mike Gravel joined the US Senate in January 1969, he requested and received a seat on the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, which had direct relevance to Alaskan issues.

Mike Gravel got a spot on the Public Works Committee, which he held throughout his time in the Senate.

Mike Gravel was initially named to the Joint Committee on Congressional Operations.

Mike Gravel relied on attention-getting gestures to achieve what he wanted, hoping national exposure would force other senators to listen to him.

Mike Gravel was an off-the-wall guy, and you weren't really ever sure what he would do.

In May 1971, Mike Gravel sent a letter to US Atomic Energy Commission hearings held in Anchorage in which he said the risk of the test was not worth taking.

In 1971, Mike Gravel voted against the Nixon administration's proposed anti-ballistic missile system, the Safeguard Program, having previously vacillated over the issue, suggesting that he might be willing to support it in exchange for federal lands in Alaska being opened up for private oil drilling.

Mike Gravel's vote alienated Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, who had raised funds for Gravel's primary campaign.

Mike Gravel publicly opposed this policy; besides the dangers of nuclear testing, he was a vocal critic of the Atomic Energy Commission, which oversaw American nuclear efforts, and of the powerful United States Congress Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, which had a stranglehold on nuclear policy and which Mike Gravel tried to circumvent.

In 1971, Mike Gravel sponsored a bill to impose a moratorium on nuclear power plant construction and to make power utilities liable for any nuclear accidents; in 1975, he was still proposing similar moratoriums.

Mike Gravel reiterated his position in favor of recognition, with four other senators in agreement, during Senate hearings in June 1971.

Mike Gravel instead convened a session of the Buildings and Grounds subcommittee that he chaired.

Mike Gravel got New York Congressman John G Dow to testify that the war had soaked up funding for public buildings, thus making discussion of the war relevant to the committee.

Mike Gravel ended the session by, with no other senators present, establishing unanimous consent to insert 4,100 pages of the Papers into the Congressional Record of his subcommittee.

Mike Gravel, too, wanted to privately publish the portion of the papers he had read into the record, believing that "immediate disclosure of the contents of these papers will change the policy that supports the war".

The "Mike Gravel Edition" was edited and annotated by Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, and included an additional volume of analytical articles on the origins and progress of the war, edited by Chomsky and Zinn.

Mike Gravel became a sought-after speaker on the college circuit as well as at political fundraisers, opportunities he welcomed as lectures were "the one honest way a Senator has to supplement his income".

In January 1972, Mike Gravel endorsed Maine Senator Ed Muskie, hoping that his support would help Muskie with the party's left wing and in ethnic French-Canadian areas during the first primary contest in New Hampshire.

In 1970, Mike Gravel co-sponsored legislation to establish a guaranteed minimum income, entitling poor families to up to $6,300 a year.

Mike Gravel subsequently voted for a "work bonus" program, which would have entitled low-income working families with dependent children if they were paying Social Security or Railroad Retirement taxes to a non-taxable bonus of up to 10 percent of their wages.

Mike Gravel supported extending Social Security to all federal employees and introduced a campaign finance reform bill in 1971 that would have enacted full disclosure of campaign financing, placed limits on large donations, media spending and individual candidate spending.

In 1969, Mike Gravel was the only Democratic Senator outside of the South to vote for Nixon's Supreme Court nominee Clement Haynsworth.

Mike Gravel actively campaigned for the office of Vice President of the United States during the 1972 presidential election, announcing on June 2,1972, over a month before the 1972 Democratic National Convention began, that he was interested in the nomination should the choice be opened up to convention delegates.

Mike Gravel was not alone in this effort, as former Governor of Massachusetts Endicott Peabody had been running a quixotic campaign for the same post since the prior year.

Mike Gravel was nominated by Bettye Fahrenkamp, the Democratic National Committeewoman from Alaska.

Several years earlier, Alaska politicians had speculated that Mike Gravel would have a hard time getting both renominated and elected when his first term expired, given that he was originally elected without a base party organization and tended to focus on national rather than local issues.

Nonetheless, after receiving support from national and local labor leaders, securing key earmarks, and producing another half-hour TV advertorial, Mike Gravel was reelected to the Senate in 1974, with 58 percent of the vote.

Mike Gravel had been open about the investment and had opposing views to one of the lobbyists on nuclear power.

In 1975, Mike Gravel introduced an amendment to cut the number of troops overseas by 200,000, but it was defeated on a voice vote.

In September 1975, Mike Gravel was named as one of several Congressional Advisers to the Seventh Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly, which met to discuss problems related to economic development and international economic cooperation.

Mike Gravel wrote in 2008 that it was the only time Gottstein had ever asked him for a favor, and the rupture resulted in their never speaking to each other again.

Environmentalists opposed to the pipeline, such as the Environmental Defense Fund and the Sierra Club then sought to use the recently passed National Environmental Policy Act to their advantage; Mike Gravel designed an amendment to the pipeline bill that would immunize the pipeline from any further court challenges under that law, and thus speed its construction.

The actual bill enabling the pipeline then passed easily; Mike Gravel had triumphed in what became perhaps his most lasting accomplishment as a senator.

In opposition to the Alaskan fishing industry, Mike Gravel advocated American participation in the formation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Mike Gravel was one of only 19 senators to vote against Senate approval for the expanded zone in 1976, saying it would undermine the US position in Law of the Sea negotiations and that nations arbitrarily extending their fishing rights limits would "produce anarchy of the seas".

Mike Gravel accumulated a complicated record on Indian affairs during his time in the Senate.

Later, his views changed; in the early 1970s Mike Gravel supported a demonstration project that established links between Alaskan villages and the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, for medical diagnostic communications.

Mike Gravel helped secure a private grant to facilitate the first Inuit Circumpolar Conference in 1977, attended by Inuit representatives from Alaska, Canada, and Greenland.

In 1977, Mike Gravel helped lead an effort to have the US Interior Department rename Mount McKinley to Denali; this eventually led to Denali National Park being so named.

Subsequently, Mike Gravel proposed a never-built "Denali City" development above the Tokositna River near the mountain, to consist of a giant Teflon dome enclosing hotels, golf courses, condominiums, and commercial buildings.

Mike Gravel blocked it, as not ensuring enough future development in the state.

Frustrated, Mike Gravel said, "the legislation denies Alaska its rights as a state, and denies the US crucial strategic resources," and opined that the Senate was "a little bit like a tank of barracudas".

In 1978 Mike Gravel authored and secured the passage into federal law of the General Stock Ownership Corporation, that became Subchapter U of the Tax Code under the Internal Revenue Code of 1954.

In 1980, Mike Gravel was challenged for the Democratic Party's nomination by State Representative Clark Gruening, the grandson of the man Mike Gravel had defeated in a primary 12 years earlier.

Mike Gravel later conceded that by the time of his defeat, he had alienated "almost every constituency in Alaska".

In 1986, Mike Gravel worked in partnership with Merrill Lynch Capital Markets to buy losses that financially troubled Alaska Native Corporations could not take as tax deductions and sell them to large national companies looking for tax write-offs.

Mike Gravel learned computer programming at some point but never practiced it.

In 1984, Mike Gravel married his second wife, Whitney Stewart Mike Gravel, who had been an administrative assistant for US Senator from New York Jacob Javits.

Mike Gravel founded and led The Democracy Foundation, which promotes direct democracy.

Mike Gravel established the Philadelphia II corporation, which seeks to replicate the original 1787 Constitutional Convention and have a Second Constitutional Convention to bring about direct democracy Gravel led an effort to get a United States Constitutional amendment to allow voter-initiated federal legislation similar to state ballot initiatives.

Mike Gravel argued that Americans are able to legislate responsibly, and that the Act and Amendment in the National Initiative would allow American citizens to become "law makers".

In 2001, Mike Gravel became director of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, where he admired institute co-founder Gregory Fossedal's work on direct democracy in Switzerland.

In 2003, Mike Gravel gave a speech on direct democracy at a conference hosted by the American Free Press.

The group invited Mike Gravel to speak again, but he declined.

Mike and Whitney Gravel lived in Arlington County, Virginia, until 2010, and then resided in Burlingame, California.

Mike Gravel began taking a salary from the non-profit organizations for which he was working; much of that income was lent to his presidential campaign.

At the start of 2006, Mike Gravel decided the best way he could promote direct democracy and the National Initiative was to run for president.

Mike Gravel favored a regional peace initiative, as well as reparation payments for Iraqis.

Mike Gravel called for a "US corporate withdrawal from Iraq", with reconstruction contracts held by US companies to be turned over to Iraqi firms.

Mike Gravel campaigned almost full-time in New Hampshire, the first primary state, following his announcement.

Mike Gravel advocated positions such as opposing preemptive nuclear war.

Mike Gravel stated that the Iraq War had the effect of creating more terrorists and that the "war was lost the day that George Bush invaded Iraq on a fraudulent basis".

Media stories said that Mike Gravel was responsible for much of whatever "heat" and "flashpoints" had taken place during the Democratic debates.

Mike Gravel gained considerable publicity by shaking up the normally staid multiple-candidate format; The New York Times' media critic said that what Mike Gravel had done was "steal a debate with outrageous, curmudgeonly statements".

Mike Gravel was in the next several debates, in one case after CNN reversed a decision to exclude him.

Mike Gravel did not compete in the initial 2008 vote, the Iowa caucuses, but was still subjected to a false report from MSNBC that he had pulled out of the race afterward.

Mike Gravel did focus his attention on the second 2008 vote, the New Hampshire primary.

Mike Gravel resumed campaigning, but fared no better in subsequent states.

On March 11,2008, Mike Gravel continued to remain in the Democratic race but additionally endorsed a Green Party candidate for president, Jesse Johnson, saying he wanted to help Johnson prevail against Green Party rivals Cynthia McKinney and Ralph Nader.

Mike Gravel's position did not subsequently improve and he was eliminated on the fourth ballot.

Mike Gravel defended Alaska Governor Sarah Palin after she was chosen as Republican presidential nominee John McCain's running mate in September 2008.

Mike Gravel praised Palin's record in standing up to corruption among Alaskan Republicans, thought her national inexperience was an asset rather than a detriment, and predicted that the "Troopergate" investigation into whether she improperly fired a state official would "come out in her favor".

Mike Gravel predicted that Palin would run for president in 2012 and that "she's going to surprise a lot of people".

In 2013, by the invitation of Hamed Ghashghavi, the secretary for international affairs of the 3rd International Conference on Hollywoodism in Tehran, Iran, Mike Gravel attended that event as an Iranian government-organized anti-Hollywood conference.

Mike Gravel noted that the conference was attended by "various elements of extremes" but said it was necessary to discuss how the US film industry portrayed Iran in order to prevent "an insane war" between the two nations.

In May 2013, Mike Gravel was one of several former members of Congress to accept $20,000 from the Paradigm Research Group, an advocacy group for UFO disclosure, as part of holding what they termed a Citizen Hearing on Disclosure, modeled after congressional hearings, regarding supposed US government suppression of evidence concerning UFOs.

In December 2014, Mike Gravel was announced as the new CEO of KUSH, a company which makes marijuana-infused products for medicinal and recreational use, and a subsidiary of Cannabis Sativa, Inc He became an Independent Director of Cannabis Sativa.

Mike Gravel was working on a book, at the time titled Human Governance, about his principal idea for direct democracy, a US Constitutional Amendment to create a "Legislature of the People" that would circumvent the existing Congress.

On March 19,2019, Mike Gravel announced that he was considering running in the 2020 Democratic primaries.

Mike Gravel's initial stated goal was merely to qualify for debates by getting the required 65,000 small donors.

Mike Gravel discouraged people from voting for him and said his preferences were Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard, both of whom favor a non-interventionist foreign policy.

In June 2019, Gravel touted the endorsement of Muntadher al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who, in December 2008, made headlines after he threw his shoes at President George W Bush in protest of the US war in Iraq.

Al-Zaidi endorsed Mike Gravel based on his promise to improve White House policies regarding Iraq and the Middle East.

Mike Gravel had been unable to get the requisite number of donations, or to score one percent or better in enough polls.

Mike Gravel added that he had always planned on ending the campaign before the teenagers in charge of it needed to return to school.

Mike Gravel's campaign crossed the threshold of 65,000 donors on July 12,2019, meeting the qualification mark for that month's debate.

The campaign officially came to a close on August 6,2019, with Mike Gravel endorsing both Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard for president.

Mike Gravel said he would divide remaining campaign funds between charity and a new think tank which would espouse his ideas.

Mike Gravel used some of the funds remaining from his 2020 presidential campaign to found an eponymous progressive think tank called The Mike Gravel Institute in 2019.

Mike Gravel died of multiple myeloma at his home in Seaside, California, on June 26,2021, at age 91.

The New York Timess obituary for Mike Gravel characterized him as "an unabashed attention-getter" who later become known for "mounting long-shot presidential runs".

The obituary in The Washington Post was similar, saying that Mike Gravel was "an Alaska Democrat with a flair for the theatrical who rose from obscurity to brief renown" and later "ran quixotic campaigns for the presidency".

On drug policy, Mike Gravel said in 2007 that he favored decriminalization and treating addiction as a public health matter.

Mike Gravel called for abolition of capital punishment in his book Citizen Power, and adhered to this position during his 2008 run for president.

Mike Gravel supported same-sex marriage and opposed the Defense of Marriage Act and the US military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

Mike Gravel wrote in 2008 that "depriving gays and lesbians of equal rights is immoral".

Later in life, Mike Gravel described himself as a critic of American imperialism.

Mike Gravel firmly opposed US military action against Iran and Syria.

Mike Gravel voiced opposition to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, the Military Commissions Act of 2006, the use of torture, indefinite detention, and what he called "flagrant ignorance" of the Geneva Convention.

In 2014, Mike Gravel called for the release of the full, unredacted Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture.

Mike Gravel opposed the use of international sanctions as a policy tool and blamed the ones against Iraq under Saddam Hussein for the deaths of a half-million children in that country.

In 2013, Mike Gravel said that sanctions against Iran were "illegal".

Mike Gravel called for the savings to boost public education spending.

Mike Gravel specifically condemned Obama for drone strikes in Pakistan and elsewhere.

Mike Gravel opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement during his 2008 candidacy, calling it unfair and economically harmful and needing renegotiation.

Mike Gravel believed that NAFTA was the "root cause" of illegal migration to the US He favored a guest worker program and "setting up naturalization procedures that would fairly bring immigrants into legal status".

Mike Gravel said that he favored eliminating the cap on H1B visas.

In 2008, Mike Gravel supported a carbon tax to combat climate change.

Mike Gravel spoke in favor of net neutrality during his presidential campaign.

Mike Gravel called for the cost of college tuition to be borne by the federal government, rather than students.

Mike Gravel expressed support for universal pre-kindergarten and the expansion of the Head Start program; and expressed an openness to charter schools and school vouchers.

Mike Gravel suggested extending the school day and the school year, and supported merit pay for teachers.

Mike Gravel called for publicly funded universal health care to replace the current employer-sponsored health insurance system.

In 2008, Mike Gravel received the Columbia University School of General Studies' first annual Isaac Asimov Lifetime Achievement Award.