Mike Gravel

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Maurice Robert "Mike" Gravel (born May 13, 1930) is an American politician who served as a United States Senator from Alaska from 1969 to 1981.

He ran for president in 2008 and in the 2020 race as a member of the Democratic Party. Gravel, a French-Canadian immigrant mother, was born and raised in Springfield, Massachusetts, and later graduated from the Columbia University School of General Studies.

In the late 1950s, he moved to Alaska, where he became a true estate investor and entered politics.

He served in the Alaska House of Representatives from 1963 to 1966, and was later elected Speaker of the Alaska House.

In 1968, Gravel was elected to the United States Senate. Gravel, a senator from Vietnam, became nationally known for his tenacious but unsuccessful attempts to finish the document during the Vietnam War and for bringing the Pentagon Papers into the public domain in 1971, putting him in jeopardy.

In 1972, he ran for Vice President of the United States in an extraordinary campaign, then played a vital role in getting congressional approval for the Trans-Alaska pipeline in 1973.

He was reelected to the Senate in 1974, but Alaskan voters were increasingly alienated, and his attempt for a third term was thrown out in 1980 in a primary election. Gravel returned to work ventures and went through challenging times, suffering corporate and personal bankruptcies in the midst of poor health.

He has been a promoter of direct democracy and the National Initiative. Gravel began a campaign for President of the United States in 2006.

His campaign attracted a following and national attention in 2007, but he received no support in national polls or primaries in 2008.

He left the Democratic Party and joined the Libertarian Party in March 2008 to seek its presidential nomination and the inclusion of the National Initiative in the Libertarian Platform.

He failed on both counts at the Libertarian National Convention in 2008.

He went on to work for a marijuana products firm and continued to speak out on a variety of political topics and candidates. Gravel ran for president in the 2020 race as a political initiative rather than a desire to win.

After failing to qualify for the first Democratic presidential debate, he crossed the donor threshold for the second debate by receiving more than 65,000 dollars, but the campaign came to a close shortly afterward.

Early life, military service, education

Gravel was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, on May 13, 1930, as one of five children of French-Canadian immigrant parents, Alphonse and Marie (née Bourassa) Gravel. His parents were members of the Quebec diaspora, and he was raised in a working-class neighborhood during the Great Depression, speaking only in French until he was seven years old. His father, nicknamed "Mike" from an early age, valued work over all else, though his mother stressed the importance of education.

Gravel was educated in parochial schools as a Roman Catholic. He suffered due to undiagnosed dyslexia, which later revealed, and he was held back in third grade. He attended elementary school in 1945 and his classmates named him "most charming person" in his class. Gravel was stunned by the ugliness of political office after a summer job as a soda jerk.

Gravel was boarded at Worcester, Massachusetts, where his results were then weak. Gravel's telling him that during the 1948–1949 Palestine war, he intended to serve with the Israel Defense Forces, but Alexandra Tolstaya advised him not to return to school. An English teacher, Assumptionist Edgar Bourque, paid him personal attention, improving Gravel's communication skills and instructing him in public speaking. Gravel's grades increased measurably in his final year, and he graduated in 1949. Marguerite's sister became a member of the Holy Cross, but Gravel himself was struggling with the Catholic faith. He spent a year at Assumption College, a Catholic school in Worcester, before moving to American International College in Springfield for his sophomore year. Journalist I. F. Stone and philosopher Bertrand Russell had a major influence on Gravel's willingness to challenge assumptions and question social norms and political power.

Gravel, who was going to be drafted but instead enlisted in the US Army for a three-year term in May 1951, so he could join the Counterintelligence Corps. He went to Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia, after basic intelligence and counterintelligence training at Fort Holabird in Maryland and South Carolina. Despite being sent off to the Korean War as a second lieutenant in early 1952, he was instead sent to Stuttgart, West Germany, as a Special Adjutant in the Army's Communications Intelligence Service. Gravel & Co., Germany, carried out surveillance missions on civilians and paid off spies. After about a year, he moved to Orléans, France, where his French language skills (if not his French-Canadian accent) helped him penetrate French communist rallies. He served as a Special Agent in the Counterintelligence Corps until 1954, and then became a first lieutenant.

Gravel enrolled in Columbia University School of General Studies in New York City, where he studied economics and earned a Bachelor of Science degree in 1956. He moved to New York, "flat broke" and helped himself by serving as a bar boy in a hotel, driving a taxi, and working in Bankers Trust's investment bond department. He left the Roman Catholic faith at this time.

2008–early 2019

Gravel supported the NYC Ballot Initiative in June 2008, claiming that the bill would create a "citizen commission rather than a government commission" with subpoena power against top US officials in order to "make a complete inquiry into what happened" following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. "Individuals in and out of government may have possibly collaborated with the suspected perpetrators of this barbaric crime," he said later. Suspicions abound over the government's report. Obviously, an act that sparked three wars, Afghan, Iraqi, and the ongoing war on Terror should be investigated thoroughly, something that was not done and which the government avoids discussing."

Gravel said of Al-Arian's prosecutor, "find out where his children go to school, find out where his office is: picket him all the time." If you see him, call him a racist in signs. Call him an injustice. Call him whatever you want to call him, but his face is on full display all the time. Gravel was chastised for potentially involving the children of the prosecutor, but Al-Arian's family disagreed with the sentiments.

After being selected as Republican presidential nominee John McCain's running mate in September 2008, Gravel defended Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Palin praised Palin's performance in standing up to nepotism among Alaskan Republicans, thought her national experience was a benefit rather than a punishment, and predicted that the "Troopergate" probe into whether she improperly shot a state official would "come out in her favour." Gravel has made it clear that he would not endorse or vote for either McCain–Palin or Obama–Biden in the general election. Palin's politics were "terrible," Gravel said, "but that doesn't detract from the fact that she is a naturally gifted individual." Palin's father said he'll run for president in 2012 and that "she's going to surprise a lot of people." Palin did not run, but Gravel's prediction about "TrooperGate" was accurate, as Palin was not found not to have breached ethics laws.

Gravel attended the event in Tehran, Iran, as an Iranian government-sponsored anti-Hollywood conference. Hamed Ghashghavi, the minister of international affairs of the 3rd International Conference on Hollywoodism, was present at the invitation of Hamed Ghashghavi. Gravel said the conference was attended by "numbers of extremes," but that it was important to discuss how the US film industry portrayed Iran in order to avoid "an insane war" between the two countries.

Gravel was one of many former congressmen to accept $20,000 from the As part of a citizen inquiry into suspected government suppression of evidence concerning UFOs, which was modelled after congressional hearings. "Something is watching the planet, and they're watching it very carefully," Gravel said, "because we are a warlike planet and we're also monitoring it."

Gravel was named in December 2014 as the new CEO of KUSH, a company that produces marijuana-infused medications for medicinal and recreational use, as well as a Cannabis Sativa subsidiary. He also worked as an Independent Director of Cannabis Sativa.

Gravel lauded Bernie Sanders and his campaign during the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries, saying, "Bernie is one of the most gifted politicians I've ever seen." He is a man of utmost integrity and also very intelligent." Sanders is expected to be elected president by Gravel, but he and his allies will be unable to get their main legislation through Congress, and therefore, Sanders and his allies will support some of the National Initiative's plans.

"We killed 58,000 American servicemen in the Vietnam War, and all they did was die in vain," Gravel said in response to the September 11 attacks. Why is it that 3,000 more people were killed in order to supply the mill's grist to enslave the military industrial complex? "There's no doubt in my mind that 9/11 was an inside job." And Gravel supporters were outraged later on that speech.

Gravel was born in Seaside, California, by 2019. A U.S. operative was working on a book titled Human Governance at the time that was about his main theory of direct democracy. A constitutional amendment that would establish a "legislture of the People" would replace the existing Congress. AuthorHouse's book The Ineffective Government and the People's Answer was self-published at the end of the year.

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Career after leaving the Senate

Of his 1980 defeat, Gravel later recalled: "I had lost my career. I lost my marriage. I was in the doldrums for ten years after my defeat," and "Nobody wanted to hire me for anything important. I felt like I was worthless. I didn't know what I could do." By his own later description, Gravel was a womanizer, and had an affair while in the Senate, and he and his wife Rita separated in December 1980. They filed for divorce in September 1981; she later received all of his Senate pension income.

During the 1980s, Gravel was a real estate developer in Anchorage and Kenai, Alaska, a consultant, and a stockbroker. One of his real estate ventures, a condominium business, was forced to declare bankruptcy and a lawsuit ensued. In 1986, 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. Gravel also learned computer programming at some point but never practiced it.

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

In 1989, Gravel reentered politics. He founded and led The Democracy Foundation, which promotes direct democracy. He 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. He 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". However such efforts met with little success.

In 2001, Gravel became director of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, where he admired institute co-founder Gregory Fossedal's work on direct democracy in Switzerland. By 2004, Gravel had become chair of the institute, and Fossedal (who in turn was a director of the Democracy Foundation) gave the introduction at Gravel's presidential announcement.

In 2003, Gravel gave a speech on direct democracy at a conference hosted by the American Free Press. The event was cosponsored by The Barnes Review, a journal that endorses Holocaust denial. After some controversy over his appearance, Gravel apologized, saying he did not realize the group's ties. Gravel said repeatedly that he did not share the group's views on the Holocaust, stating, "You better believe I know that six million Jews were killed. [The Barnes Review publishers] are nutty as loons if they don't think it happened". The group invited Gravel to speak again, but he declined.

Mike and Whitney Gravel lived in Arlington County, Virginia, until 2010, and then resided in Burlingame, California. They have the two grown children from his first marriage, Martin Gravel and Lynne Gravel Mosier, and four grandchildren. Whitney Gravel's income sustained the couple from 1998 on. In the 2000s, Gravel had poor health, requiring three surgeries in 2003 for back pain and neuropathy. Due to unreimbursed medical expenses and debts from his political causes, he declared personal bankruptcy in 2004. He began taking a salary from the non-profit organizations for which he was working; much of that income was lent to his presidential campaign. In 2007, he declared that he had "zero net worth".

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