Mike Gravel, a Nixon-era Democratic senator from Alaska who gained notoriety for publicizing parts of the Pentagon Papers, is thinking about running for the White House in 2020 in order to push his party to the left.
Gravel, 88, would face an already crowded field for the right to take on President Trump in the general election, including his former Senate colleague Joe Biden of Delaware, who is expected to jump in.
But Gravel is realistic about his chances.
“I am considering running in the 2020 Democratic primary,” Gravel tweeted early Wednesday morning. “The goal will not be to win, but to bring a critique of American imperialism to the Democratic debate stage. The website (http://mikegravel.org ) is under construction. Official announcement will be in the coming days.”
I am considering running in the 2020 Democratic primary. The goal will not be to win, but to bring a critique of American imperialism to the Democratic debate stage. The website (https://t.co/j5qZdJoH7S) is under construction. Official announcement will be in the coming days.
— Senator Mike Gravel (@MikeGravel) March 20, 2019
Gravel ran for the open 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. As a former two-term senator, he earned serious media coverage from outlets and invitations to several early Democratic debates. But having been out of office by that point for more than a quarter-century, he struggled with name recognition and to raise campaign cash. His debate invitations dried up, and in the New Hampshire primary, he earned about 400 votes out of some 280,000 cast, or 0.14 percent.
Gravel then switched to the Libertarian Party but fell short in an effort to be its standard-bearer in the 2008 general election.
These relatively recent vintage political comeback attempts obscured the image of a one-time political wunderkind from the nation’s last frontier state. A native of Springfield, Mass., and graduate of Columbia University, Gravel moved west — far west — during the 1950s in Alaska’s pre-state days.
After serving four years in the Alaska state House — including a stint as speaker — Gravel in 1968 successfully challenged Sen. Ernest Gruenig, 81, in the Democratic primary. Gravel won the Senate seat that fall and quickly became an outspoken critic of the Nixon administration’s Vietnam War efforts. He outraged Nixon administration officials and military brass when he read into the Congressional Record portions of the Pentagon Papers, detailing America’s growing intervention in the Southeast Asian nation’s affairs.
Gravel’s largely liberal voting record wore thin with Alaska’s conservative voters, and he lost his bid for the Democratic nomination for another term. Gravel largely fell out of the public eye since leaving the Senate in January 1981, reemerging ahead of the 2008 contest.
His effort is remembered most vividly for an avant-garde style campaign video with no spoken words, only for the gray-haired former senator staring straight into a camera before tossing a large stone into a nearby pond.
