Maurice Robert "Mike" Gravel ( ; May 13, 1930 – June 26, 2021) was an American politician and writer who represented Alaska in the United States Senate from 1969 to 1981 as a member of the Democratic Party. He ran for president twice: in 2008 and 2020. He was the fourth U.S. Senator in Alaska's history.
Born and raised in Springfield, Massachusetts, by French-Canadian immigrant parents, Gravel moved to Alaska in the late 1950s, becoming a real estate developer and entering politics. He served in the Alaska House of Representatives from 1963 to 1967, and also became Speaker of the Alaska House. Gravel was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1968.
As a senator, Gravel became nationally known for his forceful, but unsuccessful, attempts to end the draft during the War in Vietnam, and for putting the Pentagon Papers into the public record in 1971. He conducted an unsuccessful 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. He 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, Gravel staged a run for the 2008 Democratic nomination for President of the United States. His 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. He ran for president as a Democrat again in the 2020 election, in a campaign that ended four months after it began. Two years before his death, Gravel and his campaign staff founded the progressive think tank The Gravel Institute.
Early life, military service, education Gravel was born on May 13, 1930, in Springfield, Massachusetts, one of five children of French-Canadian immigrant parents, Alphonse and Marie (née Bourassa) Gravel.Mike Gravel genealogy, Wargs.Current Biography Yearbook 1972, p. 182.Gravel and Lauria, A Political Odyssey, pp. 69–70. His parents were part of the Quebec diaspora, pp. 392, 398. and he was raised in a working-class neighborhood during the Great Depression, speaking only French until he was seven years old. Calling him "Mike" from an early age, his father valued work above all else, while his mother stressed the importance of education.Gravel and Lauria, A Political Odyssey, p. 74.
Gravel was educated in parochial schools as a Roman Catholic. There he struggled, due to what he later said was undiagnosed dyslexia, and was left back in third grade.Gravel and Lauria, A Political Odyssey, p. 83. He completed elementary school in 1945Gravel and Lauria, A Political Odyssey, p. 81. and his class voted him "most charming personality". A summer job as a soda jerk led to Gravel handing out campaign fliers for local candidates on his boss's behalf; Gravel was immediately impressed with "the awesomeness of political office".
Gravel then boarded at Assumption Preparatory School in Worcester, Massachusetts, where his performance was initially mediocre. By Gravel's telling, in the summer of 1948 he intended to volunteer for the Israel Defense Forces during the 1947–1949 Palestine war, but Alexandra Tolstaya told him to return to school. There an English teacher, the Assumptionist Edgar Bourque, gave him personal attention, improving Gravel's language skills and instructing him in public speaking. Gravel's grades improved measurably in his final year and he graduated in 1949.Gravel and Lauria, A Political Odyssey, pp. 105, 128. His sister, Marguerite, became a Holy Cross nun, but Gravel himself struggled with the Catholic faith.Mike Gravel's Unitarian Universalism, by Doug Muder, UUWorld, December 10, 2007. Accessed December 19, 2007. He studied for one year at Assumption College, a Catholic school in Worcester, then transferred for his sophomore year to American International College in Springfield. Journalist I. F. Stone and philosopher Bertrand Russell strongly influenced Gravel in their willingness to challenge assumptions and oppose social convention and political authority.Gravel and Lauria, A Political Odyssey, pp. 105, 107–108.
Around May 1951, Gravel saw that he was about to be drafted and instead enlisted in the U.S. Army for a three-year term so that he could get into the Counterintelligence Corps.Gravel and Lauria, A Political Odyssey, pp. 108–110. After basic training and counterintelligence school at Fort Holabird in Maryland and in South Carolina, he went to Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia. While he expected to be sent off to the Korean War when he graduated as a second lieutenant in early 1952, he was instead assigned to Stuttgart, West Germany, as a Special Adjutant in the Army's Communications Intelligence Service. In Germany, Gravel conducted surveillance operations on civilians and paid off spies. After about a year, he transferred to Orléans, France, where his French language abilities (if not his French-Canadian accent) allowed him to infiltrate French communist rallies. He worked as a Special Agent in the Counterintelligence Corps until 1954, eventually becoming a first lieutenant.
Following his discharge, Gravel entered the Columbia University School of General Studies in New York City, where he studied economics and received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1956.Stephen Haycox, Gravel entry in American Legislative Leaders in the West, 1911–1994, Greenwood Press, 1997, p. 126; . He 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. During this time he left the Roman Catholic faith.
Move to Alaska
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. Alaska's voting age of 19, less than most other states' 21, played a role in his decision, as did its newness and cooler climate. Broke when he arrived, he immediately found work in real estate sales until winter arrived.Gravel and Lauria, A Political Odyssey, pp. 134–135. Gravel then was employed as a brakeman for the Alaska Railroad, working the snow-clearing train on the Anchorage-to-Fairbanks run. Subsequently, he opened a small real estate brokerage in Anchorage (the Territory of Alaska not requiring a license) and saved enough so as not to have to work the railroad again. The firm was named the M. R. Gravel Real Estate Company. Gravel joined the Anchorage Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, and continued a sporadic relationship with the movement throughout his life.
Seeing Alaska as a wide-open place with no political establishment or entrenched interests, Gravel quickly became part of the civic scene there. By October 1957, he was a Division Chairman for Anchorage for the Democratic Central Committee in the territory, and by June 1958, he was president of the Alaska Young Democrats organization. He also became active in the United States Junior Chamber (Jaycees), and by early 1958, his duties included handing out awards for farmer of the year.
By early 1958, Gravel was running as Democratic Party primary candidate for a Third Division seat in House of Representatives of the territorial legislature. (This was one of the four administrative divisions into which Alaska was sectioned at the time.) Under the slogan "Gravel, the Roadbed to Prosperity", he lost.Gravel and Lauria, A Political Odyssey, p. 136. At the same time, he was also an advocate for Alaskan statehood.
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. Gravel was selected from some two thousand applications for this position. The tour received a good amount of local newspaper coverage at its various stops, with Gravel's first name sometimes given as Mike and other times as Maurice. The tour's general message was an urging of "lower taxes, more efficiency in government and a system of taxation moderate at all levels of income". At several stops Gravel stated that the "tide of socialism" had to be stopped. He elaborated at another stop, "It is part of our Jaycee creed that economic justice can best be won by free men through free enterprise. We really want to see that free enterprise become our inheritance." The tour was scheduled to conclude in Washington D.C., on Tax Day, April 15, with petition signatures accumulated for reform to be presented to U.S. lawmakers: dressed as Revere, Gravel rode with the petition to the steps of the U.S. Capitol.Gravel and Lauria, A Political Odyssey, p. 141.
The tour over, Gravel married Rita Jeannette Martin at the First Methodist Church of Anchorage on April 29, 1959. She 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. She had also been named Anchorage's "Miss Fur Rendezvous" of 1958.Current Biography Yearbook 1972, p. 184. They had two children, Martin Anthony Gravel and Lynne Denise Gravel, born and 1962 respectively.
Gravel ran without avail for the City Council in Anchorage in 1960. During this time, he had become a successful real estate agent; after the 1960 election, he became a property developer in a mobile home park on the outskirts of Anchorage.Gravel and Lauria, A Political Odyssey, pp. 142–143. After a partner ran into financial difficulty, however, the project went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and Gravel was forced out in 1962.
State legislator
With the support of Alaska wholesale grocer Barney Gottstein and supermarket builder Larry Carr, Gravel ran for the Alaska House of Representatives representing Anchorage in 1962, initially assigned the 10th and then 8th districts.The Alaska Constitution as ratified in 1956 had originally placed Anchorage in District 10, and given the community eight seats in the House based upon the 1950 United States census. The reapportionment and redistricting proclamation of Governor William A. Egan, dated December 7, 1961, placed Anchorage into District 8 (due to the elimination of two districts earlier in the order), and given the community 14 seats in the House based upon the 1960 United States census. See This change occurred immediately prior to Gravel's election to the House. These districts were without designated seats. Therefore, it is impossible to determine a direct predecessor or successor, especially with the higher turnover of legislative seats which existed at the time. Gravel served from District 8 with: William H. Sanders (1963–1964); Bennie Leonard, Keith H. Miller, James C. Parsons, Jack H. White, William C. Wiggins (1963–1965); Homer Moseley (1963–1966); Earl D. Hillstrand, Joseph P. Josephson, Bruce B. Kendall, Carl L. Lottsfeldt, John L. Rader, Harold D. Strandberg (1963–1967); George M. Sullivan (1964–1965); Carl F. Brady, Bernard J. "Pop" Carr, Sr., Gene Guess, M. Daniel Plotnick, Charles J. Sassara, Jr., Ted Stevens (1965–1967); William J. Moran (1966–1967). See Alaska had very crowded primaries that year: 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. Gravel made it through the primary, and in November eight Republicans and six Democrats were elected to the House from the district, with Gravel finishing eighth overall and third among with Democrats, with 8,174 votes. Gottstein became Gravel's main financial backer during most of his subsequent campaigns.