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[[Image:Mgravel.jpg|right|thumb|Senator Gravel]]

[[Image:Mgravel.jpg|right|thumb|Senator Gravel]]

'''Maurice Robert "Mike" Gravel''' was a former U.S. Senator from [[Alaska]], serving from 1969 to 1981. He is currently running for [[Democratic Party]] nomination for presidency in 2008. However, he is a long-shot candidate because he has largely retired from politics for over two decades. In the Senate, he was once the colleague of the current Alaska senator [[Ted Stevens]].

'''Maurice Robert "Mike" Gravel''' is a former U.S. Senator from [[Alaska]], serving from 1969 to 1981. He is currently running for [[Democratic Party]] nomination for presidency in 2008. However, he is a long-shot candidate because he has largely retired from politics for over two decades. In the Senate, he was once the colleague of the current Alaska senator [[Ted Stevens]].

His platform includes replacing the federal [[income tax]] with a national [[sales tax]], allowing for [[ballot initiative]]s at the federal level, and nationalized universal health care. In various campaign appearances, he has shown an outspoken and angry style.

Gravel was elected to the United States Senate in 1968. He served on the Environment and Public Works Committee throughout his Senate career. He also served on the Finance and Interior Committees and he chaired the Energy, Water Resources, and Environmental Pollution subcommittees. Gravel worked to end the draft following the Vietnam War. He is well known for having put into the public record the Pentagon Papers in 1971. He embarked on a one-man filibuster against legislation renewing the military draft. In 1980 Gravel was challenged for the Democratic Party's nomination by State Representative Clark Gruening, the grandson of the man Gravel had defeated in a primary 12 years earlier. Gruening won the nomination and went on to lose in the general election to [[Republican]] Frank Murkowski.

 

Gravel supports socialist health care and creating a national sales tax. He is strongly against the [[War in Iraq]] and supports indemnity withdrawing all troops from Iraq. After Senate Majority Leader [[Harry Reid]] said that the Iraq War was "lost", he responded by saying, "this war was lost the day that George Bush invaded Iraq on a fraudulent basis." Senator Gravel advocates for the legalization of all drugs, and believes that drug abuse should be treated as a medical problem only. On his Presidential campaign website, he states that he 'fully supports the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution'.

 

In June 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. He later said "You better believe I know that six million Jews were killed. I've been to the Holocaust Museum."

 

==Presidential campaign==

On April 16, 2006, Gravel announced his presidential campaign at the National Press Club. He has become known, chiefly among Democrats and independent voters, for his statements of radical commitment to issues ranging from nuclear disarmament, citizen-initiated lawmaking, gay marriage recognition, and the lifting of discrimination against [[gay]]s in the military - to the reorganization of the tax and social security systems in the United States and the immediate cessation of US military involvement in Iraq. In a February 25, 2007 Washington Post/ABC News nationwide poll of voters who lean Democratic, 0% supported Gravel for the Democratic presidential nomination.

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