Mike Gravel

About

Mike Garvel is an American politician. He is a former United States senator and has run for president in the 2008 and 2020 elections.

Online History

Early Political Career

Gravel's political career began in 1963 when he was elected to the Alaska House of Representatives, where he eventually became House Speaker. In 1968, Gravel was elected to the Senate, where he remained in office until 1980.^[1]

2008 Presidential Campaign

In 2006, Gravel became the first Democratic candidate to seek the nomination for the party's presidential candidate. During the campaign, Gravel went viral with two campaign videos, "Rock" and "Fire." The first video, "Rock," was uploaded by bilinsi on May 27th, 2007. Within 12 years, the video has received more than 1 million views (shown below, left) . The followup video, "Fire," which was uploaded the following day by bilinsi, received more than 700,000 views (shown below, right). According to The New York Times,^[2] "The videos were created by Matt Mayes and Guston Sondin-Klausner, who also teach at the Otis College of Art and Design."

2020 Presidential Campaign

On March 19th, 2019, Gravel's Twitter ^[3] account, which had been dormant for several years, posted a "#Gravel2020." The post was meant to inspire excitement in a potential 2020 presidential campaign for the then-88-year-old retired politician (shown below). That night, in a now-deleted Tweet, the account posted a Starter Pack meme featuring various, controversial political figures like former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Vice President Dick Cheney, as well as a pair of handcuffs (shown below, right).

He later tweeted, "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." Both tweets have since been deleted.^[4]

According to Splinter,^[5] Gravel had handed the Twitter account over to "a group of students." They continued, "One of them told Splinter in an interview, convinced the former senator to think about running again. This has caused a substantial amount of confusion, as the teens have spent most of the last 24 hours furiously shitposting under Gravel’s name and doing memes with people."

On April 8th, 2019, the former Senator uploaded a video entitled "Rock 2.0," a sequel to his original campaign ad. The video features numerous images of other politicians, as well as numerous appearances of Gravel on the debate stage. The post received more than 26,000 views in 24 hours (shown below).

The description for the video confirms that Gravel is using the campaign to "push the conversation" further left at the debates. It states, "Sen. Mike Gravel is running for president – not to win, but to qualify for the debates to push the field to the left on foreign policy and political reform."

Search Interest

External References