Senator Gravel supports a woman's right to choose and a woman's control over her own body. That is why the Senator supports the Constitutional right of all Americans to privacy under the 14th Amendment and the 1973 Supreme Court Case, Roe v. Wade, which upholds this principle. Any decision on reproductive rights should remain between a woman and her doctor. There should be no room for interference from politicians and judges.
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Maurice Robert "Mike" Gravel is a former two-term Democratic United States Senator from Alaska and is primarily known for his efforts in ending the draft following the Vietnam War and for having put into the public record the Pentagon Papers in 1971. Gravel and his second wife, Whitney Stewart Gravel, live in Arlington County, Virginia. They have two grown children, Martin Gravel and Lynne Gravel Mosier. Gravel was born in Springfield, Massachusetts to French-Canadian immigrant parents, Marie Bourassa and Alphonse Gravel. There, he was raised and educated, in parochial schools, as a Roman Catholic, attending Assumption College Preparatory School. Gravel enlisted in the United States Army in 1951 and served in the Counter Intelligence Corps until 1954. A dyslexic, who talks about his learning disability openly, he attended Columbia University's School of General Studies, where he studied economics. Gravel was married to the former Rita Martin from 1958 until around 1980. Gravel moved to Alaska in 1956, without funds or a job, looking for a place he could become a politician. He found work in several areas, including real estate sales, brakeman for the Alaska Railroad, and a successful property developer on the Kenai Peninsula. Meanwhile, he ran unsuccessfully for the territorial legislature in 1958 and for the Anchorage City Council in 1960. He ran for the Alaska House of Representatives representing Anchorage in 1962 and won. Gravel served in the Alaska House of Representatives from 1963 to 1966, winning re-election in 1964. During 1965 and 1966, he served as the Speaker of the House. He did not run for re-election in 1966, instead choosing to run for Alaska's seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, losing to incumbent Democrat Ralph Rivers. In 1968 he ran against incumbent Democratic Senator Ernest Gruening, a popular former governor, for his party's nomination to the U.S. Senate. Gravel's campaign was based on his youth and his use of persuasive television advertisements, and he unexpectedly beat Gruening in the primary and went on to win the general election, gaining 45% of the vote against 37% for Republican Elmer E. Rasmuson and 18% for Gruening, who ran a write-in campaign as an Independent. Gravel 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. In the late 1960s and early 1970s the Pentagon was in the process of performing calibration tests for a nuclear warhead that, upon investigation, was revealed to be obsolete. The Cannikin tests involved the detonation of nuclear bombs under the seabed of the North Pacific at Amchitka Island, Alaska. Gravel opposed the tests in Congress and organized worldwide environmental opposition to their continuation. The program was halted after the second test. Nuclear power was considered an environmentally clean alternative for the commercial generation of electricity and was part of a popular national policy for the peaceful use of atomic energy in the 1950s and 1960s. Gravel publicly opposed this policy in 1970. He used his office to organize citizen opposition to the policy and to persuade Ralph Nader's organization to join the opposition. In 1971 Gravel played a key role in the release of the Pentagon Papers — a large collection of secret government documents pertaining to the Vietnam War — which were made public by former Defense Department analyst Daniel Ellsberg. Gravel inserted 4,100 pages of the Papers into the Congressional Record of his Senate Subcommittee on Buildings and Grounds. These pages were later issued by the Beacon Press as the "Senator Gravel Edition" — the most complete edition of the Pentagon Papers to be published. The "Gravel Edition" was edited and annotated by Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, and included an additional volume of analytical articles on the origins and progress of the war, also edited by Chomsky and Zinn. Also in 1971, Gravel embarked on a one-man filibuster against legislation renewing the military draft. Using various parliamentary maneuvers, Gravel was able to block the bill for five months before President Richard Nixon and Senate Republicans agreed to allow the draft to expire in 1973. Six months before United States Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's secret mission to the People's Republic of China in July 1971, Gravel introduced legislation to recognize and normalize relations with the PRC. In 1973, Gravel introduced an amendment to empower the Congress to make the policy decision about the construction of the Alaska Pipeline. The amendment passed the Senate by a single vote. The pipeline has been responsible for 20% of the U.S. oil supply. Gravel opposed the Alaskan fishing industry in advocating American participation in the formation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). For two years he opposed legislation that permitted the U.S. to unilaterally take control of the 200-mile waters bordering its land mass. The legislation was passed, and the United States has signed but never ratified the UNCLOS. He helped secure a private grant to facilitate the first Inuit Circumpolar Conference in 1977, attended by Inuit representatives from Alaska, Canada, and Greenland. These conferences now also include representatives from Russia. In the early 1970s Gravel supported a demonstration project that established links between Alaskan villages and the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, for medical diagnostic communications. Gravel authored and secured the passage into law of the General Stock Ownership Corporation (GSOC), Subchapter U of the Tax Code, as a prerequisite to a failed 1980 Alaskan ballot initiative that would have paid dividends to Alaskan citizens for Pipeline-related revenue. Gravel actively campaigned for the office of Vice President of the United States during the 1972 presidential election. At the 1972 Democratic National Convention, he was nominated by Bettye Fahrenkamp, the national committeewoman of Alaska. The senator then addressed the convention and won 226 delegate votes, coming in third behind Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri, who was convention Presidential nominee George McGovern's choice, and Frances "Sissy" Farenthold of Texas, in chaotic balloting after many delegates were unsatisfied by McGovern's choice. In 1974 Gravel was re-elected to the Senate, winning 58% of the vote against 42% for Republican C. R. Lewis. 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 but went on to lose in the general election to Republican Frank Murkowski. In the years since, Gravel has been a real estate developer in Anchorage and Kenai, Alaska, consultant, and founder and head of The Democracy Foundation, which promotes 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." On April 17, 2006, Gravel became a declared candidate for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in the 2008 election, announcing his run in a speech to the National Press Club. Short on campaign cash, he took public transportation to get to his announcement. Gravel's campaign is based primarily on his ardent support for direct democracy (the National Initiative), but also emphasizes his support for a national sales tax and abolition of the IRS, immediate withdrawal from the war in Iraq, a single payer national health care system, and term limits during his campaign. On April 26, 2007 he took part in the first Democratic presidential debate at South Carolina State University in Orangeburg, South Carolina. During the debate he suggested a Democratic bill criminalizing the war in Iraq. He also advocated positions such as opposing preemptive nuclear war. He stated that the Iraq War had the effect of creating more terrorists and that the "war was lost the day that George Bush invaded Iraq on a fraudulent basis". Overall, Gravel gained considerable publicity by shaking up the normally staid multiple-candidate format. In a recent television appearance Mike Gravel discussed numerous positions and suggestions. He suggested a program of "Kelso economics". Responding to a caller on a CSPAN program asking about marijuana and the drug war, Gravel stated “That one is real simple, I would legalize marijuana. You should be able to buy that at a liquor store.” Some of his political leanings and convictions may also be learned from the content of his 1972-published manifesto, Citizen Power, in which he advocated the implementation of numerous populist ideas, such as
The book also contained the complete text of the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the complete platform adopted by the Populist Party during the 1892 presidential election. (See http://www.vote-smart.org/bio.php?can_id=69496.) |
(See http://www.gravel2008.us/issues.)
(See http://www.issues2000.org.) MIKE GRAVEL QUOTES "There are Americans who say that by leaving Iraq, we would be saying that our soldiers died in vain. But the only thing worse than soldiers dying in vain, is more soldiers dying in vain. The longer our presence sustains the violence, the more innocent civilians will die as well.” "We have become a nation ruled by fear. Since the end of the Second World War, various political leaders have fostered fear in the American people--fear of Communism, fear of terrorism, fear of immigrants, fear of people based on race and religion, fear of Gays and Lesbian in love who just want to get married, and fear of people who are somehow different. It is fear that allows political leaders to manipulate us all and distort our national priorities." "What is the essence of this country that we are being patriotic about? A real love of America -- an authentic patriotism -- must be based on more than a moralizing grumph, a smug assertion, a bumper-sticker slogan. We've all heard the phrase, "my country right or wrong." I think we can all agree, this leaves something to be desired. No, I think a true patriotism -- a truly MacArthuresque love of country -- can leave some room for loving the sinner, but hating the sin. The American who calls a critic or doubter to task as un-American is -- himself -- in that instant, the true anti-patriot. It is the American who defends the right to disagree, and who hears and sees and embraces the voices of diversity, who is the truest and greatest lover of America." "We can feed the collective fantasy that our good intentions and heroic efforts were thwarted by the cowardice and incompetence of others. But if that's what we take from our experience in Iraq, we will never learn the true lessons and we will be condemned to repeat the same mistakes." "The inability to admit a mistake and assume responsibility is not just a morally bankrupt way to walk through life; it is a dangerous and deadly way to lead a nation. When I am president, I will open up all secret files relating to the Iraq war and expose all officials who lied to the public in promoting it. (That's right, Dick, your files too.) My Justice Department will prosecute everyone who lied under oath or ripped off the American taxpayer by exploiting the Iraq reconstruction effort. And I will pardon no one." "Those who seek national leadership positions must tell Americans the truth. Americans can handle the truth. Having reliable information is the only way to dispel the fear-based culture that our leaders have drugged us with for the last 60 years, concealing reality. The reality is, the United States is No. 1 only in weaponry, consumer spending, government and personal debt, in the number of people we have in prison and, I would say, in delusion." "We are a moral and fair-minded people. As a nation, we must put aside our arrogance and demand that our leaders work together with other nations and peoples, treating them as equals. There is no other way to reverse the environmental threat of global warming, a threat more real than nuclear proliferation. In the global village, the United States produces the most pollution and supplies the largest amount of weaponry, facts that our leadership ignores. We have a failure of leadership––a leadership that fails to face reality." "Politicians are averse to dealing critically with the military establishment and our defense policies for fear of having their patriotism questioned. We should be guided by President Eisenhower's warning that an inordinate emphasis on military power breeds a culture of militarism that threatens other vital areas of our society; and that eventually, an inordinate emphasis on military power will guarantee our collapse as a great nation and as a democracy. Unfortunately, no president since Dwight Eisenhower has even dared to acknowledge the problem." "The U.S. as the mightiest nation in the world claims the right to police the world, but the cost of this declared right is a bloated defense budget and a defense industry that knows no limits. Our militarized economy is both a direct cost to American taxpayers and an indirect cost in the loss of funding for education, healthcare, and infrastructure. Some around the world are beginning to ask: who polices the policeman?" (See http://www.gravel2008.us.) We thank the following resources: Mike Gravel Official Website |
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