The idiosyncratic senator who hated war and elitism

1930–2021

Mike Gravel knew how to grab the public’s attention. A Democratic senator from Alaska, he made headlines in 1971 by reading much of the Pentagon Papers—a leaked collection of secret papers on U.S. involvement in Vietnam—into the Congressional Record. He spent three hours reading to a subcommittee, finally bursting into tears and declaring, “Metal is crashing through human bodies, because of a public policy this government and all of its branches continue to support.” He was just as passionate in his antiwar convictions when running as a fringe presidential candidate in 2007, asking then– Sen. Barack Obama during one debate, “Tell me, Barack, who do you want to nuke?” Born to a working-class family in Springfield, Mass., Gravel gravitated toward politics early but “sensed that he would be hindered by his lack of connections and polish,” said The Washington Post.

He lit out for pre-statehood Alaska in 1956, working in real estate and as a brakeman on trains before being elected to the state legislature in 1963. Elected to the U.S. Senate in 1968, he battled fellow Democrats to secure the construction of the TransAlaska oil pipeline, which aided his 1974 re-election. After losing the Democratic primary in 1980, and living through a quarter-century of financial struggles, Gravel staged an unconventional comeback, said The New York Times. He announced a presidential bid in 2006, promising to end the Iraq War and to allow citizens to enact laws via public referendum—a way, he said, to circumvent Congress and “minority rule by the elites of society.” That campaign floundered, as did a 2020 campaign run mainly by two teenage staffers. “My glands work in a certain way,” Gravel once admitted, “that makes me stand up, foolishly sometimes, and fight.”

Mike Gravel