Mike Gravel

The people must be brought into the operation of government, to make the laws that affect their lives, and thereby become the fourth check in our government’s system of checks and balances. Maurice Robert "Mike" Gravel (pronounced "Gravelle," not Gra-vel") was a former Democratic senator from Alaska, who briefly ran for the Democratic Party presidential nomination in 2008 (doing so again in 2020), then switched his affiliation in March 2008 to unsuccessfully seek the Libertarian Party presidential nomination.  He is otherwise best known for his career in the U.S. Senate during the 1970s. His final political activities included campaigning for a national initiative and referendum to be implemented at the federal level in the United States.

Senatorial career
Gravel served as a Senator from Alaska from 1969 to 1981. His most notable achievements during this time were filibustering the Vietnam draft twice, appealing a case to the Supreme Court to have the Pentagon Papers read into the record, and opposing nuclear testing in Alaska.

He lost his seat in the 1980 election due largely to an anti-incumbent backlash in Alaska over the Alaska Lands Conservation Act, which passed in 1980. That Gravel had opposed the Act and even tried to filibuster it didn't matter; Gravel had earlier opposed and successfully blocked a weaker "compromise" lands bill, and because of this he got the blame for the stronger bill passing. Alaskans were pissed off enough that he lost the Democratic primary. Clark Gruening, the victorious Democrat, then lost the general election to Republican Frank Murkowski, father of current Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski.

The Good
He was pro-choice on everything, ranging from abortion to gay marriage and pot. While he supported the FairTax initiative, just like Jesus's homeboy, Gravel called his version the "Progressive FairTax," which included a full rebate for necessities like food. Sweet… caviar! He was in favor of a carbon tax and international action on climate change, as well as a new guest worker program. He was also highly against the war in Iraq, as many libertarians were.

Gravel was officially a member of the Unitarian Universalist Church, though he was suspected of being a deep-cover atheist, or at least some kind of non-believer. He communicated support for the Rational Response Squad during his 2008 campaign, supported more funding and rigor in science education, and opposed creationism. Gravel also released a video on YouTube called "The Oppressive Nature of Religion" and dodged questions on his belief in religion at debates, saying that our society should be guided by love and not religion.

The Really Good
Gravel supported a constitutional amendment that would allow voter initiatives and referendums on a federal level, similar to the system in Switzerland… but bigger. He supported the impeachment of Curious George. Finally, his campaign ads were superb works of Bill Viola-esque video art.

He also supported universal healthcare and for college tuition to be paid by government, both rather contrary to pure libertarianism.

2020 Presidential Election positions
Gravel formed an exploratory committee on March 19, 2019, and made his FEC filing the next month. Unlike the other candidates, Gravel clarified he was not running to actually win the nomination, but to bring left-wing ideas to the Democratic primary debate stage. In such a crowded field including other progressives like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, he never distinguished himself and dropped out early on.

His official platform included the following positions:
 * Enacting Bernie Sanders' Medicare for All and eliminating private health insurance.
 * Enacting Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Green New Deal.
 * Creating a free public tax preparation and tax filing program.
 * Abolishing the NSA, ICE and the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol.
 * Abolishing the electoral college, instilling a ranked choice voting system, and establishing automatic voter registration.
 * Banning the death penalty, cash bail, solitary confinement, mandatory minimum sentences and private prisons.
 * Repealing the USA PATRIOT Act.
 * Closing all offshore military bases, cutting military aid to Saudi Arabia and Israel, withdrawing all abroad soldiers back to the United States, ending the use of drones, and renaming the Department of Defense to the "Department of War".
 * Investing $1.5 trillion in infrastructure.

The Bad
Gravel was a 9/11 "truther" and supported a new investigation into the attacks. In 2016, he said "there's no question in my mind that 9/11 was an inside job":

In April 2019, Gravel said "there had to be somebody that was planting the explosives in these buildings which came down by controlled demolition":

Later in April, he discussed 9/11 with David Pakman:

In addition to being a 9/11 truther, Gravel believed that the government covered up the existence of UFOs. In 2013, he attended a "citizens hearing" on the subject.

In 2013, Gravel attended the in Iran, a conference promoting Holocaust denial and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories which was attended by several Holocaust deniers and other unsavoury figures. At the conference, he was photographed alongside E. Michael Jones.

Why the Switch?
Gravel switched to the Libertarian Party because of his opposition to war, not because he was a right-winger. He felt that the DNC was being unfair to him and too friendly to Obama and Bill Clinton (sound familiar?). Gravel also decided that he owed his libertarian friends a favor, and seemed really enthusiastic about the libertarians — until he found out what freedom the Libertarians were really for: the "free" market. Gravel went back to the Democrats with his tail between his legs after the convention — a reminder to everyone to steer away from peer pressure.

The Gravel Institute
In 2020, he used some of the leftover money from his presidential candidacy to found the Gravel Institute, which aims to counter right wing misinformation. The videos use a similar format to PragerU, which the institute intends to counter, by featuring well known speakers (such as and  with planned appearances from Bernie Sanders and Chelsea Manning) in five to ten minute videos. The day to day operation of the channel was originally handled mostly by the same two teenagers who ran his 2020 campaign, but in 2022 they revealed a new board of directors which includes New York state senator law professor   CEO Hicham Oudghiri, and former Ohio state senator and House candidate  They have over 387k followers on Twitter and over 395K subscribers on YouTube as of August 2022.

The institute has featured such dubious lefty luminaries as Slavoj Žižek, Bhaskar Sunkara (Jacobin magazine) and David Cross.

The institute has been known to sometimes promote apologia for ruthless dictators with false assertions, even dead ones, like Muammar al-Gaddafi in a post that was subsequently deleted. The institute falsely claimed and later apologized for claiming that the Wagner Group did not express Nazi ideology.

In the days preceding the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, The Gravel Institute was promoting claims eerily similar to Russian propaganda amid increasing threats of military intervention by Russia and pleas for Western military aid by Ukraine. After the actual invasion, the institute suddenly became embarrassed by the obsequious attachment to Putin and began deleting the posts, in addition to changing a video's title and description about Ukraine, and later deleting/privating said video. The video in question could still be viewed on their Facebook page as recently as late April 2022, but this has also been removed.