Mike Gravel
Maurice Robert "Mike" Gravel (/ɡrəˈvɛl/ grə-VELL; May 13, 1930 – June 26, 2021) was an American politician and writer who represented Alaska in the United States Senate from 1969 to 1981 as a member of the Democratic Party. He ran for president twice (U.S. presidential nominations).
Mike Gravel
John S. Hellenthal
Michael F. Beirne
June 26, 2021 (aged 91)
Seaside, California, U.S.
Democratic (before 2008, 2010–2021)
Libertarian (2008–2010)
2
1951–1954
Born and raised in Springfield, Massachusetts, by French-Canadian immigrant parents, Gravel moved to Alaska in the late 1950s, becoming a real estate developer and entering politics. He served in the Alaska House of Representatives from 1963 to 1967, and also became Speaker of the Alaska House. Gravel was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1968.
As a senator, Gravel became nationally known for his forceful, but unsuccessful, attempts to end the draft during the War in Vietnam, and for putting the Pentagon Papers into the public record in 1971. He conducted an unsuccessful campaign for the Democratic nomination in 1972 for Vice President of the United States, and then played a crucial role in obtaining Congressional approval for the Trans-Alaska pipeline in 1973. He was re-elected to the Senate in 1974, but was defeated in his bid for a third term in the primary election in 1980.
An advocate of direct democracy and the National Initiative, Gravel staged a run for the 2008 Democratic nomination for President of the United States. His campaign failed to gain support, and in March 2008, he left the Democratic Party and joined the Libertarian Party to compete unsuccessfully for its presidential nomination and the inclusion of the National Initiative into the Libertarian Platform. He ran for president as a Democrat again in the 2020 election, in a campaign that ended four months after it began. Two years before his death, Gravel and his campaign staff founded the progressive think tank The Gravel Institute.
Early life, military service, education[edit]
Gravel was born on May 13, 1930, in Springfield, Massachusetts, one of five children of French-Canadian immigrant parents, Alphonse and Marie (née Bourassa) Gravel.[1][2][3] His parents were part of the Quebec diaspora,[4] and he was raised in a working-class neighborhood[5] during the Great Depression,[3] speaking only French until he was seven years old.[6] Calling him "Mike" from an early age,[2] his father valued work above all else, while his mother stressed the importance of education.[7]
Gravel was educated in parochial schools as a Roman Catholic.[2] There he struggled, due to what he later said was undiagnosed dyslexia,[6][8] and was left back in third grade.[9] He completed elementary school in 1945[10] and his class voted him "most charming personality".[2] A summer job as a soda jerk led to Gravel handing out campaign fliers for local candidates on his boss's behalf; Gravel was immediately impressed with "the awesomeness of political office".[2][6]
Gravel then boarded at Assumption Preparatory School in Worcester, Massachusetts,[2] where his performance was initially mediocre.[11] By Gravel's telling, in the summer of 1948 he intended to volunteer for the Israel Defense Forces during the 1947–1949 Palestine war, but Alexandra Tolstaya told him to return to school.[12] There an English teacher, the Assumptionist Edgar Bourque, gave him personal attention, improving Gravel's language skills and instructing him in public speaking.[11] Gravel's grades improved measurably in his final year[11] and he graduated in 1949.[12] His sister, Marguerite, became a Holy Cross nun,[2] but Gravel himself struggled with the Catholic faith.[13] He studied for one year at Assumption College, a Catholic school in Worcester, then transferred for his sophomore year to American International College in Springfield.[2] Journalist I. F. Stone and philosopher Bertrand Russell strongly influenced Gravel in their willingness to challenge assumptions and oppose social convention and political authority.[14]
Around May 1951, Gravel saw that he was about to be drafted and instead enlisted in the U.S. Army for a three-year term so that he could get into the Counterintelligence Corps.[15] After basic training and counterintelligence school at Fort Holabird in Maryland and in South Carolina, he went to Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia.[15] While he expected to be sent off to the Korean War when he graduated as a second lieutenant in early 1952, he was instead assigned to Stuttgart, West Germany, as a Special Adjutant in the Army's Communications Intelligence Service.[15] In Germany, Gravel conducted surveillance operations on civilians and paid off spies.[15] After about a year, he transferred to Orléans, France, where his French language abilities (if not his French-Canadian accent) allowed him to infiltrate French communist rallies.[15] He worked as a Special Agent in the Counterintelligence Corps until 1954,[5] eventually becoming a first lieutenant.[16]
Following his discharge, Gravel entered the Columbia University School of General Studies in New York City, where he studied economics and received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1956.[17][18] He moved to New York "flat broke"[16] and supported himself by working as a bar boy in a hotel,[16] driving a taxicab,[19] and working in the investment bond department at Bankers Trust.[16] During this time he left the Roman Catholic faith.[13]
U.S. Senator[edit]
Election to Senate in 1968[edit]
In 1968, Gravel ran against 81-year-old incumbent Democratic United States Senator Ernest Gruening, a popular former governor of the Alaska Territory who was considered one of the fathers of Alaska's statehood,[19] for his party's nomination to the U.S. Senate. Gravel's campaign was primarily based on his youth and telegenic appearance rather than issue differences.[21][45][44] He hired Joseph Napolitan, the first self-described political consultant, in late 1966.[21] They spent over a year and a half planning a short, nine-day primary election campaign that featured the slogans "Alaska first" and "Let's do something about the state we're in", the distribution of a collection of essays titled Jobs and More Jobs, and the creation of a half-hour, well-produced, glamorized biographical film of Gravel, A Man for Alaska.[2][19][21][46] The film was shown twice a day on every television station in Alaska, and carried by plane and shown on home projectors in hundreds of Alaska Native villages.[2][21][44] The heavy showings quickly reversed a 2–to–1 Gruening lead in polls into a Gravel lead.[21] Gravel visited many remote villages by seaplane and showed a thorough understanding of the needs of the bush country and the fishing and oil industries.[2][47]
Gravel also benefited from maintaining a deliberately ambiguous posture about Vietnam policy.[47] Gruening had been one of only two senators to vote against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and his opposition to President Lyndon B. Johnson's war policies was harming him among the Democratic electorate;[48] according to Gravel, "all I had to do was stand up and not deal with the subject, and people would assume that I was to the right of Ernest Gruening, when in point of fact I was to the left of him".[19] In A Man for Alaska, Gravel argued that "the liberals" would come to West Germany's defense if it was attacked, and that they "should apply the same rule to Asians".[49] During the campaign he also claimed that he was "more in the mainstream of American thought on Vietnam" than Gruening, despite the fact that he had written to Gruening to praise his antiwar stance four years earlier. Decades later, Gravel conceded that "I said what I said [about Vietnam] to advance my career."[45]
Gravel beat Gruening in the primary by about 2,000 votes.[48][50] Gruening found "the unexpected defeat hard to take" and thought that some aspects of his opponent's biographical film had misled viewers.[44] In the general election, Gravel faced Republican Elmer E. Rasmuson, a banker and former mayor of Anchorage.[48] College students in the state implored Gruening to run a write-in campaign as an Independent, but legal battles prevented him from getting approval for it until only two weeks were left.[48] A late appearance by anti-war presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy did not offset Gruening's lack of funds and endorsements; meanwhile, Gravel and Rasmuson both saturated local media with their filmed biographies.[48] On November 5, 1968, Gravel won the general election with 45 percent of the vote to Rasmuson's 37 percent and Gruening's 18 percent.[48]
Senate assignments and style[edit]
When Gravel joined the U.S. Senate in January 1969, he requested and received a seat on the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, which had direct relevance to Alaskan issues.[47] He also got a spot on the Public Works Committee,[47] which he held throughout his time in the Senate.[51] Finally, he was a member of the Select Committee on Small Business.[52] In 1971, he became chair of the Public Works Committee's Subcommittee on Public Buildings and Grounds,[47] and by 1973 he was chair of its Subcommittee on Water Resources,[53] then later its Subcommittee on Environmental Pollution. Gravel was also initially named to the Joint Committee on Congressional Operations.[47] By 1973, Gravel was off the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee and the Select Small Business Committee and instead a member of the Finance Committee,[53] and by 1977, he was chair of that body's Subcommittee on Energy and Foundations.[54] By 1973 he had also been on the ad hoc Special Committee to Study Secret and Confidential Government Documents.[53]
By his own admission, Gravel was too new and "too abrasive" to be effective in the Senate by the usual means of seniority-based committee assignments or negotiating deals with other senators,[21][55] and was sometimes seen as arrogant or a nuisance by the more senior and tradition-oriented members.[21][45] Gravel relied on attention-getting gestures to achieve what he wanted, hoping national exposure would force other senators to listen to him.[55] But even senators who agreed with him on issues considered his methods to be showboating.[56]
As part of this approach, Gravel voted with Southern Democrats to keep the Senate filibuster rule in place,[21] and accordingly supported Russell Long and Robert Byrd but opposed Ted Kennedy in Senate leadership battles.[21] In retrospective assessment, University of Alaska Anchorage history professor Stephen Haycox said, "Loose cannon is a good description of Gravel's Senate career. He was an off-the-wall guy, and you weren't really ever sure what he would do."[57]
Nuclear issues and the Cold War[edit]
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the U.S. Department of Defense was in the process of performing tests for the nuclear warhead for the Spartan anti-ballistic missile. Two tests, the "Milrow" and "Cannikin" tests, were planned, involving the detonation of nuclear bombs under Amchitka Island in Alaska. The Milrow test would be a one-megaton calibration exercise for the second and larger five-megaton Cannikin test, which would measure the effectiveness of the warhead. Gravel opposed the tests. Before the Milrow test took place in October 1969, he wrote that there were significant risks of earthquakes and other adverse consequences and called for an independent national commission on nuclear and seismic safety;[58] he then made a personal appeal to President Richard Nixon to stop the test.[59]
After Milrow was conducted, there was continued pressure on the part of environmental groups against going forward with the Cannikin test, while the Federation of American Scientists claimed that the warhead being tested was already obsolete.[59] In May 1971, Gravel sent a letter to U.S. Atomic Energy Commission hearings held in Anchorage in which he said the risk of the test was not worth taking.[60] Eventually a group not involving Gravel took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to issue an injunction against it,[61] and the Cannikin test took place as scheduled in November 1971.[61] Gravel had failed to stop the tests (notwithstanding his later claims during his 2008 presidential campaign).[nb 2]
In 1971, Gravel voted against the Nixon administration's proposed anti-ballistic missile system, the Safeguard Program, having previously vacillated over the issue, suggesting that he might be willing to support it in exchange for federal lands in Alaska being opened up for private oil drilling. His vote alienated Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, who had raised funds for Gravel's primary campaign.[38]
Nuclear power was considered an environmentally clean alternative for commercial generation of electricity and was part of a popular national policy for the peaceful use of atomic energy in the 1950s and 1960s.[62] Gravel publicly opposed this policy; besides the dangers of nuclear testing, he was a vocal critic of the Atomic Energy Commission,[62] which oversaw American nuclear efforts, and of the powerful United States Congress Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, which had a stranglehold on nuclear policy and which Gravel tried to circumvent.[62] In 1971, Gravel sponsored a bill to impose a moratorium on nuclear power plant construction and to make power utilities liable for any nuclear accidents;[63] in 1975, he was still proposing similar moratoriums.[64] By 1974, Gravel was allied with Ralph Nader's organization in opposing nuclear power.[65]
Six months before U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's July 1971 secret mission to the People's Republic of China (P.R.C.), Gravel introduced legislation to recognize and normalize relations with the P.R.C., including a proposal for unity talks between the P.R.C. and the Republic of China (Taiwan) regarding the Chinese seat on the U.N. Security Council.[66] He reiterated his position in favor of recognition, with four other senators in agreement, during Senate hearings in June 1971.[67]
Vietnam War, the draft, and the Pentagon Papers[edit]
Although he did not campaign against the Vietnam War during his first Senate campaign, by the end of 1970, Gravel was speaking out against United States policy in southeast Asia: in December of that year he persuaded William Fulbright to join him in a spontaneous two-day filibuster against a $155 million military aid package to Cambodia's Khmer Republic government in the Cambodian Civil War.[68]
President Richard Nixon had campaigned in 1968 on a promise to end the U.S. military draft,[69][70] a decision endorsed by the February 1970 report of the Gates Commission.[69][71]
The existing draft law was scheduled to conclude at the end of June 1971, and the Senate faced a contentious debate about whether to extend it as the Vietnam War continued.[72] The Nixon administration announced in February 1971 that it wanted a two-year extension to June 1973, after which the draft would end;[73][74] Army planners had already been operating under the assumption of a two-year extension, after which an all-volunteer force would be in place.[71] Skeptics such as Senate Armed Services Committee chairman John Stennis thought this unrealistic and wanted a four-year extension,[73] but the two-year proposal is what went forward in Congress.[72] By early May 1971, Gravel had indicated his intention to filibuster the draft renewal legislation, halting conscription and thereby bringing U.S. involvement in the war to a rapid end.[75] During this period he also supported efforts to mobilize and influence public opinion against the war, endorsing the "Vietnam War Out Now" rallies in Washington D.C. and San Francisco on April 24, 1971,[76] and financing a broadcast campaign by the antiwar group War No More with a personal loan.[77] In June 1972, he escorted a group of over 100 antiwar protesters, including psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, actress Candice Bergen, theater producer and director Joseph Papp, and pediatrician Dr. Benjamin Spock, into the United States Capitol Building; the group was arrested after blocking a hallway outside the Senate chamber.[78]
By June 1971, some Democratic senators opposed to the war wanted to limit the renewal to a one-year extension, while others wanted to end it immediately;[72] Gravel reiterated that he was one of the latter, saying, "It's a senseless war, and one way to do away with it is to do away with the draft."[72] A Senate vote on June 4 indicated majority support for the two-year extension.[72] On June 18 Gravel announced again his intention to counteract that by filibustering the renewal legislation,[79] defending the practice against those who associated it only with blocking civil rights legislation.[79] The first filibuster attempt failed on June 23 when, by three votes, the Senate voted cloture for only the fifth time since 1927.[80]
Protracted negotiations took place over House conference negotiations on the bill, revolving in large part around Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield's eventually unsuccessful amendment to tie renewal to a troop withdrawal timetable from Vietnam; during this time the draft law expired and no more were conscripted.[81] On August 5, the Nixon administration pleaded for a renewal before the Senate went on recess, but Gravel blocked Stennis's attempt to limit debate, and no vote was held.[82] Finally on September 21, 1971, the Senate invoked cloture over Gravel's second filibuster attempt by one vote, and then passed the two-year draft extension.[81] Gravel's attempts to stop the draft had failed[55] (notwithstanding Gravel's later claims that he had stopped or shortened the draft, taken at face value in some media reports, during his 2008 presidential campaign).[nb 3]
Meanwhile, on June 13, 1971, The New York Times began printing large portions of the Pentagon Papers.[83] The papers were a large collection of secret government documents and studies pertaining to the Vietnam War, of which former Defense Department analyst Daniel Ellsberg had made unauthorized copies and was determined to make public.[84] Ellsberg had for a year and a half approached members of Congress – such as William Fulbright, George McGovern, Charles Mathias, and Pete McCloskey – about publishing the documents, on the grounds that the Speech or Debate Clause of the Constitution would give congressional members immunity from prosecution, but all had refused.[85] Instead, Ellsberg allowed Times reporter Neil Sheehan to take notes of the Papers, but Sheehan disobeyed, copying them and taking the copies by plane to Washington, then New York, for organization and publication.[86]
The U.S. Justice Department immediately tried to halt publication, on the grounds that the information revealed within the papers harmed the national interest.[84] Within the next two weeks, a federal court injunction halted publication in the Times; The Washington Post and several other newspapers began publishing parts of the documents, with some of them also being halted by injunctions; and the whole matter went to the U.S. Supreme Court for arguments.[84] Looking for an alternate publication mechanism, Ellsberg returned to his idea of having a member of Congress read them, and chose Gravel based on the latter's efforts against the draft;[6] Gravel agreed where previously others had not. Ellsberg arranged for the papers to be given to Gravel on June 26[6] via an intermediary, Post editor Ben Bagdikian.[87] Gravel used his counter-intelligence experience to choose a midnight transfer in front of the Mayflower Hotel in the center of Washington, D.C.[88]
Over the next several days, Gravel (who was dyslexic) was assisted by his congressional office staff in reading and analyzing the report.[89] Worried his home might be raided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Gravel smuggled the report (which filled two large suitcases) into his congressional office, which was then guarded by disabled Vietnam veterans.[89]
On the night of June 29, 1971, Gravel attempted to read the papers on the floor of the Senate as part of his filibuster against the draft, but was thwarted when no quorum could be formed.[90] Gravel instead convened a session of the Buildings and Grounds subcommittee that he chaired.[90] He got New York Congressman John G. Dow to testify that the war had soaked up funding for public buildings, thus making discussion of the war relevant to the committee.[91] He began reading from the papers with the press in attendance,[90] omitting supporting documents that he felt might compromise national security,[92] and declaring, "It is my constitutional obligation to protect the security of the people by fostering the free flow of information absolutely essential to their democratic decision-making."[92]
He read until 1 a.m., culminating by saying "Arms are being severed. Metal is clashing through human bodies because of the public policy this government and all its branches continue to support."[45] Then with tears and sobs he said that he could no longer physically continue,[92] the previous three nights of sleeplessness and fear about the future having taken their toll.[6] Gravel ended the session by, with no other senators present, establishing unanimous consent[91] to insert 4,100 pages of the Papers into the Congressional Record of his subcommittee.[55][84] The following day, the Supreme Court's New York Times Co. v. United States decision ruled in favor of the newspapers[84] and publication in the Times and others resumed. In July 1971, Bantam Books published an inexpensive paperback edition of the papers containing the material the Times had published.[93]
Gravel, too, wanted to privately publish the portion of the papers he had read into the record, believing that "immediate disclosure of the contents of these papers will change the policy that supports the war".[87] After being turned down by many commercial publishers,[87] on August 4, he reached agreement with Beacon Press,[94] the publishing arm of the Unitarian Universalist Association, of which Gravel was a member.[55] Announced on August 17[93] and published on October 22, 1971,[87] this four-volume, relatively expensive set[93] became the "Senator Gravel Edition", which studies from Cornell University and the Annenberg Center for Communication have labeled as the most complete edition of the Pentagon Papers to be published.[95][96] 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.[96] Beacon Press then was subjected to an FBI investigation;[88] an outgrowth of this was the Gravel v. United States court case, which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled upon in June 1972;[88] in a 5-to-4 decision it held that the Speech or Debate Clause of the Constitution did grant immunity to Gravel for his reading the papers in his subcommittee; did grant some immunity to Gravel's congressional aide, but compelled the aide to testify before a grand jury about matters not directly related to the legislative process; and granted no immunity to Beacon Press in relation to their publishing the same papers.[97]
The events of 1971 changed Gravel in the following months from an obscure freshman senator to a nationally visible political figure.[55] He became a sought-after speaker on the college circuit as well as at political fundraisers,[55] opportunities he welcomed as lectures were "the one honest way a Senator has to supplement his income".[55] The Democratic candidates for the 1972 presidential election sought his endorsement.[55] In January 1972, Gravel endorsed Maine Senator Ed Muskie,[98] hoping that his support would help Muskie with the party's left wing and in ethnic French-Canadian areas during the first primary contest in New Hampshire[55] (Muskie won, but not overwhelmingly, and his campaign faltered soon after). In April 1972, Gravel appeared on all three networks' nightly newscasts to decry the Nixon administration's reliance on Vietnamization by making reference to the secret National Security Study Memorandum 1 document, which stated it would take 8–13 years for the Army of the Republic of Vietnam to defend South Vietnam.[99] Gravel made excerpts from the study public,[100] but senators Robert P. Griffin and William B. Saxbe blocked his attempt to read NSSM 1 into the Congressional Record.[99]
Domestic policy[edit]
In 1970, Gravel co-sponsored legislation to establish a guaranteed minimum income, entitling poor families to up to $6,300 a year (the equivalent of $42,000 in 2019 after adjustment for inflation). He subsequently voted for a "work bonus" program, which would have entitled low-income working families with dependent children if they were paying Social Security or Railroad Retirement taxes to a non-taxable bonus of up to 10 percent of their wages.[101]
In 1969, Gravel was the only Democratic Senator outside of the South to vote for Nixon's Supreme Court nominee Clement Haynsworth.[102] The following year, Gravel opposed Nixon's next pick, G. Harrold Carswell.[103]
Run for vice president in 1972[edit]
Gravel actively campaigned for the office of Vice President of the United States during the 1972 presidential election, announcing on June 2, 1972, over a month before the 1972 Democratic National Convention began, that he was interested in the nomination should the choice be opened up to convention delegates.[104] Toward this end he began soliciting delegates for their support.[105] He was not alone in this effort, as former Governor of Massachusetts Endicott Peabody had been running a quixotic campaign for the same post[106] since the prior year. Likely presidential nominee George McGovern was in fact already considering the unusual move of naming three or four acceptable vice-presidential candidates and letting the delegates choose.[106]
On the convention's final day, July 14, 1972, McGovern selected and announced Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri as his vice-presidential choice.[107] Eagleton was unknown to many delegates and the choice seemed to smack of traditional ticket balancing considerations.[107][108] Thus there were delegates willing to look elsewhere. Gravel was nominated by Bettye Fahrenkamp, the Democratic National Committeewoman from Alaska.[109] He then seconded his own nomination, breaking down in tears at his own words[110] and maybe trying to withdraw his nomination.[110] In any case he won 226 delegate votes, coming in third behind Eagleton and Frances "Sissy" Farenthold of Texas, in chaotic balloting[108][111] that included several other candidates.
Gravel attracted some attention for his efforts: writer Norman Mailer said he "provided considerable excitement" and was "good-looking enough to have played leads in B-films",[112] while Rolling Stone correspondent Hunter S. Thompson said Gravel "probably said a few things that might have been worth hearing, under different circumstances".[113] Yet the process was doubly disastrous for the Democrats. In the time consumed by nominating and seconding and all the vice-presidential candidates' speeches, the attention of the delegates on the floor was lost[113] and McGovern's speech was pushed to 3:30 a.m.[113] The haste with which Eagleton was selected led to surprise when his past mental health treatments were revealed; he withdrew from the ticket soon after the convention, to be replaced by Sargent Shriver.
Reelection to Senate in 1974[edit]
Several years earlier, Alaska politicians had speculated that Gravel would have a hard time getting both renominated and elected when his first term expired,[55] given that he was originally elected without a base party organization and tended to focus on national rather than local issues.[55]
Nonetheless, Gravel was reelected to the Senate in 1974,[114] with 58 percent of the vote. His Republican opponent, State Senator C. R. Lewis, was a national officer of the John Birch Society, and earned 42 percent of the vote.[115]
Second term[edit]
In 1975, Gravel introduced an amendment to cut the number of troops overseas by 200,000, but it was defeated on a voice vote.[116]
In September 1975, Gravel was named as one of several Congressional Advisers to the Seventh Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly, which met to discuss problems related to economic development and international economic cooperation.[117]
In June 1976, Gravel was the focus of a federal investigation into allegations that he was involved in a sex-for-vote arrangement. Congressional staff clerk Elizabeth Ray (who had already been involved in a sex scandal that led to the downfall of Representative Wayne Hays) said that in August 1972 she had sex with Gravel aboard a houseboat on the Potomac River, under the instruction of Representative Kenneth J. Gray, her boss at the time.[118] Gray allegedly wanted to secure Gravel's support for further funding for construction of the National Visitor Center in Washington, a troubled project that was under the jurisdiction of subcommittees that both members chaired.[119][120] Another Congressional staffer said she witnessed the boat encounter, but Gravel said at the time that he had never met either of the women.[118][121] Gravel and Gray strongly denied that they had made any arrangement regarding legislation,[118] and neither was ever charged with any wrongdoing.[122] Decades later, Gravel wrote that he had indeed had sex with Ray, but had not changed any votes because of it.[123]
Gravel and his main financial backer, Gottstein, had a falling out in 1978, during the Congressional debate over whether to allow a controversial sale of U.S. F-15 fighter aircraft to Saudi Arabia. An ardent backer of Israel, Gottstein opposed the sale and asked Gravel to vote against it. But Gravel not only voted for it but made an emotional speech attacking the anti-sale campaign.[38] Gravel wrote in 2008 that it was the only time Gottstein had ever asked him for a favor, and the rupture resulted in their never speaking to each other again.[124]
Death[edit]
Gravel died of multiple myeloma at his home in Seaside, California, on June 26, 2021, at age 91.[137][56][45] As a result on the delay in burials induced by the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, Gravel was later laid to rest on June 20, 2023 at Arlington National Cemetery where his cremated remains were buried. While given a military burial, a gun salute was not given at his request as he remained steadfast with his anti-violence stance.[261]
The New York Times's obituary for Gravel characterized him as "an unabashed attention-getter" who later become known for "mounting long-shot presidential runs".[56] The obituary in The Washington Post was similar, saying that Gravel was "an Alaska Democrat with a flair for the theatrical who rose from obscurity to brief renown" and later "ran quixotic campaigns for the presidency".[45] The Anchorage Daily News quoted Gravel as saying of himself in 1989, "I'm an independent kind of guy. A rough and ready kind of guy. My glands work in a certain way that make me stand up, foolishly sometimes, and fight."[135]
Awards and honors[edit]
In 2008, Gravel received the Columbia University School of General Studies' first annual Isaac Asimov Lifetime Achievement Award.[281]