![]() ![]() There an English teacher, the Assumptionist Edgar Bourque, gave him personal attention, improving Gravel's language skills and instructing him in public speaking. 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. Gravel then boarded at Assumption Preparatory School in Worcester, Massachusetts, where his performance was initially mediocre. 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". He completed elementary school in 1945 and his class voted him "most charming personality". There he struggled, due to what he later said was undiagnosed dyslexia, and was left back in third grade. Gravel was educated in parochial schools as a Roman Catholic. Calling him "Mike" from an early age, his father valued work above all else, while his mother stressed the importance of education. His parents were part of the Quebec diaspora, and he was raised in a working-class neighborhood during the Great Depression, speaking only French until he was seven years old. 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. Two years before his death, Gravel and his campaign staff founded the progressive think tank The Gravel Institute.Īs of 2023, Gravel is the last Democrat to have either held or win election to Alaska’s Class 3 Senate seat.Įarly life, military service, education ![]() ![]() He ran for president as a Democrat again in the 2020 election, in a campaign that ended four months after it began. 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 was re-elected to the Senate in 1974, but was defeated in his bid for a third term in the primary election in 1980.Īn advocate of direct democracy and the National Initiative, Gravel staged a run for the 2008 Democratic nomination for President of the United States. He conducted a 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. Senate in 1968.Īs 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 served in the Alaska House of Representatives from 1963 to 1967, and also became Speaker of the Alaska House. Maurice Robert " Mike" Gravel ( / ɡ r ə ˈ v ɛ l/ grə- VELL – June 26, 2021) was an American politician and writer who served as a United States Senator from Alaska from 1969 to 1981 as a member of the Democratic Party, and who later in life twice ran for the presidential nomination of that party.īorn 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. ![]()
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