Daily Caller News Foundation
Exposing The Truth One Story At A Time

Investigative Group

Who Is Mike Gravel, The Former Democratic Senator Who Told House Dems To ‘F– Off’

Who Is Mike Gravel, The Former Democratic Senator Who Told House Dems To ‘F– Off’

The U.S. White House (By Original uploader was Black and White at en.wikipedia - Transferred from en.wikipedia, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3786245)

Andrew Kerr
July 13, 2019 3:28 PM ET

Former Alaska Sen. and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Mike Gravel told House Democrats to “fuck off” after the caucus’s Twitter account attacked Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff Friday.

The caucus called out Saikat Chakrabarti for “explicitly singling out a Native American woman of color” when the staffer insinuated in June that freshman Democratic Rep. Sharice Davids of Kansas was enabling a “racist system” when she voted to provide emergency funding for the humanitarian crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Gravel, 89, served in the U.S. Senate from 1969 to 1981. He’s most well-known for effectively declassifying the Pentagon Papers by reading them into the Senate record in 1971.

The Democrat ran a highly unusual presidential campaign in 2008 where he ran ads such as “Rock” — a nearly 3-minute video of Gravel staring into a camera and throwing a rock into a lake.

Gravel’s antics have carried over into his 2020 presidential campaign, which he launched in April with the intention not to win the Democratic nomination, but to qualify for the televised debates.

Gravel launched his latest bid with a campaign ad titled “Rock 2.0,” which again features the former Alaska senator staring into a camera and throwing a rock into a lake.

“It’s time to make some waves for change,” Gravel said in the ad.

Gravel reversed course on his no-win intentions weeks after launching his campaign in a Twitter announcement that “after extensive consideration and discussion,” he’s running to win the 2020 Democratic nomination.

Gravel didn’t qualify for the first round of debates held in June, but he participated in his own way by launching a Twitter offensive while sitting in the audience.

Gravel’s highly provocative presidential campaign is focused almost exclusively on his Twitter account, which is run primarily by his teenage staffers.

The former Alaska senator announced Friday that his campaign had raised money from 65,000 unique donors, one of the Democratic National Committee’s thresholds to participate in the second round of debates on July 30 and 31.

Gravel announced on Twitter that his 65,000th donor would receive a signed rock.

But Gravel has yet to meet the DNC’s second threshold of polling at 1% or more in at least three party-approved polls.

“I’m grateful to every one of the 65,000 who donated to our campaign, and the thousands more that have followed and supported us,” Gravel said in a statement Friday. “I will do all I can to ensure their voices not be silenced in this primary.”

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact [email protected].