Who Is Mike Gravel, and Why Are Teens Running His Presidential Campaign?
If you Google “Mike Gravel rock video,” the first thing that comes up is a three-minute long clip from 2007, shot in the style of an Agnès Varda flick. In it an old man throws a rock into a pond, and the words gravel2008.us materialize onscreen. Gravel, a former senator from Alaska, is what you might call both an unintentional performance artist and a semi-intentional presidential candidate. During his decade-long tenure in the Senate, Gravel took a vehement anti-Vietnam stance and entered the leaked Pentagon Papers into the congressional record, among other things. At 89 years old, Gravel is running for president for a second time with the help of memes, two teenage boys from Westchester, and some of the most leftist politics out of any 2020 Democratic hopeful.
The protest candidate is a pretty tried-and-true tradition on the left; just look at 2016 Green Party candidate, Jill Stein, for example. Gravel fits the description more or less. Even though he claims he’s running to win, most of Gravel’s platform is about pushing the party further to the left ahead of the Democratic primary. Gravel is someone who constantly dunks on Joe Biden for being a centrist, is openly against Israel’s occupation of Palestine, and drops merch that says things like Send Henry Kissinger to the Hague in a scary Stephen King–type font. Gravel’s been endorsed by the Iraqi journalist who famously threw a shoe at George Bush and young people online almost everywhere.
Which makes sense: Gravel was motivated to run for president because of some very smart teenagers who learned about the former senator from an episode of the podcast Chapo Trap House. This March, not long after the Chapo Trap House episode dropped, the teens reached out to Gravel via email. It took plenty of convincing, but eventually he agreed, and the campaign began. Gravel’s campaign is one that is highly influenced by emergent Gen-Z culture. There are posts on Gravel’s real Instagram account of a fake Coachella poster that reads Corporatechella and has Mayor Pete as headliner and a hologram of another opponent, Andrew Yang, as one of the supporting acts, as well as countless tweets about “savage capitalism” and Joe Biden’s chauvinism. This is the first election where members of Gen Z can vote, and Gravel’s campaign appeals to that group of recent adults in a way that no other candidate has really managed so far. Gravel is absolutely a fringe candidate: Not only is he approaching 90 years old, but it’s important to note that he is a reportedly a 9/11 truther and has gone on the record to say that extraterrestrials are “monitoring the planet.” Ultimately Gravel’s impact on younger voters is clear. Someone like Tim Ryan can play “Old Town Road” as a walk-out song, but only Mike Gravel can cause a #gravalanche.
Originally Appeared on Vogue
