“Alaska Senator” Mike Gravel Hand Signed 3X5 Card Todd Mueller COA

Description

Up for auction
“Alaska Senator” Mike Gravel Hand Signed 3X5 Card.
This item is authenticated By Todd Mueller Autographs and comes with their certificate of authenticity.
ES-8904E
Maurice Robert
Gravel
(
/ɡrəˈvɛl/
grə-VEL
; May 13, 1930 – June 26, 2021) was an American politician who served as a
United States Senator
from
Alaska
from 1969 to 1981 as a member of the
Democratic Party
, and who, in later life, twice ran for the presidential nomination of that party. 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 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. 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
.