WASHINGTON (AFP) — He's been written off by big US media as unelectable and has little money to finance his White House bid, but former Democratic Senator Mike Gravel has been able to keep his hopes alive thanks to YouTube and the Internet.
After representing Alaska in the US Senate from 1969 to 1981, Gravel fell off the political radar screen, his claim to fame being his vocal opposition to the Vietnam war.
For five months in 1971 he fought, alone, a law to renew the draft, forcing then-president Richard Nixon to allow it to expire in 1973. In 1971 he also made public the "Pentagon Papers," secret documents regarding the lead up to the Vietnam war.
A fierce critic of the Iraq war, Gravel does not mince words when talking about his Democratic opponents, especially front-runner Senator Hillary Clinton, whom he calls "gutless wonders" for not using lawmakers' funding power to bring an end to the war.
Low in the polls, he was blocked from the two most recent Democratic debates, MSNBC's October 30 debate in Philadelphia and one sponsored by CNN on November 15 in Las Vegas. Gravel told AFP it was his opposition to the war that kept him off the air.
"I charge GE, which is the owner of NBC, that they are excercising censorship because they are a major defense contractor and that is code in my mind for war profiteer," he said.
He said it is difficult to maintain his campaign against "celebrity candidates" because "mainstream media is controlling the information that Americans get."
"What is important is the American people need to hear what I or anybody else says," he said.
And so the 77-year-old candidate is using very modern methods to get his message out.
His avant-guard campaign ads, including one in which he stares at the camera saying nothing before tossing a large rock into the water and walking away, have been hits on YouTube.
And while the debates were going on in Philadelphia and Las Vegas, Gravel held his own discussions of the issues, via streaming video on the Internet, watched by thousands.
His scrappy, cutting-edge methods have drawn fans like 27-year-old millionaire Gregory Chase.
Saying it was a "great disappointment" that Gravel had been blocked from the debates, Chase announced he would spend a sizable amount of money to support the former senator's presidential bid through the key New Hampshire primary vote.
"People who use the Internet like Mike Gravel," said his campaign director Jose Rodriguez, who led Gravel to video streaming and the Internet for publicity.
"You just see his popularity by all the videos he has on YouTube and things that people make for him," he said.
A supporter of abortion, gay rights, universal health care and campaign finance reform, Gravel opposes the death penalty.
But his primary reason for running for the presidency is to advance his agenda for direct national elections on issues, called the "National Initiative."
"The whole reason I am running is to empower the people," he said. "What the people need to be able to do is to be put in position so they can vote on the policies issues that affect their lives," he said.
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