Now that primary season is well underway, much of the attention in the Democratic race has surrounded front-runners Sens. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards. And since Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, announced that he was dropping out, only one “long-shot” candidate remains: Mike Gravel.
Though the former Alaska senator has yet to make a significant showing in any of the recent Democratic primaries and caucuses, he says that he’s in the race for the long haul. “We plan on campaigning right through until the end, until November,” spokesman Elliott Jacobson said.
Gravel has continued to deliver his message — mainly focused on withdrawal from Iraq — at town hall meetings in Florida, where his name is on the ballot for Tuesday’s primary. Most of his fellow candidates pledged not to campaign in Florida because the state broke Democratic National Committee rules when it moved up its primary date. But Jacobson said, “The senator believes that the state of Florida has every right to be seated at the convention, and that the delegates have a right to have a voice in who becomes the next president.”
The senator addressed the student bodies at Stetson University and Florida Atlantic University over the weekend, where he called for increased civic participation. “If you want to get control of your lives, if you want to get control of your government, you have to become lawmakers,” Gravel said, according to the Palm Beach Post
The Gravel campaign Web site also features a new video targeted at “young men and women” and compares the loss of life by young people during the Vietnam War to the current situation in Iraq.
Gravel did take a brief respite from the campaign trail to rub shoulders with Hollywood’s elite at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, on Jan. 21. He was not there to premier his next YouTube video, but rather to attend a panel discussion on media and politics.
Looking forward, Gravel will campaign in states holding primaries on Super Tuesday, including California. His campaign remains optimistic for the future: “The senator’s message resonates with a lot of people, but they don’t think he can win. So we’ve found that they’ve wandered off to other candidates who have a better chance; but that doesn’t mean his message is not connecting,” Jacobson said. “And we think that when people look back on the race, they’ll see how prescient Senator Gravel was.”
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