Mike Gravel endorses Bernie Sanders in 2020 race
Former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel, who last week announced the end of his presidential campaign, endorsed Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders Tuesday in the 2020 White House race.
“Bernie has a program that benefits all Americans, not just the 1 percent. He will be a great president for all Americans,” Gravel said in a video posted to Twitter.
“We have a simple choice,” he continued. “We can have a Democratic socialism of Bernie Sanders to benefit all Americans, or we can have Republican socialism which benefits the 1 percent and leads us to a constant state of war. The choice is yours.”
Gravel announced last week he would be exiting the contest for the Democratic nomination. His campaign, which was managed by a pair of progressive teenage activists, officially closed shop Tuesday, according to his Twitter account.
The 89-year-old retired lawmaker, who left elected office in 1981 and mounted an unsuccessful White House bid in 2008, sought to appear on the early primary debate stages this year to shift the party’s politics further left.
Gravel did not participate in either the June debate in Miami or the July debate in Detroit, despite reporting to have achieved the number of individual donors required to take part in the latter forum.
“This campaign, really, is about crafting a new society—a kind and gentle society, based on dignity and equality, solidarity and love,” Gravel’s team wrote Tuesday in a lengthy Twitter thread marking the conclusion of his candidacy. “A good life for all, regardless of inborn traits or one’s station at birth. A world of peace and real freedom, democracy and fraternity.”
In most polls of Democratic voters, Sanders ranks second behind former Vice President Joe Biden, a frequent target of Gravel’s social media snark in recent months and the subject of an attack ad by the Gravel campaign.
