Mike Gravel served two terms as a U.S. Senator from Alaska from 1969 to 1981. Currently a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the presidency, he sat down with HPR to discuss what he considers to be the most important issue facing America: his National Initiative, a plan to implement a form of direct democracy through federal ballot initiatives.

HPR: You were the first person to file your candidacy for the Democratic nomination. But in the last half of 2007 you started getting excluded from debates and your campaign isn’t getting much coverage. Given this, how effective has your campaign been in promoting direct democracy?

Sen. Mike Gravel: It’s been more effective than I realized. It’s very hard; we’re talking about something that’s totally out of the box, politically. I got more press for the National Initiative in the first week of my candidacy than I had in the ten years before that. But when you’re talking about something that people are not acquainted with, you have to repeat it over and over again. Now what had happened in the campaign was that the Democrats, and then corporate America, immediately wanted to marginalize me. Not so much because of the National Initiative, because I don’t think they understand it at all, but because I took a very strong position on the war and pushed the other candidates in that direction. I told the Congress how to end the war and gave them the procedures on how to do it. That disturbed them. Then when I challenged them over the military-industrial complex and how the country has been sold out, that disturbed them.

But, after the Texas and Ohio primaries, the media has got to have some grist for the mill, which is going to give me an opportunity to get my message out, and that’s why I continue to run. After the convention, obviously I won’t have the nomination, but maybe another party would want to pick me up as their standard bearer going into the next election. There are five blind polls that I know of that show that on the issues I am far and away ahead of all the other candidates. If the American people knew who I was, with respect to the issues, I would become president.

HPR: Would you say that the National Initiative is the most important issue of your campaign?

MG: It’s not only the most important issue of my campaign, it is the most important issue in the history of the country since it’s founding. There are twenty-four states that have initiative laws where people can make laws at the state and local level. But those laws are very inadequate. It should apply in every government jurisdiction in the United States. In the twenty-four states that have this, it is controlled by representative government. I want it to be independent of representative government. And how we do that is by having the electoral trust created, which will administer the procedures on behalf of the people.

HPR: So you see the National Initiative as being a fourth branch of the government, providing checks and balances?

MG: Very much so. In fact, it becomes the fourth check. And that’s very significant, because if you have one party controlling all three branches of government, you have no checks. And keep in mind, under our system, which has been so corrupted, the two political parties, Democrats and Republicans, which are not mentioned in the Constitution, are more powerful than the executive, the judicial, and the legislative branches. It’s a monopoly. And how do you break that monopoly? You can’t. Not within the context of representative government. That’s why I decided to go around the government and enact this law to allow the people to become lawmakers.

HPR: How do you get the necessary political power to pass these measures?

MG: By turning around and having a private non-profit corporation conduct a national election, and getting sixty-million Americans to vote for it. When this happens it will become the law of the land. The founding fathers all agreed that the people were sovereign and the first amendment gives the people the right to express their opinion and petition the government. What is an election but this?]]>