Alaskans HATED Mike Gravel when he was our senator and probably more than any other factor (besides Carter's land theft), Gravel is the reason Alaska has been a Republican state since 1981. Like Mark Begich, he ignored the people of Alaska to represent Outsiders. Gravel followed his own agenda and his attendance record was deplorable. He even missed critical Alaska votes and tacitly supported the D2 land grab.

The only reason he won the Democratic nomination in 1968 was because Ernest Gruening had opposed Johnson's Gulf of Tonkin resolution and the military wanted Gruening out of office. Gravel won by only 2000 votes. Then in 1974, his opponent was a John Birch Society member and most of the people going to the polls had been in Alaska less than a year, so believed his campaign rhetoric because they didn't know his actual record. By 1980, the population had settled down enough that he was overwhelmingly removed from office by his own party.