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  Are These Teenagers Really Running a Presidential Campaign? Yes. (Maybe.)
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ContributorWA Indy 
Last EditedWA Indy  Jun 10, 2019 06:14pm
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CategoryNews
Author Jamie Lauren Keiles
News DateFriday, June 7, 2019 12:00:00 AM UTC0:0
DescriptionZach Montellaro, a Politico reporter, reads the Federal Election Commission website like a tabloid. He not only trawls the big, dry database in which presidential candidates register to run; he also reads several smaller aftermarket ones that reformat the filings from the first. On Twitter, he follows F.E.C. bots that tweet out campaign filings as they post. On the night of March 19, he was up late when one such tweet, from @CATargetBot, crossed his feed: “NEW FEC F1 #POTUS Mike Gravel for President Exploratory Committee.”

At first, Montellaro wasn’t sure if the filing was real. He remembered Gravel from the 2008 Democratic primary. The former Alaska senator, once well known for helping disseminate the Pentagon Papers, was 77 then. His run, when it’s remembered at all, is recounted as a kind of Dada diversion that began with a silent art-house film of the candidate throwing a rock into a lake and peaked in the primary debates, with Gravel pointing fingers, castigating war hawks, roasting Joe Biden, embarrassing himself and asking future President Obama, “Barack, who do you want to nuke?”
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