Salon (sub)

May 7, 2007 | NEW YORK -- If Mike Gravel, the former senator from Alaska now running for president as a quasi-lefty long shot, can be said to have a base, then he should have been standing right in the thick of it Wednesday night.

Fresh from taping an appearance on Comedy Central's "Colbert Report" in midtown Manhattan, Gravel and press secretary Alex Colvin took an impromptu drive down to Cooper Union in the East Village. Six blocks north of the defunct punk-rock club CBGB, venerable leftist historian Howard Zinn was leading a group of actors and musicians, including Danny Glover, Ally Sheedy and Steve Earle, in a selection of readings and songs, such as Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land," Bob Dylan's "Masters of War," Allen Ginsberg's "America," and speeches from Martin Luther King Jr. and Cindy Sheehan. But when the 76-year-old Gravel, white-haired and clad in the dark suit and red tie that are the uniform for all male presidential candidates, strode into the back of the crowded auditorium almost two hours after the event began, there was little hint that the mostly graying throng in attendance recognized him. What notice Gravel did get was from one 30-something man who told him to keep up the fight, and from two gushing, acne-marked teenagers who asked for an autograph and promised their vote if he continued sticking to the issues.