Marianne Williamson helped a protest candidate get a surge of campaign donations to aid him in qualifying for the next debates

• Presidential candidate Marianne Williamson sent out an email encouraging her supporters to donate to Sen. Mike Gravel's longshot presidential campaign to help him qualify for the July debates. 
• Gravel, an 89-year-old who served in the US Senate from 1969 to 1981, is running an unique protest presidential campaign managed by three teenagers from Westchester, New York who say Gravel is just 10,000 donors short of qualifying for the debates.

• In order to qualify for the next round of Democratic debates in Detroit, Michigan on July 30 and 31, candidates must either obtain 65,000 unique donors or reach 1% in three DNC-approved polls. 

• The Gravel campaign got a surge of new contributions immediately after Williamson's fundraising email.

• The teens running Gravel's campaign have publicly that they expect the campaign to come to an end in the next few weeks if Gravel does not qualify for the July debates, and plan to donate their remaining campaign funds to charity. 

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Former Sen. Mike Gravel's longshot presidential campaign got a fundraising boost on Sunday night when fellow outsider 2020 candidate Marianne Williamson sent out an email encouraging her supporters to donate to his campaign to help him qualify for the July debates. 

Gravel, an 89-year-old who served in the US Senate from 1969 to 1981, is running an unique protest presidential campaign managed by three teenagers from Westchester, New York, whose main goal is to get Gravel on the debate stage in July to challenge the fellow 2020 Democrats on foreign policy and US imperialism. 

In order to qualify for the next round of Democratic debates in Detroit, Michigan on July 30 and 31, candidates must either obtain 65,000 unique donors or reach 1% in three DNC-approved polls. 

In recent days, the Gravel campaign has said they are just 10,000 donors short of meeting the donor requirement, but have only reached 1% in one approved poll, according to Politico's poll tracker. 

Read more: Meet Marianne Williamson, the motivational speaker and Oprah Winfrey pal who confused pretty much everyone at the Democratic debates

Williamson, an author, motivational speaker, and New Age spiritual guru, met both requirements to qualify for the first round of debates in June. She raised eyebrows - and became an Internet meme overnight - with her unique answers to policy questions, in which she claimed that detailed policy plans without the spirit of love could not defeat President Donald Trump. 

In a Sunday email to supporters, Williamson wrote of Gravel, "during his time in the Senate, he garnered wide respect for his unabashed opposition to the Vietnam War and for reading the Pentagon Papers into the Congressional Record."

She added: "Democracy thrives when brave men like Mike Gravel risk their careers to do what's just and right...that's why diverse and provocative voices like Gravel's are so important to move the debates and conversation about our nation's peace and prosperity forward."

The Gravel campaign got a surge of new contributions right after Williamson's fundraising email. The campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment from INSIDER inquiring how many total new donors they'd obtained since Williamson's email went out. 

The teens running Gravel's campaign have publicly that they expect the campaign to come to an end in the next few weeks if Gravel does not qualify for the July debates, and plan to donate their remaining campaign funds to charity. 

In a May interview with INSIDER, Gravel's chief strategist Henry Williams, a Columbia University freshman, said that he while he didn't expect Gravel to make it to the first primaries or win the election, he hoped Gravel would serve as the "vanguard" for new leftist ideas like drastically reducing the size of the US military and decriminalizing sex work, and help bring those policy positions out of the fringes and into the political mainstream. 

Read more: Mike Gravel's progressive, anti-war presidential campaign is being run by three teens on social media

Williams said: "My dream is to transfer all our political momentum behind one candidate, probably Bernie Sanders, and to get Bernie to adopt a plank to his policy platform regarding non-interventionism or cutting the military budget, opposing the criminalization of sex work, just one or two."

He added: "We want to prove there's a political market for these messages because the party needs a true left flank."

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