George McGovern, the three-term senator from South Dakota who carried the Democratic Party’s liberal banner in the Vietnam War era, launched a star-crossed bid for the presidency in 1972 and energized many of the leading Democrats of the past generation, died Sunday at a hospice in Sioux Falls, S.D. He was 90.
Family spokesman Steve Hildebrand confirmed the death to The Associated Press. The cause was not disclosed.
In a public career spanning more than five decades, McGovern may be best remembered as a presidential candidate of near-epic futility, in which he lost 49 of 50 states. The senator’s liberal agenda — supporting civil rights and anti-poverty programs and strongly denouncing the Vietnam War — was critical to his landslide defeat to President Richard Nixon. But those views also helped define the future vision of the Democratic Party.
“In many ways, he revolutionized the Democratic Party,” said Ross Baker, a Rutgers University political-science professor. “His followers drove out the old guard. Some would say it was the end of the old Democrats, but others would say, no, it opened up the party to women and others.”
Gary Hart, McGovern’s campaign manager in 1972 and later a U.S. senator from Colorado and a presidential candidate, said McGovern was the conscience of the Democratic Party.
“He was a man of great conviction and morality,” Hart said.
McGovern did tremendous work in opening up the party for women and minorities, Hart said.
“He deserves more credit than he receives for growing the party between 1968 to 1972,” Hart said.
Others who worked on McGovern’s 1972 campaign were Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton, future National Security Adviser Samuel Berger and future White House Chief of Staff John Podesta.
McGovern, a minister’s son, was raised in a South Dakota farm community during the Depression and was a decorated bomber pilot in World War II. Both experiences — seeing hobos begging for food at his family’s doorstep and witnessing emaciated child beggars in wartime Italy — molded his political career from the moment he was first elected to Congress in 1956.
In the early 1960s, he conceived the idea of the U.S. Food-for-Peace program, which gave foreign nations credit to buy surplus U.S. crops, and served under President John Kennedy as the program’s first director.
After winning his Senate seat in 1962, he spent much of his public life working on the expansion of food-stamp and school-lunch programs and championing civil rights and the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in the Senate.
After being defeated for re-election to the Senate in 1980, he served as the U.S. representative to the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization in Rome.
As part of his wide-ranging humanitarian interests, McGovern was synonymous with the antiwar movement. In September 1963, he became the first person to challenge the burgeoning Vietnam War on the Senate floor.
He campaigned in 1968 on a pledge to immediately withdraw all U.S. troops from Vietnam and to cut the Pentagon’s budget by 40 percent.
The race against Nixon was seen by most as a sure loss. The revelations of the Nixon administration’s involvement in the Watergate scandal — which stemmed from a 1972 break-in of Democratic National Committee headquarters — had not yet sunk into the public’s consciousness.
He offered the vice presidential slot to several prominent Democratic lawmakers, but he was turned down. When Sen. Thomas Eagleton of Missouri accepted the No. 2 position, McGovern said he backed him “a thousand percent.”
Within two weeks, Eagleton stepped down amid revelations that he had undergone psychiatric treatment.
He replaced Eagleton with Sargent Shriver, the Kennedy in-law who was founding director of the Peace Corps. But the campaign never recovered.
The McGovern-Shriver ticket received 38 percent of the popular vote, carrying just Massachusetts and the District of Columbia, for 17 electoral votes. Nixon won 520 electoral votes.
At the 1973 Gridiron Club dinner in Washington, McGovern was able to joke, “Ever since I was a young man, I wanted to run for the presidency in the worst possible way — and I did.”
In 2000, Clinton awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian honor.
Denver Post staff writer Ryan Parker contributed to this report.
In memoriam
“We first met George while campaigning for him in 1972. Our friendship endured for 40 years. As a war hero, distinguished professor, congressman, senator and ambassador, George always worked to advance the common good and help others realize their potential. Of all his passions, he was most committed to feeding the hungry, at home and around the world.”
Former President Bill Clinton and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton
“Even though he and our father were political rivals, they had much in common: a deep love of country; an abiding passion for the issues about which they cared; an unwavering commitment to serve the American people. Over the course of his long and productive career, George McGovern earned the respect of Americans around the country and across the political spectrum.”
Tricia Nixon Cox and Julie Nixon Eisenhower, whose father, President Richard Nixon, beat McGovern in the 1972 presidential election
“G McGovern – a great man. War hero, teacher, congressman, senator, presidential candidate, and life long advocate for peace. God bless.”
Tom Brokaw, a South Dakota native and special correspondent for NBC News, on Twitter
