George Stanley McGovern, a staunch liberal who served South Dakota in the U.S. Senate and House for more than two decades and who ran unsuccessfully as the Democratic Party nominee for president in 1972, died Sunday at the age of 90, his family said.
In 1956, he won a seat in Congress and was re-elected two years later.
After losing a bid for the U.S. Senate in 1960, McGovern was named special assistant to the president and director of the Food for Peace Program by President John F. Kennedy.
Two years later, he was elected to the Senate and reelected in 1968 and 1974. He served on Senate committees on agriculture, nutrition, forestry and foreign relations, and the Joint Economic Committee. He also served three years on the Commission on Party Structure and Delegate Selection, which changed the way states picked their delegates before leaving it in 1971 to run for president.
In 1972, Senator McGovern was selected as the Democratic Party nominee for president on a platform that included ending the war in Vietnam at a time when the country was torn over U.S. involvement there, but losing in a lopsided vote for incumbent Richard Nixon, with the McGovern ticket earning only 17 electoral votes -- from Massachusetts and the District of Columbia -- to Nixon's 520.
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