George McGovern dies at age 90

The family spokesman also said, McGovern died at approximately 5:15 a.m. Sunday morning at a hospice in Sioux Falls, surrounded by family and friends.

McGovern was a bomber pilot in World War II who became an early critic of the Vietnam war and a leader of the democrat’s liberal wing. He was elected to his first three senate terms in 1962. McGovern ran for President three times, also making a try for nomination in 1968 and 1984.

Despite the 1972 watergate break-in, Richard Nixon won a second term in one of the biggest landslides in modern history. McGovern lost his senate reelection bid and left Congress in 1981. A Failed run for the democratic nomination in ’84 saw him return to private life for good, but he remained politically relevant as he moved in and out of different think tanks and served as an ambassador to the UN Food Program.

McGovern once said politics was an act of faith, and while he joked his political timing was off he strove to deepen that spiritual relationship with a country he loved until the day he died.

George McGovern was 90 years old.