{mosads}McGovern’s daughter, Ann McGovern, told the AP earlier Wednesday that the former senator, 90, was “nearing the end.” 

McGovern was the 1972 Democratic nominee for president, losing his bid for the White House to incumbent President Richard Nixon.

He also served as a member of the House of Representatives from 1957 to 1961 and the Senate from 1963 to 1981, where he was a champion of the Democratic Party’s liberal wing. In his later years, McGovern had focused his attention on fighting world hunger.

McGovern had faced many health problems in recent years, and in 2011 was hospitalized after he fell and hit his head before a television interview.

His upstart campaign to capture the Democratic nomination in 1972 was detailed in two seminal works of political journalism: Timothy Crouse’s The Boys on the Bus, and Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72.