A family spokesman says former U.S. Sen. George McGovern, the Democrat who lost to President Richard Nixon in 1972 in a historic landslide, has died at the age of 90.

The spokesman, Steve Hildebrand, told The Associated Press by telephone that McGovern died at 5:15 a.m. Sunday 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 Democrats' liberal wing.

He was elected to his first of three Senate terms in 1962.

McGovern ran for president three times, also making a try for the nomination in 1968 and 1984.

Despite the 1972 Watergate break-in, Nixon won a second term in one of the biggest landslides in modern history.

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