Tag Archives: george mcgovern

Varilek hopes to copy McGovern

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George McGovern endorsed Matt Varilek for the U.S.House Tuesday.

Varilek is new on the political scene, untested and unproven. He’s facing an incumbent in a traditionally Republican state. George McGovern knows all about that.

McGovern was elected to the House in 1956, a year Republican Dwight Eisenhower was elected president. McGovern defeated incumbent Harold Lovre, a former resident of Hamlin County, the home county of Rep. Kristi Noem.

Lovre was also a relative of my family and, Dad says, a good man who loved my grandmother’s cooking.

McGovern won another term in the House in 1958, beating SD living legend Joe Foss. In 2008, looking back at his election history with me, McGovern said it was the easiest race of his life, since Foss didn’t really want to run but was talked into it by the state GOP.

McGovern went on to win three terms in the Senate, but his long career started with an uphill race for the U.S. House. Matt Varilek hopes to emulate that.

Could Rick Santorum be the Republican George McGovern?

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A blogger thinks so:

… Exactly 40 years after Senator George McGovern, the “true liberal” in the Democratic race, wrested the Party’s nomination from “Establishment” candidate Ed Muskie, the ghost of McGovern looms large and threatening on Mitt Romney’s path to the nomination. As does the specter of Ed Muskie from neighboring Vermont who, like Romney, stumbled in New Hampshire after some dirty tricks by the Manchester Union-Leader. Muskie in 1972, like Romney in 2012, won New Hampshire as expected, but not decisively — and therein lies the rub.

Click here to see the entire post.

John Thune, power and irony

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The correct term is irony.

And for once, it’s used correctly. John Thune’s elevation to the No. 3 spot in the Senate Republican leadership is remarkable, impressive, and yes, ironic.
Thune gained a Senate seat by defeating Tom Daschle in 2004 in an election where the major issue was, had Daschle grown too big for his SD britches and too comfortable in his East Coast tuxedo?

SD voters decided the answer was yes, and Daschle, after three terms in the Senate and 26 years in Congress, was out. He had risen to the post of Democratic leader of the Senate, a tremendous accomplishment but apparently a kiss of death in his home state.

Now, Thune is the No. 3 GOPer in the Senate and rising like a hit single. The No. 2 man, Republican Whip Sen. John Kyl, has said he will put down the whip next year, so JT could move up again.

Thune told me he likes having a seat at the table to make the case for South Dakota issues and ideas.

He also said Tuesday he feels his views and votes are in sync with South Dakota, so he may be less vulnerable. Perhaps that differentiates him from Daschle, George McGovern and Larry Pressler, who served three terms in the Senate from South Dakota but were denied a fourth.

It’s been called the Kurse of Karl, in honor of SD’s only four-term senator, Karl Mundt. But some in South Dakota’s tiny chattering class say it has more to do with the perception of power than a fourth term. We’re small staters who don’t like to see someone put on titles or airs.

Of course, if Thune runs for vice president and is elected in 2012, or if he runs for and wins the White House in 2016 or 2020 — and he’s still just 50 — he need not worry about that.

Being one of the top Republicans in the Senate, with a new assignment to appear before the media as often as possible, is a great way to get there.

Inside George McGovern’s painful night

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EMTs place George McGovern in an ambulance Friday outside the McGovern Library in Mitchell as DWU President Bob Duffett looks on. (Chris Huber/Daily Republic)

First and foremost,  George McGovern is apparently recovering and doing OK in a Sioux Falls hospital. We published this update Saturday.

Here’s a  tweet from his grandson, Matt McGovern, issued around noon Saturday:

“Thank you all for the well-wishes, my grandpa is doing alright and recovering at the hospital.”

That is welcome news today after seeing the aftermath of his fall Friday. It wasn’t pretty.

It was around 5:45 p.m. Friday. I was at The Daily Republic office working on other stories and preparing to head to  Dakota Wesleyan University to watch the live C-SPAN show “The Contenders,” which would feature McGovern in the 13th of 14 episodes on men who ran for the presidency and lost but made a difference.

We did a preview story for the Friday MDR and also published a new blog packed with info on McGovern. It will be constantly updated.

The show was set to start at 7 p.m. and photographer Chris Huber and I planned to get to the McGovern Center around 6:45 p.m. McGovern wasn’t going to be on until 8:30 p.m. He was going to eat dinner, munch on a brownie and watch the first 90 minutes of videos and comments on TV with his daughter Ann, Don Simmons from the McGovern Center and others.

I w as lucky enough to be invited as well.

Instead, we heard a report on the scanner about an elderly man down by the McGovern Museum. A minute later, it was said the man was 89 — McGovern’s age. I was out the door in less than a minute and soon at the center, where an ambulance had backed up to a door and people milled about.

I hustled up and was stunned by what I saw. McGovern’s face was bruised and bloody and he sat in a chair just inside the center, wrapped in a bloody pink quilt. His daughter, Simmons, DWU President Bob Duffett, the C-SPAN producer and other people were standing around, looking dazed, as two paramedics worked with McGovern.

He was able to respond to questions and knew the day and date. After ensuring he was stable, the paramedics placed a back board on a gurney and placed him on it. Soon McGovern was in the ambulance and it rolled toward Avera Queen of Peace Hospital.

I asked the C-SPAN producer what his plan was. “The show must go on,” Pete Daniels said.

And it did. It was a solid effort with interesting insights on McGovern’s career from the great reporter and author Jules Witcover, who covered McGovern’s runs for the White House in 1968 and 1972, and author Scott Farris, who wrote “Almost President: The Men Who Lost the Race but Changed the Nation.”

It will be repeated on C-SPAN Sunday morning and again around Christmas when all 14 shows will be packaged  together.

We watched the show at the center — the brownies were excellent — while Simmons checked for news updates on his laptop  and made and took calls. One thing  was evident: This was so unfair.  McGovern had looked forward to the show and a chance to discuss his life, career and goals.

Ann McGovern followed her dad to the hospital with Duffett and returned a couple hours later to get her car and head to Sioux Falls. George McGovern was being taken via helicopter to a Sioux Falls hospital.

Ironically, the fall garnered McGovern far more attention than the two hours of air time on a little-seen politics and policy network. His accident and condition have been reported atop websites across the nation, from CNN (which got several facts wrong) to The New York Times.

The South Dakota media has of course focused on it as well, although KELO actually ran two  feature stories Friday night before reporting his fall. Strange.

Today, we are told McGovern is recovering and I will give his family space and peace. We will offer updates as we learn more.

McGovern makes first post-health-scare public appearance

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George McGovern speaks Monday at the McGovern Conference in Mitchell. (Photo by Tom Lawrence/Republic)

George McGovern made an appearance this morning during the McGovern Conference at Dakota Wesleyan University in Mitchell. As far as I know, it was his first public gig since being hospitalized recently for fatigue.

During a speech of about 20 minutes or so to open the conference (during which he stood the entire time), he promised that doctors at the Mayo Clinic gave him a clean bill of health and said he’ll be fine as long as he slows down and starts acting “like a normal person.” They also told him to stop drinking alcohol, which he joked was the “severest” advice he received. He told the audience that he passed along the health information to assure everyone he would not faint during his speech.

One other fascinating health tidbit: He said he ran across former Gov. Bill Janklow at the Mayo Clinic, and the two “hugged.” Janklow is there to undergo treatment for brain cancer, though his prognosis is not good.

After the opening comments about his health, McGovern was back in prime form, discussing politics and world affairs. He pressed some themes from his new book “What It Means to Be a Democrat,” including his call for a return to political civility and his disdain for the tea party. He said although the tea party would have us believe everything federal is evil, projects such as the interstate highway system, Medicare, Social Security and the GI Bill are examples of federal projects that have made lasting positive impacts on America.

McGovern also offered a unique take on the situation in the Middle East, in response to a question from the audience. He said taking out Saddam Hussein — “an S.O.B.,” McGovern called him — was not all that great strategically, because it removed what had been one of the primary limiting factors on Iran. Without Hussein in the way, McGovern said, Iran may be more emboldened to carry out its radical agenda.

Anyway, that’s a quick take from the morning session. Back to editor stuff for me. Our assistant editor, Tom Lawrence, will have a couple of stories about the conference in tomorrow’s Daily Republic.