George McGovern, Former Senator and Presidential Candidate, Hospitalized in Florida

One-time Senator and Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern was admitted to a Florida hospital on Tuesday, his family said in a statement.

According to McGovern’s family, the 89-year-old liberal icon was being evaluated for “brief fainting spells where he passes out and becomes verbally unresponsive,” CNN reported.

“He is comfortable and undergoing further testing,” the family added.

A nursing supervisor for Flagler Hospital in St. Augustine, Fla., told CNN McGovern is in stable condition.

In December, McGovern was rushed to a hospital in his native South Dakota after falling at a university.

McGovern is best known for his unsuccessful presidential bid as the Democratic nominee against incumbent Republican Richard Nixon in 1972. Prior to his presidential run, the elder McGovern represented South Dakota in the U.S. House and Senate.

He left politics after losing a 1980 bid for a fourth Senate term.

Since leaving politics, George McGovern has been actively involved in issues related to agriculture, food, nutrition, and hunger.

In 1998 McGovern was appointed by President Bill Clinton as an ambassador to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization and was appointed as the U.N.’s first global ambassador for hunger in 2001.

More recently, in 2008, McGovern and former U.S. Sen. Bob Dole, a Republican, were honored with the World Food Prize, a distinction some observers have called the Nobel Prize for hunger.

Their George McGovern-Robert Dole International Food for Education and Nutrition Program, which was established in 2000 and funded primarily through Congress, provides millions of meals to children in the U.S. and some three dozen countries across the world.

via Reuters