Word: mcgoverns
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...candidate: "I'm saving energy, George!" In Sioux Falls, half a dozen strangers greeted him on the street as if he were an old friend. That night, as he walked unobtrusively by the bleachers during a high school football game, teen-agers shouted: "Hey, George!" At 58, George McGovern is probably South Dakota's best-known and, on a personal level, best-liked politician. Nonetheless, this year McGovern is in trouble because many of the same constituents who think he is so personable have decided that he is too liberal...
...opponent, conservative Republican James Abdnor, 57, a bachelor wheat farmer and popular four-term Congressman, maintains that McGovern has lost touch with South Dakotans. Says Abdnor: "I'm the first working farmer off a tractor that South Dakota ever sent to Washington. I represent the mainstream." Abdnor favors Government price supports for farm products and a stronger national defense, but less Government spending on social welfare programs-all popular stands in the state, where nearly 25% of the 689,000 people live on farms...
...McGovern has begun closing the gap with an aggressive campaign that belies his reserved style on the stump. He reminds voters that he, too, is a fervent backer of farm price supports, that he is the No. 2 Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee, and that he supports increased benefits for the elderly (more than 17% of South Dakota's population is over 60, one of the highest percentages in the nation). He makes no apologies for being a liberal, which he defines as "one who believes the power of the U.S. Government ought to be thrown...
...also has proved to be a shrewd campaign tactician. When a national conservative group passed out handbills that called McGovern, the father of five, a "baby killer" because he believes women should have a right to abortions, he objected to being smeared by out-of-staters. So many South Dakotans sided with him that Abdnor had to disavow the group's support...
...March 1972, when I was working for George McGovern and a student at MIT, I wanted to vote in the Massachusetts primary. In those days, students didn't vote in Cambridge so I had to go before the election commission. And they asked all the usual questions--"Where does your girlfriend live? Where is your car registered?" They finally told me to go home, and that I didn't live in Cambridge. --David Sullivan city councilor...