SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — A Minnesota man who worked to elect George McGovern in the historic 1972 presidential campaign says the former US senator had courage that few politicians have today.

Fifty-five-year-old Todd Hong was just 15 when he started working for the McGovern presidential campaign in 1972 in Sioux Falls. Hong was among the people who streamed past the casket holding McGovern during a public viewing Thursday at First United Methodist Church.

McGovern died Sunday at age 90. McGovern, a staunch liberal, lost in a historic landslide to Republican Richard Nixon in the 1972 race.

Hong, of Eden Prairie, Minn., says he was at McGovern headquarters election night in Sioux Falls in 1972. He says he and other campaign workers were devastated when they saw McGovern lost and started screaming at the television.+

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