Eleanor McGovern, wife of Senator George McGovern, the 1972 Democratic presidential candidate, died yesterday of heart failure at home in Mitchell, South Dakota. She was 85. Though her husband lost the election (to Richard Nixon), it was not for want of Eleanor’s enthusiastic campaigning. “When we look back of this, it doesn’t […] seem very much, but Eleanor was the first spouse to campaign for her husband alone,” said Robert G Duffett, president of Wesleyan Presbyterian University, the McGoverns’ alma mater. “They had such confidence in her abililty to articulate an issue they just sent her out campaigning. That was huge in ’72. It was unprecedented.” (LA Times)