Former Democratic vice presidential candidate and Peace Corps founder Robert Sargent Shriver Jr. died today at age 95, family sources told ABC News. Shriver had long suffered from Alzheimer's disease, a cause that his daughter, former California first lady Maria Shriver, championed in recent years.
Serving in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations in the 1960s, Shriver ran the War on Poverty and founded or was an early advocate of groups, including Head Start, VISTA, Job Corps, Community Action, Legal Services, Upward Bound, Foster Grandparents and Special Olympics. President Johnson dubbed him "Mister Poverty" for his work and accomplishments.
He was the U.S. ambassador to France from 1968 to 1970. But Shriver's biggest foray into national politics came in 1972 when George McGovern chose him to replace Thomas Eagleton as his running mate on the ill-fated Democratic ticket. Eagleton had pulled out of the race after revelations that he had been treated for depression and received electroshock therapy. Although McGovern declared that he would back Eagleton "1,000 percent," within a week he asked him to withdraw and picked Shriver, who was well-connected in Democratic politics as a Kennedy family member.
The McGovern-Shriver ticket lost to Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew in the general election by 23 percentage points, one of the biggest landslides in U.S. presidential history.
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