Thomas F. Eagleton, 77, a Running Mate for 18 Days, Dies

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Thomas F. Eagleton, a former United States senator whose legislative accomplishments were overshadowed by his removal as the Democratic vice presidential candidate in 1972 after revelations of mental illness and electroshock therapy, died yesterday in Richmond Heights, Mo. He was 77 and lived outside St. Louis in Clayton, Mo.

The cause was a combination of heart, respiratory and other ailments, a family spokesman said.

Mr. Eagleton took a leading role on legislative issues like presidential war powers, the bombing of Cambodia and home rule for the District of Columbia. But history will probably remember him primarily as a vice presidential candidate for 18 days.

He was in his first term as a senator from Missouri when the presidential candidate, Senator George McGovern, asked that he join him on the Democratic ticket. Mr. Eagleton was a last-minute selection; Mr. McGovern had been counting on Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts to change his mind and become his running mate once Mr. McGovern received the presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Miami Beach. But Mr. Kennedy declined.

After others were considered, the campaign settled on Mr. Eagleton, at 42 a young, Roman Catholic senator with a liberal voting record and the good opinion of labor. That afternoon, on July 13, 1972, Frank Mankiewicz, a top McGovern aide, asked Mr. Eagleton if there was anything in his background that might embarrass the campaign.

Mr. Eagleton said there was not. He did not tell Mr. Mankiewicz that he had been hospitalized three times for depression and that his treatment twice involved electroshock therapy.

But rumors began circulating among politicians and journalists. Mr. Eagleton held a news conference on July 25 in Custer, S.D., where he had just briefed the vacationing Mr. McGovern over breakfast. Mr. Eagleton told reporters that he had been treated for “nervous exhaustion.” But in response to questions, he acknowledged that the treatment had included psychiatric counseling and electric shocks.

That day Mr. McGovern said, “I think Tom Eagleton is fully qualified in mind, body and spirit to be the vice president of the United States and, if necessary, to take on the presidency on a moment’s notice.” As objections to Mr. Eagleton mounted, Mr. McGovern insisted that he was “1,000 percent for Tom Eagleton.”

But the pressure from party leaders, campaign contributors and members of Mr. McGovern’s own staff was unrelenting. On July 31, the candidates met again, this time in Washington, and Mr. McGovern forced Mr. Eagleton to withdraw. He stepped down after 18 days as the nominee, saying he had done so for the sake of “party unity.”

Mr. Eagleton campaigned hard for the ticket of Mr. McGovern and his replacement, R. Sargent Shriver, but they failed to carry Missouri or any other state except Massachusetts as President Richard M. Nixon swept to a resounding re-election victory.

McGovern followers said the vice presidential fiasco was to blame for the magnitude of the loss. Mr. Eagleton, however, said he was just “one rock in a landslide.”

Mr. McGovern said last April that he had come to regret his removal of Mr. Eagleton. “If had it to do over again, I’d have kept him,” Mr. McGovern said. “I didn’t know anything about mental illness. Nobody did.”

He said that in recent years he and Mr. Eagleton had been on good terms, and that he regarded Mr. Eagleton as one of the 10 or 12 best senators with whom he had served.

Returning to Congress after he was dropped from the ticket, Mr. Eagleton took a leading role in legislation to halt the United States’ bombing of Cambodia in 1973. When, in 1984, he announced that he would not seek a fourth term two years later, he called the Cambodia legislation his top achievement in the Senate.

He was also a leading sponsor of the War Powers Act, which was intended to limit the president’s ability to make war without Congressional approval. In the end, however, he voted against the bill in 1973, contending it had been watered down too much.

A chain smoker, Mr. Eagleton fought tobacco subsidies. He was a leading advocate of the 1974 Turkish Arms embargo. In 1982, as the Senate debated ousting Sen. Harrison A. Williams of New Jersey, who had been convicted of bribery and conspiracy in the Abscam influence-peddling scandal, Mr. Eagleton said, “We should not perpetrate our own disgrace by asking him to remain.”

A native of St. Louis, Mr. Eagleton was a Navy veteran and a graduate of Amherst and Harvard Law School. He was elected to his first public office, as prosecutor in St. Louis, in 1956 at the age of 27. It was also in 1956 that he married the former Barbara Ann Smith of St. Louis, who survives him. He is also survived by a son, Terence, of Manhattan; a daughter, Christin Fleming of Greenville, Del.; and two grandchildren.

Mr. Eagleton’s early political career was a steady march of quadrennial strides. After four years as prosecutor, he was elected attorney general of Missouri in 1960. In 1964, he was elected lieutenant governor. In 1968, he was elected to the Senate after defeating the incumbent, Edward V. Long, in a Democratic primary. He was re-elected in 1974, benefiting from a widespread feeling in Missouri that he had been ill-treated by Mr. McGovern, and again in 1980.

When he announced his retirement in 1984, he said he had served “a full and complete career,” adding, “Public offices should not be held in perpetuity.” But he also complained that runaway campaign spending had put “the stench of money” around the Capitol.

After he left the Senate in 1987, he served on the board of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. He resigned in 1989, saying the decisions it made were “by insiders and for insiders,” not the public. He also accused the board of trying to thwart federal fraud investigations.

Mr. Eagleton practiced law in St. Louis, taught at Washington University there and had a central role in bringing professional football back to St. Louis, when the Los Angeles Rams became the St. Louis Rams. In his last years, he was writing a book about how St. Louis had declined and then prospered since he had entered public life.

John C. Danforth, a Republican friend and Senate colleague from Missouri for 10 years, recalled in January that Mr. Eagleton reflected a Senate era far less partisan than the one today. When Mr. Danforth was sworn in as senator in 1977 at a family dinner, Mr. Eagleton attended. The two never campaigned against each other. “There was nothing that was devious about him,” Mr. Danforth said. “He was wonderful to deal with in the Senate. He was funny, and saw the ridiculous in things.”