Former Rep. Clark MacGregor, a Minnesota Republican and Congressional relations counsel to President Richard Nixon, died Feb. 10 from respiratory failure. He was 80.

After a decade-long tenure as a Gopher State Congressman during the 1960s, during which he focused on crime and civil rights legislation, MacGregor left the House to run for Eugene McCarthy’s (D) vacated Senate seat but was squarely beat by former Democratic Vice President Hubert Humphrey.

The Dartmouth College graduate and World War II veteran, who served with the Office of Strategic Services in Burma, later went on to earn a law degree from the University of Minnesota.

After 12 years as a trial attorney, MacGregor successfully sought Minnesota’s 3rd district Congressional seat.

A longtime friend of Nixon’s, MacGregor held a variety of posts for the 37th president beginning in 1968 when he headed Nixon’s presidential campaign in nine Midwestern states and later as chairman of the Committee to Re-elect the President. (Another Nixon aide, Ron Ziegler, who served as the president’s press secretary, also passed away last week after suffering a heart attack.)

MacGregor’s post-politics career was spent at the United Technologies Corp. in Hartford, Conn., where he was vice president until his retirement in 1988.

MacGregor is survived by his wife, Barbara, and three daughters.

— Bree Hocking