POLITICIAN'S MOST PERSONAL CAMPAIGN : LOSS OF DAUGHTER TO ALCOHOL SPARKS MCGOVERN'S ACTIVISM.

Byline: Elizabeth M. Cosin Daily News Staff Writer

It is presidential election year and George McGovern is campaigning again.

The onetime Democratic presidential nominee travels mostly alone now. He goes by commercial jet, a solitary figure in the first-class cabin, a book or folder open before him, half-glasses resting halfway down his familiar nose.

No security detail. No press pens scribbling notes, no bulbs popping. No throngs of faithful followers greet him when he deplanes, though one or two always come up to say a word of thanks or to offer sympathy for his fight.

But there is no real opponent. None that he can touch anyway or bring into the fold, like he tried to do as the liberal senator from South Dakota in 1972 before getting buried in a record-setting electorial blizzard for Richard Nixon.

These days, regret, not Vietnam, weighs heavily on the mind of the man who defined kinder and gentler. His opponent is the beast called alcoholism, the disease that killed his daughter, Terry, and that proved you can teach an old liberal new forms of activism.

For McGovern, this campaign is his most important, his final legacy not only to his beloved Terry and the others who suffer from the lure of the bottle, but to their parents and loved ones who, for all kinds of reasons, are unable to cope with the grip alcoholism has on the ones they most care about.

It is, he says often these days, his greatest political challenge.

``I live every day with regrets about a lot of things to do with Terry,'' he says. ``But my biggest regret is in not appreciating her for what she was. I think if I had to do it all over again - and I would give anything to go back - I would let my kids be themselves, not what I wanted them to be.''

It is a remarkably candid statement by a man so thoroughly trained in public life, where speaking one's mind is considered tantamount to the political form of suicide. A three-time presidential candidate and one-time nominee, McGovern has mostly faded from view lately, particularly outside the Beltway, where he still lives and heads the Middle East Policy Council.

But the death of Terry McGovern, who was found frozen to death in a Madison, Wis., snowbank two Christmases ago, has changed all that, quite possibly for good. McGovern turned his grief and ignorance about his daughter's illness into a memoir, ``Terry: My Daughter's Life-and-Death Struggle With Alcoholism'' (Villard, 208 pages; $21), which chronicles, in often heart-wrenching detail, the life and death of his daughter, an apparently bright, creative, warm-hearted woman who reached out, it seems, to everyone but herself.

``Part of writing this was certainly to deal with my grief,'' says McGovern, who was in Los Angeles recently as part of an exhaustive nationwide tour to speak about the new book.

``When Terry was found in that snowbank in Madison, it was a terrible way to end a life. The grief of losing a child is enormous, just enormous. But I didn't want to end the story like that. When Terry was alive, I didn't really understand what she was going through or exactly why she couldn't beat a disease despite being in and out of (substance-abuse) programs her entire adult life. I wanted to understand.''

The result has quickly become a kind of inspirational bible for the relatives of drinkers who are unable to overcome alcoholism. Wherever McGovern has gone on his current book tour, he has met people like the woman who came up to him at LAX on the late Sunday night he arrived in town.

``She told me she'd already read the book and how helpful it had been for her family,'' he says. ``This has happened quite frequently since the book came out. People have come up to me and told me how the book helped them to quit drinking.''

The book also could help the families of alcoholics, addiction experts say.

``You have to be very brave to do what he did,'' says Terry Hayes, executive director of the National Council for Alcohol and Drug Dependence of Los Angeles County, one of several local affiliates of a nonprofit organization based in New York. McGovern currently serves on the group's national board of directors.

``The McGoverns obviously loved their daughter very much and yet she still died,'' she says. ``There are many, many families out there who are going through the same thing, and this book does a service in showing they are not alone and that there are things you can do.''

McGovern is clearly touched that he has been able to impact those, unlike his own daughter, who are still reachable.

It's another reason, he now says, why he decided to share his innermost feelings, his foibles as parent, his errors as care-giver and his role sometimes as enabler with the rest of the world. His hoped-for result was to help people who can still help their loved ones.

``You know, Terry was a beautiful woman, and I would give anything to have her here with me again, to see her smile,'' he says, not for the first time during the hour-plus conversation, dropping his head in anguish. ``I think about that all the time. I know I can't help her now, but I can, hopefully, help others. This is ironically something Terry would have really liked about the book. She was so good to people. Everyone said that.''

Terry's compassion was well-chronicled by friends, lovers, co-workers, health-care workers and her family, all borne out by McGovern's own painstaking and certainly painful research. He interviewed dozens of people for the book's details, which even include the heartbreaking account of her last weeks and days.

McGovern also quotes from Terry's personal journals, which covered most of her life and which shed a sad and often heartbreaking light on the losing battle she was forced to fight every day.

The McGoverns long knew about their daughter's drinking problem, which started when she was a teen-ager and became more intense while she was in college (her brother also fought the disease and is now a recovering alcoholic). It had been a well-known public fact since an incident during the 1968 campaign when McGovern made his first foray into the presidential arena.

She underwent treatment at clinics, hospitals and saw several psychiatrists for her related problems with depression and even went through a nine-year period of sobriety. But the ``demon,'' as her father came to call it, took over for good, leading to her solitary death at the age of 45.

Terry's death certainly has had an enormous, long-lasting effect on the lives of her family, but her famous father hopes the knowledge he has gained, albeit mostly after the fact, will have repercussions for the 300,000 problem drinkers who are expected to die this year of their illness.

It is for those people and their families that McGovern hits the campaign trail once more time.

``It's a disease,'' he says. ``It is an illness that grips people who are susceptible, and it is extremely strong. People need to understand this aspect of alcoholism.''

It is a sentiment shared deeply by those who remain on the front lines of the battle with addiction.

``Alcoholism is a terribly misunderstood, stigmatized disease,'' says Al Jeffries, executive director of the San Fernando Valley chapter of the NCADD. ``It's essential whenever someone can tell their story so people can understand this.''

And when they do grasp it, McGovern has one last thing to add.

``Don't give up,'' he says. ``I tell people not to give up, even though I know it's easy to have that feeling that if (the alcoholic) just dies, then they would be better off. Because everyone suffers so much. But don't give up. As long as they are alive, you can do something, anything. After they are dead, it is too late. I know.''

Where to go for support

Help for alcohol and drug addiction varies from weekly informal support groups to in-house treatment centers. Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) groups are listed in the local White Pages telephone directory. Experts also suggest talking to your family doctor or psychiatrist.

The nonprofit National Council for Alcohol and Drug Dependence has several affiliates in and around the San Fernando Valley that can help with interventions, referrals, support groups or just lend a willing ear.

For the nearest affiliate, the national office maintains a 24-hour help line at [phone]. Local office hotlines are available during the day only.

Below are some local support groups and programs.

Local offices of the NCADD:

East San Gabriel Valley, [phone].

Pasadena, [phone].

San Fernando Valley, [phone].

Los Angeles, [phone].

Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACA): various weekly meetings, [phone], [phone], [phone] or [phone], and [phone].

Alcoholism Council: information line, [phone].

I-ADARP Drug and Alcohol outpatient clinics: for adults [phone] and [phone]; for teens [phone] and [phone].

L'Chaim workshops integrate the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous with Jewish beliefs and practices, Wednesdays, North Hollywood. [phone].

Al-Anon: friends and families of alcohol abusers, various weekly meetings [phone] or [phone].

Alcoholics Anonymous: various daily meetings, [phone] or [phone].

Cocaine Anonymous: various weekly meetings, [phone].

Cocanon: friends and families of cocaine abusers, various weekly meetings, [phone] or [phone].

Deaf and Hearing-Impaired Adult Children of Alcoholics: deaf friends and families of alcohol abusers, meets weekly, voice/TTY, [phone].

Marijuana Anonymous: various weekly meetings, [phone] or [phone].

Narcotics Anonymous (Conejo Valley): daily meetings, 24-hour help line, [phone].

Narcotics Anonymous (West End): daily meetings, [phone].

Nar-Anon: friends and families of narcotics abusers, weekly meetings, [phone], [phone] or [phone].

Nicotine Anonymous: various weekly meetings, [phone] or [phone].

Overcomers Outreach support groups use the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and Bible study materials for those struggling with alcoholism, chemical dependency, eating disorders, workaholism, nicotine addiction, compulsive gambling and codependency. Canoga Park, [phone]; Westlake Village, [phone].

Rational Recovery: a free, weekly self-help group for alcoholics and other substance abusers that does not require a belief in a higher power or supreme being. [phone].

Women in Sobriety group: for women in all stages of sobriety, noon Mondays, Valley Women's Center, Tarzana, [phone].

CAPTION(S):

6 Photos, Box

Photo: (1--2--Cover--Color) McGovern's longest campaign

Onetime Democratic presidential nominee takes a stand against alcoholism - the disease that killed his daughter Terry

(2) Terry McGovern, shown at age 22 at a favorite lake near Charlottesville, Va., in 1971. After leaving a Wisconsin bar in 1994, she collapsed in the snow and froze to death.

(3) ``I think if I had to do it all over again - and I would give anything to go back - I would let my kids be themselves, not what I wanted them to be,'' says former presidential nominee George McGovern.

Phil McCarten/Daily News

(4) The McGovern family at their home in Chevy Chase, Md., in 1959, with Terry at far right, age 10.

(5) Terry and her father at her last birthday party, June 10, 1994, in Milwaukee.

Box: Where to go for support (See Text)