FORMER US PRESIDENTIAL candidate Herman Cain has died after being hospitalised with Covid-19.

The 74-year-old ran for the Republican nomination on a number of occasions, coming closest in 2012 when he briefly led the field in some polls before Mitt Romney won out to face Barack Obama.

Cain was first hospitalised with Covid-19 at the beginning of this month but he has now passed away, according to several US media outlets and a post on his own website.

“Herman Cain – our boss, our friend, like a father to so many of us – has passed away,” a post on his website said this afternoon.

The post detailed that Cain had trouble breathing when he was admitted to hospital and was in a high-risk group due to having previously had cancer.

Cain was a former businessman who was an executive at several major US food corporations, such as Burger King and Godfather’s Pizza. He was a vocal opponent of Bill Clinton in the 1990s and a newspaper columnist.

His 2012 Republican campaign was noteworthy for his embrace of the Tea Party movement and a so-called ’9-9-9 Tax plan’. The plan sought to simplify the US tax system by an across-the-board 9% rate on income tax, sales tax and corporation tax.

US President Donald Trump publicly suggested last year that he may nominate Cain for a position on the board of the US Federal Reserve but Cain subsequently withdrew his candidacy.

Cain was hospitalised with Covid-19 on 1 July, having ten days previously attended a Trump rally in Tulsa. He tweeted an image from the rally in which neither he nor the others in the picture were wearing masks, as is advised by the US Center for Disease Control.