The Democrats Patrician Power Player

By Margaret B. Carlson

When his hopeless and long-forgotten 1976 campaign for the presidency ended -- and even his last-ditch, favorite-hopes were thoroughly dashed in his home state by Jimmy Carter -- Lloyd Bentsen had still not passed the asterisk level in national name recognition. Twelve years later, at 67, the senior Senator from Texas remains largely unknown outside his home state and Washington. His career has played out in the boardrooms of Houston and the hideaway offices of the Capitol. The backslapping style of a Lyndon Johnson or a John Connally, two of his early supporters, is totally foreign to this patrician son of a wealthy landowner in the Rio Grande Valley. With his well-cut suits, nails that look manicured even when they are not, and silver hair he never lets down, he is Texas without the swagger, the kind of gentleman that stuffy men's clubs were made for.

Bentsen is the oldest vice-presidential nominee since Harry Truman picked Senator Alben Barkley, then 71, in 1948. He lives the life of a comfortable millionaire in Washington's exclusive Kalorama section. He did not give up his Mercedes even when he was shepherding sensitive trade legislation through - Congress (although he now drives a Lincoln). His wife of 45 years, Beryl Ann, better known as B.A., is a former model for Vogue and Mademoiselle who gave up her career to marry Bentsen in 1943. Of the rolling-bandage school of Senate wives, B.A. last year served as first vice chairman of the group's organization, supervising its lunch for Nancy Reagan, and headed up a March of Dimes fund raiser.

The couple spend weekends at their farm outside Middleburg in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley and play power doubles at the annual Senate tournament at John Gardner's tennis ranch when they can get away, although Bentsen prefers singles. With the same understated courtesy he employs in the Senate, when a ball goes close to the line, he inquires with a small smile, "And how do you call the Senator's ball?"

Years ago Bentsen was known as an awesome poker player. He smiles coyly when asked about a game his first year in Congress when he won a house from a fellow Representative.

Bentsen's father Lloyd Sr. was well on his way to his first million by the time Lloyd Jr. was born in a small cottage on a dirt road in Mission, Texas. "Big Lloyd" arrived in Texas from South Dakota with $1.50 in his pocket and became one of the largest landowners in the Rio Grande Valley. He started his empire with a grocery and a land-clearing operation. He hired Mexican laborers to clear the land, and instead of paying them half the contract price, as was the custom, he paid them the full amount -- but in scrip good only in the grocery store. Soon he was buying the land he was clearing; the small cottage gave way to a sprawling ranch house with a 27-acre man-made lake stocked with ducks and geese. At 94, Lloyd Sr. is still running the ranching and farming business, with more than 50,000 acres, valued at around $50 million.

Lloyd Jr. graduated from the University of Texas with a law degree in 1942 and enlisted in the Army. As a bomber pilot in Europe, he flew 50 missions. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross after being shot down twice.

Bentsen returned to Texas in 1945, and at 25 was elected Hidalgo County judge. When he won his House seat two years later, he was its youngest member. He did not make much of a mark in his three terms, and may be best remembered for a speech in 1950 urging that America drop an atom bomb on North Korea unless its troops retreated north of the 38th parallel. Bentsen became one of the youngest members ever to leave the House voluntarily. At 33, complaining ! that the $12,500-a-year salary was not enough to raise three children on, Bentsen returned to Texas to start a life-insurance company with a family stake of $5 million. He eventually built a corporate empire with holdings ranging from banking to real estate that by 1970 was estimated to be worth $25 million.

His fortune made, Bentsen returned to politics in 1970, taking on a fellow Democrat and populist icon, Senator Ralph Yarborough. With the help of the L.B.J.-Connally wing of the party, Bentsen won the primary in a brawl that was messy even by Texas standards. Bentsen linked Yarborough with antiwar demonstrations and ran commercials of the uproar outside the 1968 Democratic Convention to make his point. He labeled Senator Edmund Muskie, who came to campaign for Yarborough, an ultra-liberal. Yarborough kicked up dust as well, calling the Bentsens a family of land frauds and exploiters, a reference to lawsuits that were filed against the senior Bentsen and settled out of court. Bentsen's successful general-election race against George Bush was a much more genteel affair: a Houston insurance millionaire and a Houston oil millionaire did not have much to argue about, at least back then. Bentsen won, 53% to 47%, a reflection in part of the huge Democratic majority in Texas.

This time Bentsen cut a wider swath in Washington. In the days before economist chic, he quickly established himself as the Senator with the numbers. His office was hung with spreadsheets and flow charts. In a world of financial illiterates, he became known as a man of probing analysis and computer-chip memory who actually knew how to wend intricate tax breaks for the oil and real estate industries through Congress.

Although Bentsen is proud of representing business interests, he likes to think of himself as a middle-of-the-road Senator willing to turn left when conviction or politics dictates. He has long been an advocate of civil rights: he opened his Houston hotel to blacks in 1963, before the law required integration and while other major hotels remained segregated. He was one of the few Southern House members to vote for repeal of the poll tax in 1949. Personal circumstances -- illness in his family -- have softened his view on the Government's role in social programs. He is an advocate of federal health programs for prenatal and neonatal care.

Bentsen has never been a stirring speaker, and in his 1976 try at the presidency he had difficulty rousing crowds. In one campaign stop at the rodeo - grounds in Sikeston, Mo., even Minnie Pearl from the Grand Ole Opry could not overcome the lack of excitement generated by a Bentsen appearance. Some 150 people showed up, sitting in small clumps, a family here, a family there. The desultory clapping only emphasized the vastness of the grandstand and the paucity of the crowd. The second his stump speech was over, Bentsen strode angrily back to his car and shook the Missouri dust off his expensive shoes. A few months later he ended his campaign, but organizers of the event remember that day in Sikeston the way others remember a death in the family. The 1976 race so discouraged Bentsen that he considered not running for re-election in 1982. The lure of becoming chairman of the Senate Finance Committee once the Democrats regained control changed his mind.

That occasioned Bentsen's biggest blunder in Washington. Shortly after he took over as chairman, Bentsen sent a letter to lobbyists and political-action committees, establishing a breakfast club. For a $10,000 fee, a lobbyist could have ham and eggs monthly with the Senator. Bentsen was just one of many Senators offering access for money in one of the many variations that hover this side of illegality. But the baldness of the approach and the fact that he had no real re-election challenge that required raising the money caused the Eggs McBentsen affair to unleash a storm of criticism. Bentsen quickly disbanded the club, called the mistake a "doozy," and returned the money. The episode did not cramp his fund-raising ability: he has raised over $5 million for his 1988 Senate campaign. It did, however, give Bentsen a bit more caution, which is the one trait he seems to share with the man who chose him to run for Vice President.

With reporting by Hays Gorey/Washington and Richard Woodbury/Houston