Washington Wheeler-Dealer Cut His Teeth On Corruption
The nation hardly notice when Bobby Baker, the poster boy for political corruption, got out of prison on June 2, 1972.
The nation hardly notice when Bobby Baker, the poster boy for political corruption, got out of prison on June 2, 1972.
The Washington insider the press nicknamed “Lyndon’s boy” did not hail from Texas, as many misinformed Americans presumed, but from South Carolina. Sent to Capitol Hill as a senate page at the impressionable age of 14, the ambitious errand boy cut his teeth on corruption.
When Lyndon Johnson moved up a congressional rung in 1949, Baker already was a smooth operator with seven years experience at satisfying senators’ every need. “Bobby was the man you called,” a contemporary remembered candidly. “He had the head count. He knew who was drunk, who was out of town and who was unreachable. He knew who was against a bill and why. Bobby was it.”
Hitching his star to LBJ’s, Baker rose to prominence right alongside the powerful Texan. The selection of Johnson in 1955 as majority leader by senate Democrats automatically landed the plum post of majority secretary for his subordinate.
After LBJ traded his senate seat for the vice-presidency six years later, Baker reported to his reclusive replacement. Unlike Johnson, who always kept the wheeler-dealer on a short leash and out of serious trouble, Sen. Mike Mansfield gave him free rein to do as he pleased.
For Baker that meant drinking his fill at the public trough. By the fall of 1963, he had his sticky fingers in a score of lucrative pies that included a law firm, travel agency, housing developments and a Maryland resort which catered to the Potomac power brokers.
Baker bought a townhouse for his mistress, who doubled as his secretary, and a $124,000 mansion for his wife and five children. Not bad for a government worker with a modest annual income of $19,612.
The bubble finally burst in October 1963. A disgruntled business partner sued the influence peddler for reneging on a promise to install thousands of vending machines in defense installations. Baker quickly resigned in the faint hope of staying out of the slammer.
But a squeaky clean senator insisted upon putting his crooked affairs under the microscope. A subsequent investigation complete with sensational disclosures coincided with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the elevation to the Oval Office of Lyndon Baines Johnson.
At a January 1964 press conference, LBJ admitted receiving a six hundred-dollar stereo from Baker but characterized the gift as an innocent exchange of presents. Later that month, he emphatically denied the ex-aide was ever his “protégé” and added, “He was there before I came to the senate for ten years, doing substantially the same job. He was elected by all the senators.”
But past statements that hinted at a much closer relationship came back to haunt the president. “If I’d had a son, Bobby, I would want him to be just like you,” was undoubtedly the most damaging quotation dug up by reporters. A glowing tribute to Baker on the senate floor in August 1957, during which the Texan ranked him as “one of my most trusted, most loyal and most competent friends,” also proved embarrassing.
The Republican challenger tried hard to make a campaign issue out of the incumbent’s ties with Baker, but voters could not have cared less. Seventy-three percent interviewed for an April 1964 poll said the scandal had not tarnished their opinion of the president, and three percent even indicated they thought more highly of him.
LBJ rode out the storm and buried Barry Goldwater at the polls in November. For Baker, however, the worst was yet to come. A federal grand jury indicted him in January 1966 on nine felonies ranging from theft to income tax evasion.
A year later almost to the day, the balding boy wonder went on trial. Even though he faced a maximum punishment of 48 years behind bars and $47,000 in fines, he loved the limelight. When a stranger asked for directions to the highly publicized proceedings, Baker bubbled, “Right in there!”
At the heart of the government’s case was a six-figure bribe the defendant solicited in 1962. California savings and loan executives owned up to the illegal $100,000 “contribution,” and Baker admitted taking the money. The question for the jury to decide was whether he pocketed the cash, as the prosecutor claimed, or delivered the bundle to Sen. Robert Kerr of Oklahoma.
The wealthy Sooner had since gone to this reward. So it was Baker’s word against the reputation of a dead politician staunchly defended by family, friends and senate colleagues. To no one’s surprise, the verdict was a clean sweep for the prosecution.
In spite of his conviction on all counts, the judge gave the white-collar criminal the customary slap on the wrist. After serving 17 months of a three-year sentence, Bobby Baker faded into richly deserved obscurity where he remains today at the age of 81.
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