By Frederic J. Frommer
The last time a Democrat won a Senate race in Texas, James Talarico wasn’t even alive.
In 1988, Democrat Lloyd Bentsen won the Senate race from Texas for the fourth and final time of his career. Talarico, a Democrat who has a good shot at winning a Senate seat from the state this fall over Republican Ken Paxton, was born the following year.
Yes, it’s been a long time. The last time the party won a Senate seat in Texas, Ronald Reagan was still president, the Soviet Union still existed, and the Los Angeles Dodgers won the World Series. OK, so that one hasn’t changed much in recent years.
The ’88 election proved to be an odd split-decision for Bentsen, a moderate Democrat who championed the state’s oil and gas industries. (Taking a page out of that playbook, Talarico recently told the Texas Tribune Festival that he was “indebted to the oil and gas industry.”)
In addition to running for re-election, Bentsen was the running mate for Democratic presidential nominee Mike Dukakis. They lost the general election to George H.W. Bush and Dan Quayle, and it was a blowout in Texas, where the GOP won by a dozen points.
But Bentsen easily won his Senate seat by even more – nearly 20 points – over Republican Rep. Beau Boulter, in a striking demonstration of Bentsen’s crossover appeal in the state.
At the beginning of the ’88 election, Bentsen wasn’t a huge national figure. But one zing in a debate against Quayle helped to quickly elevate his profile. After the youthful-looking 41-year-old Quayle said he had as much experience in Congress as John F. Kennedy did when he ran for president in 1960, Bentsen was ready with a savage putdown:
“Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy,” he said sternly, as if lecturing a wayward student. “I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.”
Many in the crowd erupted with wild, raucous cheers.
(At a September protest in defense of the Kennedy Center, some protestors recycled that taunt at President Trump with signs that read, “You’re No Jack Kennedy.”)
Bentsen was first elected to the House in 1948 at age 27, making him the youngest member of Congress at the time. But after just three terms, he left Congress to earn money for his young family, starting an insurance company in 1955.
He returned to politics in 1970 by defeating Sen. Ralph W. Yarborough in the Democratic primary, and then won the general election over Congressman George H.W. Bush, the future president.
Bentsen and Bush would intersect in the ’88 election and again in 1990, when Bentsen, the powerful chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, helped negotiate a deal with the Bush White House, which included a tax increase. That betrayal of candidate Bush’s “no new taxes” pledge helped sink his presidency.
The New York Times observed that Bentsen “looked and comported himself like Hollywood’s version of a successful politician” – or from “central casting,” as Trump would say. “He was tall and thin with handsome features, a deep, soothing voice, elegant clothes and such legendary self-control that those who served with him in Congress and in the Clinton cabinet could not recall a single instance in which he let his emotions get the better of him.”
Bentsen’s popularity as a national candidate – his approval ratings were higher than any of the other three men on the presidential tickets in 1988 – led some Democrats to float his name as a potential presidential candidate in 1992. Instead, of course, Bill Clinton won and named Bentsen his Treasury secretary in 1993 with two years left on his term.
And that marked the end of Democratic senators from Texas, a drought that Talarico could very well end this fall. When Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison won a special election in 1993 to fill out the remainder of Bentsen’s term, it was the first time that a Republican won that Senate seat in more than a century. But the shift from the Democrats’ hold on the state as part of the “Solid South” dated back to 1961, when Republican John Tower broke the monopoly by winning a special election Senate seat – the first statewide GOP winner since Reconstruction.
Today, Hutchison’s seat is held by Ted Cruz. The seat that Talarico is seeking has been in Republican hands since Tower’s victory in 1961.
Frederic J. Frommer, a sports and politics historian who has written for the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Atlantic and other national publications, is working on a book on ‘70s baseball.