Shortly before Jack Kennedy's first-ballot nomination at the Democratic Convention of 1960, an offer came from the Kennedy forces to Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Baines Johnson. If L.B.J., at that moment J.F.K.'s only serious rival for the nomination, would withdraw from contention, he could become Kennedy's vice-presidential running mate.
Lyndon, as a consummate politician, already knew that Kennedy had him whipped for the top spot. He was still reluctant to give up, but he was avidly being urged to do so by Bobby Gene Baker, a youthful friend and protégé for whom he had got a job as the U.S. Senate's Democratic secretary.
Right then, into the Johnson headquarters suite in Los Angeles, marched Oklahoma's formidable Senator Robert Kerr, a Johnson backer with no taste for the Kennedy family. Kerr was enraged when he heard that Baker was pleading with Lyndon to withdraw and accept second place. In his anger, he swung and slapped Bobby "as hard as I've ever been hit." But Bobby Baker kept right on presenting his case. After five minutes, Kerr reached out his right hand to shake Bobby's and pronounced: "You're right. You're smarter about this than I was."
That, at least, is the way Bobby Baker tells the story. And he has told it often to convince people of what a fast-talking, nimble influencer of U.S. politicians he is. But last week Bobby Gene's powers of influence fell apart, and he had to resign his job and face a Senate investigation.
"The 101st Senator." Raised in backwoods Pickens, S.C., Baker was tapped at 14 to be a U.S. Senate page when the son of a neighbor turned down the job. Bobby was frightened at first: "I had never been out of Pickens before."
But he quickly learned how to impress the Senators who could help him. When Texas' Representative Lyndon Johnson was elected to the Senate in 1948, Bobby latched onto him. "Bobby was an unabashed lackey—a bootlicker—and he'd think of any excuse to come to the office and see Johnson," recalls one Senate veteran.
In 1951, when Johnson was mentioned as a possibility to become the Democratic whip, Page Boy Bobby knew how to help. "I just kept leaking stories to the newspapers that Johnson had the inside track, that in a showdown he would have the votes," says Baker. Johnson won, Bobby was made an assistant to the Democratic Senate secretary, and in 1955, when Johnson became Senate majority leader, Bobby got the secretary's job—a kind of message bearer, nose counter, gossip collector for the Democratic leadership. He got so adept at counting, lining up and (at first in Lyndon's name) delivering votes that he later became known as the "101st Senator."
Naturally, not everyone was fond of Bobby Baker. Says one Senator: "I never liked him very much, but if you wanted to know what was going on, Bobby was the guy you called. He had the head count. He knew who was drunk, who was out of town, who was out sleeping with whom. He knew who was against the bill and why, and he probably knew how to approach him to get him to swing around. Bobby was it."