Lloyd Bentsen; Texas Senator, Vice Presidential Candidate

Mr. Bentsen compiled a diverse record. He looked after such traditional Texas interests as deregulation of natural gas and state control of offshore oil but also voted to repeal the poll tax, a device used in the South to discourage voting among minorities.

He also proposed using the atomic bomb against principal North Korean cities if North Korea failed to withdraw its troops from South Korea. In later years, with some embarrassment, he recanted that position.

In 1955, bored with politics and finding it difficult to raise a family in Washington on a congressional salary of $12,500 a year, he left Congress against Rayburn's advice.

With substantial backing from his father, Mr. Bentsen eventually became president of Lincoln Consolidated, an insurance and financial holding company in Houston.

In 1970, Mr. Bentsen sold his business for $22 million and declared his candidacy for the U.S. Senate. Johnson, who had recently left the White House, tried to talk him out of it, warning, "I just don't believe you can beat Ralph Yarborough." Yarborough, the Democratic incumbent, was a beloved liberal icon.

Heavily bankrolled by business interests, Mr. Bentsen launched an expensive media campaign that branded the populist incumbent a "dangerous liberal." His TV commercials seemed to hold Yarborough responsible for the anti-Vietnam War mayhem outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968. Mr. Bentsen won with 53 percent of the vote.

With support from organized labor that November, Mr. Bentsen ran to the right of the Republican candidate, then-Rep. George H.W. Bush. He accused Bush of supporting gun control and a guaranteed annual income for the poor. (The two men actually were quite compatible politically.) In a battle between a Houston insurance millionaire and a Houston oil millionaire, the insurance man prevailed, 53 to 47 percent.

Texas liberals initially scorned Mr. Bentsen as a Tory Democrat -- a Democrat who looked after the interests of wealthy conservatives linked to Texas oil money -- and they hated him for ending the Senate career of Yarborough. But as Democrats of any stripe became an endangered species in the Lone Star State, Mr. Bentsen gradually became more acceptable.

Liberals such as Ann Richards, who would later be elected Texas governor, came to admire his willingness to set aside political differences to build a broad coalition. "Many of us credit Lloyd Bentsen with our success and our inspiration," she said yesterday.

Given his lifelong familiarity with the Valley, he spoke Spanish fluently and had a strong following among South Texas Mexican Americans.

Mr. Bentsen often said his proudest accomplishment in the Senate was pension reform. As a member of the Finance Committee and the Joint Economic Committee, he also believed in using the tax code to provide incentives for a variety of activities -- to save, invest, produce oil and make college loans. It was an idea he shared with President Ronald Reagan.

Mr. Bentsen worked closely with President Jimmy Carter to support the controversial Panama Canal treaties in 1978, even though his mail was running 10 to 1 against relinquishing the canal to Panama. He explained that leaders in Central America had told him that defeat of the treaty would give Cuban leader Fidel Castro an issue to use against U.S. interests.