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Senate Years of Service: 1971-1993 Party: Democrat
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BENTSEN, Lloyd Millard, Jr., (uncle of Ken Bentsen),
a Representative and a Senator from Texas; born in Mission, Tex.,
February 11, 1921; attended the public schools; graduated, University of Texas
Law School at Austin 1942 and was admitted to the bar the same year; served in
the United States Army Air Forces 1942-1945, attaining rank of major; awarded
the Distinguished Flying Cross; entered the private practice of law in McAllen,
Tex., in 1945; county judge of Hidalgo County 1946-1948; elected in 1948 as a
Democrat in to the Eighty-first Congress and, at a special election on December
4, 1948, to fill the vacancy in the Eightieth Congress caused by the death of
Milton H. West; reelected to the Eighty-second and Eighty-third Congresses and
served from December 4, 1948, to January 3, 1955; was not a candidate for
renomination in 1954; founded and operated a financial holding company in
Texas; elected as a Democrat in 1970 to the United States Senate for the term
commencing January 3, 1971; reelected in 1976, 1982, and 1988, and served until
his resignation on January 20, 1993; unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic
nomination for President of the United States in 1976; chairman, Joint Economic
Committee (Ninety-eighth Congress), Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee
(Ninety-eighth Congress), Committee on Finance (One Hundredth through One
Hundred Second Congresses); Democratic candidate for Vice President of the
United States 1988; Secretary of the Treasury in the Cabinet of President
William Jefferson Clinton, 1993-1994; awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom
on August 11, 1999; was a resident of Houston, Texas, at the time of his death
on May 23, 2006; interment in Forest Park Lawndale Cemetery in Houston, Texas.
BibliographyCollins, Michael L. Lloyd Bentsen. In
Profiles in Power: Twentieth-Century Texans in Washington,
edited by Kenneth E. Hendrickson, Jr. and Michael L. Collins. Arlington
Heights, IL: Harlan Davidson, 1993.
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