Word: bentsen
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...Democrats, liberals and party leaders most want a winner, which Carter persuasively showed himself to be last week. His twelve-point margin in Pennsylvania proved conclusively that he could topple tough opposition in a big Northern industrial state. In Texas, his come-from-behind victory over Senator Lloyd M. Bentsen showed that not even a popular favorite son could slow the Carter bandwagon. The overwhelming successes?he has won eight of the first ten primaries?stunned old-line political leaders...
...Gramm drew blood, no doubt helping Alan Steelman, the Republican Congressman from Dallas who will oppose Bentsen in November. Many conservatives in the GOP are unhappy that Steelman was nominated, viewing him as a maverick with uncomfortably liberal tendencies. One Texas Republican political consultant asked me not long ago, "How the hell can Steelman come out for gay rights, the ERA, and legalized abortion, all in the same speech?" But Steelman is consistently on the Right in matters of government spending and management of the economy--he gets high marks from conservative groups who rate members of Congress--and Gramm...
...winner on Saturday, the biggest loser was Senator Lloyd Bensten, who can thank Reagan that things didn't turn out worse. Jimmy Carter soundly boxed his ears in the presidential primary, winning all but five delegates. Carter got 49 per cent of the popular vote, leaving Bentsen with a thoroughly embarrassing 23 per cent, George Wallace receiving most of the rest. The defeat was all the more humiliating because it was Bentsen who had set up the presidential primary--Texas's first--solely to advance his own presidential ambitions...
...only bright spot for Bentsen was his easy victory over a vigorous challenger in the concurrent race for the Senate nomination, getting 63 per cent of the vote. The challenge came from Phil Gramm, a conservative economics professor at Texas A&M, whose attacks focused on Bentsen's supposed neglect of the Lone Star state in his presidential bid. One TV ad featured two disembodied voices, one of which asked what Bentsen had to show for his six years in the Senate. The other mentioned Bentsen's vote to expand the Voting Rights Act, his support for federal...
Those attacks hit Bentsen where he is most vulnerable, but Gramm did poorly, mainly because of all those people who crossed over. If those 300,000 Texans had voted in the Democratic primary instead, most of them likely would have voted for Gramm. That might have given him enough of the vote to embarass Bentsen...