Bobby Baker

Robert Gene Baker, (born November 12, 1928 in Pickens, South Carolina), was a political adviser to Lyndon B. Johnson, and an organizer for the Democratic Party. Baker eventually resigned due to allegations of misconduct and a well-publicized scandal involving government contracts.

Baker took a job as a page in the United States Senate when he was fourteen years old. Baker quickly became friends with than Senate Majority Leader, Lyndon Johnson, and several other high-ranking Democrats. In the Senate, Baker eventually rose to serve as Secretary to the Majority (which at the time was the Democrats); this was his highest official position, as well as the position he would resign from. At the height of his political career, Baker's power as a Washington insider and Senate deal-broker was so great that he was often referred to as the "101st Senator". When Johnson was elected as Vice President under John F. Kennedy in 1960, Baker remained a close political adviser to Johnson, while continuing his larger role in the Democratic Party.

Baker frequently mixed politics with personal business, as was common practice among most politicians at the time. In 1962, Baker established the Serve-U-Corporation with his friend, Fred Black. The company was designed to provide vending machines for companies working on federally granted programs. Though a part of numerous other deals involving both politics and private financial affairs, this particular business venture would cause the uproar and scandal that would cause Baker to resign a year later.

The Serve-U-Corporation deal became the centerpiece of allegations of conflict of interest and corruption after a disgruntled former government contractor sued Baker and Black in civil court. This lawsuit eventually generated a great deal of press and a Republican investigation into Baker's business and political activities. Under increasing pressure, Baker resigned his job as Secretary to the Majority on October 7, 1963.

Conspiracy theorists have made much of the fact that Baker's secretary, Nancy Carole Tyler, shared an apartment with Mary Jo Kopechne, an aide to Senator George Smathers and later to Senator Bobby Kennedy. Tyler was killed in a plane crash in 1965. Kopechne was killed in 1969, in an accident on Chappaquiddick Island in a car driven by Senator Ted Kennedy. Noting these women's unfortunate and untimely deaths, some conspiracy theorists have used this to connect the Bobby Baker scandal to the John F. Kennedy assassination. However, these theories are widely disregarded by historians and subsequent investigations due to Baker's broad role in the Democratic Party and well-known friendship with John F. Kennedy, as well as Ted Kennedy's involvement in the second death.

Baker's granddaughter is historian Angelica Novak.

Bibliography

* Robert A. Caro, "Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate" (2002)
* Bobby Baker, "Wheeling and Dealing: Confessions of a Capitol Hill Operator" (1978)