J. Bennett Johnston, who shaped US energy policy, dies at 92

J. Bennett Johnston Jr., a Democrat of the Louisiana and senator of the United States with four terms who have contributed to modeling American energy and scientific policies in an era of growing concerns for the dangers of nuclear power and the dependence of the nation on foreign oil, died in Arlington, in Va. He was 92 years old.

His death was confirmed by his son J. Bennett Johnston III.

One of a new generation of polished South Democrats who included the presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, Johnston served in the Senate from 1972 to 1997, a mandate that included conflicts in the Middle East who threatened the imports of American oil and nuclear changes in Pennsynia in 1979.

The objective of the Ira of environmentalists has favored more nuclear power plants, although public security limited the new buildings for decades. But he won the fights to abruptly expand the oil perforation in the Gulf of Mexico, the main area of ​​production of offshore oil for the United States and has sponsored the laws to allow coastal states to share federal revenues from offshore perforation.

As president or member of the ranking of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee from 1973 to 1996, it was involved in practically all the energy legislation of the Senate, by the rewriting of the nuclear license provisions of the Federal Law to the development of synthetic fuels and the deregulation of natural gas prices for production. It was a delicate balancing act for a senator of a state with ferocious competition energy interests.

In a state also famous for bright politicians such as Huey and Earl Long and corrupt thieves such as former governor Edwin W. Edwards, Johnston was a remarkable exception – a silent intellectual with finely reduced political sentences and that grasped the technical complexity of energy exploration and production and could also discuss lucidary, tennis particles.

A man of finishing and athletic with elusive hair, Mr. Johnston – an inveterated apple muncher who was said to be the most greedy tennis player of the Senate on the 50th anniversary – was an accessible and friendly man, sensitive to questions and with whom to easy to speak.

His vote was not based on loyalty. Colleagues said they changed the part according to his opinions on the merits of the proposed legislation. He supported the highest standards for the mileage of the gas for car manufacturers, but he opposed the strategic defense initiative of President Ronald Reagan-a floor to use weapons in space to protect America from the nuclear-definement attack badly conceived and too expensive.

On international politics, he often sided with the liberals in support of the United Nations and foreign aid. But he joined the conservatives in opposition to abortion and most of the weapons control measures and supported a 1981 bill to limit the bush for racial integration in public schools to five miles or 15 minutes. The measure died in the room of representatives.

In the Senate struggles for the candidates for the Supreme Court, Johnston helped to lead a 1987 refusal by Robert H. Bork as candidate of President Reagan, but broke with his party in 1991 to support the confirmation of the candidate of President George HW Bush, Clarence Thomas.

In 1988, with the Democrats in control of the Senate and Robert F. Byrd of Virginia of the West resigned as their leaders after a decade, Johnston and Senator Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii ran for the leader of the majority, the most powerful place in the Senate. Both lost against Senator George J. Mitchell of Maine.

Johnston’s support for higher education has obtained $ 110 million for five national research centers in the universities of Louisiana. He crossed for years for billions for the Super Collider superconductor, a pure accelerator of research particles, in Texas, to look for fleety submarine structures. “He was lynched by the note,” he said when the project was canceled in 1993.

“I am interested in understanding where the universe comes from and where he is going from,” Johnston said to Physics Today Magazine in 1996. “I am interested in the Higgs Bosone, that high energy physicists hope to find if it exists at all and, like them, I also hope that research produces surprises.” (In 2012, scientists announced that they had discovered a new subatomic particle that seemed to be the Higgs boson).)

John Bennett Johnston Jr., who rarely used his name, was born in Shreveport, in La., On June 10, 1932, to John Bennett Johnston Sr., a lawyer, and the former Wilma Lyon. He graduated from the Shareveport schools and attended the United States Military Academy from West Point and Washington and Lee University before graduating from the Faculty of Law at Louisiana State University in 1956.

He married Mary Gunn the same year. They had four children: J. Bennett Johnston III, Hunter Johnston, Mary Johnston Norriss and Sally Roemer.

In the army from 1956 to 1959, he became the first lieutenant with the body of Judge Advocate General in Germany. After practicing the law in Shreveport for several years, he began his political career in 1964 with elections in the Chamber of Representatives of Louisiana. In 1968 he won a four -year mandate to the state Senate.

In a state dominated by the Democrats, with the nominations equivalent to the elections, Mr. Johnston in 1971 races for the governor, but for a certain period he lost his appointment to the representative Edwin Edwards, who then won the first of his four terms as governor. Mr. Edwards later went to prison for eight years for corruption and extortion. In 1972, Johnston contested the renomination of the United States Senator Allen J. Ellenderwho had held his place since 1936 as protected by the murdered senator Huey P. Long.

But Mr. Ellender died during the countryside. Mr. Edwards appointed his wife to the place waiting for special elections and Mr. Johnston won the nomination and general elections. He was re -elected in 1978 and again in 1984 against the opposition token, despite a landslide for President Reagan who wounded other democrats.

Johnston’s latest campaign in 1990 was his hardest – against David Duke, a former leader of Ku Klux Klan who had become a popular state legislator. Also from the Baroque political standards of Louisiana, the race was strange: a powerful three -terms with a three -terms obscured by a political neophyte that had not sponsored only one bill in the Louisiana legislature.

Mr. Duke dominated the campaign with appeals to white resentment for the affirmative and welfare action programs and allusions to his agenda full of raid. But his candidacy and his past associations with groups of white supremacy have been widely condemned and Mr. Johnston won a fourth term.

When that term ended in January 1997, Mr. Johnston, who lived in Mclean, Virginia, retired from politics and founded Johnston & Associates, a Washington a lobbying company that later ceased the activity.

Mr. Johnston’s son said he survived his wife, his four children and 10 grandchildren.

Yan Zhuang Contributed relationships.