Baker was born in Pickens, South Carolina, on November 12, 1928. He attended Pickens Elementary and Pickens High School until he was 14 years old. He received an appointment as a U.S. Senate page with the help of Harold E. Holder.
In 1942, Baker became a page for Senator Burnet Maybank and quickly became friends with several important Democrats. When Lyndon Johnson was elected to the Senate in 1948, John Connally introduced Baker to Senator-elect Johnson. Baker quickly became Johnson's protégé. Baker was eventually promoted to Secretary to the Majority Leader in 1953, his highest-ranking official position, from which he would later resign. Prior to resigning, Baker had been a major power on Capitol Hill. He later served 18 months in prison for tax evasion. In 1978, he coauthored a memoir entitled Wheeling and Dealing with Larry L. King.
Baker frequently mixed politics with personal business. He was a founder and treasurer of the Quorum Club, located in the Carroll Arms Hotel adjacent to the Senate office building. The society was a place for lawmakers and other influential men to meet for networking and illicit carousing. Baker alleged that he arranged for Ellen Rometsch to go to Bill Thompson's apartment, and Thompson took her to the White House on many occasions. Rometsch was of German origin and had been a Socialist Unity Party member in East Germany.
In 1962, Baker established the Serv-U Corporation with his friend, Fred Black. This business venture would cause a scandal. In November 1962, electronic microphones in Ed Levinson's office at the Fremont Hotel in Las Vegas picked up references to Baker. The FBI agent notified FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover of the references early in 1963. Levinson and Benjamin Seigelbaum arranged a $400,000 start-up loan for the Serv-U Corporation. The Serv-U Corporation deal became the subject of allegations of conflict of interest and corruption after a disgruntled former government contractor, represented by David Carliner, sued Baker and Black in civil court.
In September 1963, an investigation was begun by the Republican-led Senate Rules Committee into Baker's business and political activities. Baker was investigated for allegations of bribery and arranging sexual favors. Under increasing criticism, Baker resigned as Secretary to the Majority Leader on October 7, 1963. According to author Evan Thomas, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy was able to arrange a deal with J. Edgar Hoover to quell mention of the Rometsch allegations in the Senate investigation of Bobby Baker. Hoover successfully limited the Senate investigation by threatening to release embarrassing information about senators. In exchange, Robert Kennedy assured Hoover that his job as FBI Director was secure. Robert Kennedy also agreed to allow the FBI to proceed with wiretaps on Martin Luther King Jr..
Even though Lyndon Johnson was not involved in Baker's business dealings after 1960, the Senate investigation looked into their financial activities in the 1950s. After word of the assassination of John F. Kennedy reached Washington on November 22, 1963, the Senate investigation was delayed. Thereafter, any investigation of Lyndon Johnson as part of the Baker investigation was dropped. Baker, however, was convicted of tax evasion and spent 18 months in prison. In the 1964 presidential election, Republican candidate Senator Barry Goldwater brought up the Bobby Baker scandal as an issue against Johnson.
In 2017, Baker died on his 89th birthday, November 12, in St. Augustine, Florida.
This article is based solely on the supplied corpus. No external sources were consulted; claims that could not be substantiated against the corpus were omitted under the drop-the-claim rule.