RIP to "one of Texas' better loopy billionaires"

That's what Molly Ivins called him. Read on to find out why she and so many other Texas liberals loved him.

Lou Dubose at the Texas Observer:

Bernard Rapoport’s politics were grounded in his conviction that the role of government was to improve the lives of its citizens. The growing accumulation of wealth in the highest tax brackets gnawed at him. He considered it not only unjust but a threat to capitalism.

B told his marbles story so frequently and widely — as a child he would go in the tank just as he was about to win all his opponents’ marbles, so the game could continue — no one was surprised that the party favors at his 90th birthday party at Jay Rockefeller’s Washington mansion were bags of marbles and airline-cabin-service bottles of Canadian Club.

If wealth, like marbles, wasn’t distributed, capitalism couldn’t work.

SNIP

Bernard Rapoport changed American politics for the better. He invested millions in campaigns, wrote checks and raised funds to elect the current Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate, was devastated by the Democrats’ loss of the U.S. House in 2010, and had his heart broken when Waco Congressman Chet Edwards lost his seat in an election that no amount of money could have saved. (B regularly called me, and others, during the last election cycle, looking for some glimmer of hope regarding Chet’s race.)

He was a major donor to Ann Richards’ campaigns for governor. He funded Garry Mauro’s quixotic challenge of George W. Bush in 1998. He supported Democratic centrists, like Martin Frost and Tom Daschle. He raised money and organized events to elect Bill Clinton and supported Hillary Clinton’s 2008 primary campaign.

SNIP

While B might have been described as a values investor in political campaigns, contributing to Democrats who could win elections, he put much of his money where his heart and ideals were.

He was the finance chairman for Ralph Yarborough’s campaigns for the U.S. Senate, and, after Yarborough lost to Lloyd Bentsen, labored to raise money for Yarborough’s attempt at a comeback in the Democratic primary in 1972. He contributed to, raised money for, and worked on George McGovern’s presidential campaign in Texas. He raised money and contributed to Michigan Congressman David Bonior — whose labor-liberal and anti-war principles he considered impeccable.

B once told me he signed on with Paul Wellstone’s 1990 Senate campaign when Tony Mazzocchi described Wellstone as a political science professor who had joined Hormel worker picket lines and been jailed for protesting unfair lending practices. For B, that brief description and Mazzocchi’s endorsement was sufficient.

Mazzocchi was a socialist trade unionist who came out of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers International Union to found the Labor Party. He embodied the politics of David Rapoport, who understood that the relationship between labor and management or ownership is adversarial. When B wrote Mazzocchi a check to cover the cost of a Labor for Peace anti-Vietnam War ad in The Washington Post in the early 1970s, it cemented a relationship between the old-school trade unionist and the man Mazzocchi called “the most radical businessman in the nation.” It probably helped earn Bernard Rapoport a place on Richard Nixon’s enemies list.

If Paul Wellstone was good enough for Tony Mazzocchi, he was good enough for Bernard.

“I opened up the bank for Wellstone,” B said.

Bernard and Audre opened up the bank for more good causes and candidates than can be catalogued here. Breakfast with the two of them at the St. Regis in Washington was a gathering of the best of the American institutional left — much of it supported by the Rapoports or their foundation: Marcus Raskin of the Institute for Policy Studies; Lawrence Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute; Mike Lux, who founded American Family Voices and the Progressive Donor Network; Mary Beth Maxwell of American Rights at Work, whom B and former Congressman David Bonior promoted as Obama’s secretary of labor; and many more.

SNIP

Bernard never quit.

Sitting in a wheelchair at the Outback Steakhouse in Waco three years ago, with his health fading, the stock market down and business losses piling up, B told me about an investment he was considering.

“It might earn us millions,” he said. If it did, he would use the money to fund social-service projects, advocacy groups and education.

He told me that though he had used his money to make the country a better place, he wanted one more run at it.

This country seems a smaller place without him.

The family has asked that in lieu of flowers, you make a donation to the Rapoport Scholars Program at the University of Texas, or to The Texas Observer.