J. Bennett Johnston, Jr.

John Bennett Johnston, Jr. (born 1932), is a lawyer/lobbyist in Washington, D.C., who served from 1972 to 1997 as a Democratic member of the United States Senate from his native Louisiana.

Prior to his Senate tenure, Johnston was from 1968 to 1972 a state senator and from 1964 to 1968 a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives from Shreveport in Caddo Parish. He ran unsuccessfully in the fall of 1971 for the Louisiana governorship, losing his party's nomination to then U.S. Representative Edwin Edwards of Crowley in south Louisiana.

In his first election to the U.S. Senate in 1972, Johnston challenged the incumbent Allen J. Ellender of Terrebonne Parish in the Democratic primary. Ellender died during the campaign, and Johnston easily won the party nomination and then defeated Republican Ben C. Toledano of New Orleans and former Governor John J. McKeithen, a Democrat from Caldwell Parish running as an Independent. In 1978, he defeated then State Representative Woody Jenkins of Baton Rouge, a strong conservative. In 1990, Johnston defeated then State Representative David Duke of Jefferson Parish, a former member of the Ku Klux Klan, who ran as a Republican but without the backing of the state's GOP apparatus.

Johnston served as chairman of the Senate Energy Committee during a period when energy issues dominated the nation's agenda.

Johnston's son-in-law is former U.S. Representative Tim Roemer of Indiana.