Background
Steelman was born in Little Rock, Arkansas.
United States representative politician
Steelman was born in Little Rock, Arkansas.
He attended Baylor University in Waco, Texas, on a baseball scholarship. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in political science in 1964 and was president of his class.
He gave up his Fifth Congressional District seat to challenge Democratic incumbent Lloyd M. Bentsen, Junior., in the 1976 United States. Senate general election. He received an Modern Language Association degree in 1971 from Southern Methodist University in Dallas. In 1972, Steelman was a visiting fellow at the John F. Kennedy Institute of Politics at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Steelman unseated incumbent Democratic Congressman Earle Cabell, a former mayor of Dallas who had served since 1965, when he unseated in November 1964 the Republican incumbent Bruce Alger.
Steelman polled 74,932 votes (557 percent) to Cabell"s 59,601 (443 percent). His campaign manager was the later Texas Republican state chairman Fred Meyer, a Dallas businessman originally from suburban Chicago.
In 1974, a heavily Democratic year both in Texas and nationally, Steelman barely survived the challenge of Mike McCool. In a low-turnout election, Steelman polled 28,446 (521 percent) to McCool"s 26,190 (479 percent).
Steelman did not seek a third term in the United States. House in 1976 but instead opposed the reelection of Senator Lloyd Bentsen.
Senate returns gave Bentsen 2,199,956 (568 percent) to Steelman"s 1,631,370 (422 percent). Bentsen not only defeated the 34-year-old Steelman by a comfortable margin, but he helped to bring Democratic presidential nominee Jimmy Carter to victory in Texas. Time magazine listed Steelman among its "200 Emerging Young National Leaders" in 1974, in a special edition devoted to leadership in America.
The defunct Dallas Times Herald, in endorsing his re-election bid that year called him one of "the best ever sent to Congress for Texas." Texas Monthly magazine named him one of the top five most effective member"s of the then 26-person Texas congressional delegation during only his second term.
New Times, a Washington-based national magazine, named him one of the "Ten Best Congressmen" of the 435-member body in 1973. Steelman never again sought office after the loss to Bentsen.
He resides in Dallas and is Vice Chairman of Alexander Proudfoot, a listed company on the London Stock Exchange. He is an avid golfer and reads history and biography.
From 1969 to 1972, he was a member of President Richard M. Nixon"s Advisory Council on Minority Business Enterprise, when he was elected to Congress.