Robert S. Strauss, 95, top Washington trouble-shooter

Robert S. Strauss, 95, a consummate power broker, Democratic Party leader and trusted counselor to presidents of both parties, died Wednesday at his home in Washington.

Before moving to Washington in 1970, Mr. Strauss cofounded what is now one of the largest U.S. law firms, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld L.L.P.

A loud, sometimes profane backslapper, he made his name in the nation's capital as a persuasive back-room trouble-shooter, a virtuoso of hardball negotiation and gentle suasion.

Among his official roles, he led the Democratic National Committee from 1973 to 1977 and Jimmy Carter's presidential campaigns in 1976 and 1980. He was U.S. special trade representative and envoy to the Middle East during the Carter administration. Under Republican President George H.W. Bush, he served as the final U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, then the first ambassador to Russia after the Soviet communist system collapsed.

All the while, he was building a long list of friends and contacts in both parties.

Mr. Strauss said personal networking turned out to be his most important skill, legal degree notwithstanding. "My strength was people," he said in a 2005 interview with the New York Times.

Ideologically, Mr. Strauss was a "great compromiser" committed to "strengthening the center," as Time put it in 1974. On occasion, liberal Democrats questioned his devotion to party ideals.

Mr. Strauss, the son of German American Jews, was born in Lockhart, Texas, and grew up in Stamford, a small town about 190 miles west of Dallas.

His father, Carl, ran a dry-goods store. His mother, Edith, bragged that Robert, the younger of her two sons, would enter politics and become Texas's first Jewish governor, Mr. Strauss recalled in an introduction to the book Lone Stars of David: The Jews of Texas.

Mr. Strauss followed his brother, Ted, to the University of Texas at Austin and, as a student, volunteered for Lyndon Johnson's first congressional campaign. In his final year at the university's law school, he met with a recruiter for the FBI and was hired as a special agent, serving from 1941 to 1945.

Mr. Strauss became treasurer of the Democratic National Committee in 1970. Three years later, he took over the reeling party in the aftermath of Republican President Richard Nixon's rout of George McGovern.

Mr. Strauss' wife of 65 years, the former Helen Jacobs, died in 2006. They had three children.