Howard Cannon, 90, Senator Who Served Four Terms, Dies

Former Senator Howard W. Cannon of Nevada, who served four terms as a moderate Democrat and was unseated after Teamsters union officials were accused of offering him a bribe, died today at a hospice in Las Vegas. He was 90.

Mr. Cannon had been in ill health for several years and died of congestive heart failure, a family friend told The Associated Press.

Mr. Cannon was chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee in the late 1970's. Federal prosecutors built a case alleging that on Jan. 10, 1979, Mr. Cannon met in his Las Vegas office with Roy L. Williams, the president of the Teamsters, and several Williams associates to hear the Teamsters chief's plea that Mr. Cannon use his influence to block a bill to deregulate the trucking industry.

The government charged that Mr. Cannon was assured of a valuable piece of Las Vegas real estate in return for his help. Mr. Cannon was never indicted, swore that he had never been offered a bribe and insisted that he did not know the union leader ''from a bale of hay'' when the supposed bribe offer was made.

When he was called as a defense witness at the trial of Mr. Williams and the others in November 1982, Mr. Cannon insisted repeatedly that no bribe had been offered. Two other witnesses contradicted Mr. Cannon, saying that he had been assured he would be well treated on the land transaction.

The land was eventually sold to someone else, and the legislation the Teamsters disliked was passed early in 1980.

Mr. Williams and his co-defendants were convicted. The union chief was sentenced to several years in prison.

Despite his denials of wrongdoing, the Teamsters union episode hurt Mr. Cannon politically. At the start of 1982, he expressed confidence that he would win re-election. But he lost his seat that fall in a close upset to a Republican, Chic Hecht, a former Nevada state senator who had worked in Ronald Reagan's 1976 and 1980 presidential campaigns.

Mr. Cannon said later that his most significant accomplishment in the Senate was his role in passing legislation that deregulated the airline and trucking industries.

Born on Jan. 26, 1912, in St. George, Utah, where his father operated a cattle ranch, Howard Walter Cannon graduated from Arizona State Teachers College, where he starred in several sports, and received his law degree from the University of Arizona.

During World War II, he was the pilot of a transport plane that was shot down over the Netherlands in 1944 after dropping a contingent of paratroopers. He and a fellow officer, Frank Krebs, hid for six weeks behind German lines before American troops liberated the area.

Mr. Cannon was awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross. He became a major general in the Air Force Reserve and flew as a hobby for much of his life. Mr. Krebs later became a Senate aide for Mr. Cannon.

Mr. Cannon practiced law in Las Vegas after the war and was elected city attorney in 1949. He narrowly won the Democratic primary for the Senate in 1958 and ousted the incumbent Republican, George W. Malone.

In 1964, he faced a tough re-election battle. Nevada had segregationist tendencies at the time, and some voters resented Mr. Cannon's vote to end a filibuster by Southern Democrats trying to block the Civil Rights Act. Some Republican strategists tried to link Mr. Cannon to Bobby Baker, the Senate secretary who was then at the center of a financial scandal.

Mr. Cannon beat the Republican candidate, Paul Laxalt, by 48 votes of more than 134,000 cast.

He easily won again in 1970 and 1976, but in 1982 he lost to Mr. Hecht by 5,657 votes of about 235,000 cast. Afterward, Mr. Cannon complained that reporters had not been aggressive enough in pressuring Mr. Hecht on important issues.

Mr. Cannon is survived by his wife, Dorothy; a son, Alan; and a daughter, Nancy Downey, all of Las Vegas.