Winthrop Rockefeller (May 1, 1912 – February 22, 1973) was an American politician and philanthropist. Rockefeller was the fourth son and fifth child of American financier John D. Rockefeller Jr. and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller. He was one of the grandchildren of Standard Oil co-founder John D. Rockefeller. As an entrepreneur in Arkansas, he financed many local projects, including a number of new medical clinics in poorer areas, before being elected state governor in 1966, as the first Republican governor of Arkansas since the Reconstruction era. Despite accusations of lacking insight into the concerns of low-income voters, Rockefeller was re-elected in 1968, and went on to complete the integration of Arkansas schools.
In 1968, he was the favorite son of the Arkansas delegation to the 1968 Republican National Convention. It was widely expected that the Arkansas delegates would switch to his brother, New York governor Nelson Rockefeller, on a second ballot. However, Richard Nixon secured the nomination on the first ballot, and the Arkansas delegates switched to Nixon instead.
Winthrop Rockefeller was born in New York, to philanthropists John Davison Rockefeller Jr. and socialite, Abigail Greene "Abby" Aldrich. He is one of the grandsons of Standard Oil co-founder John D. Rockefeller. He had one elder sister named Abby, three elder brothers John III, Nelson, and Laurance, and a younger brother named David. Nelson served as Governor of New York and Vice President of the United States under Gerald Ford.
Winthrop attended Yale University (1931–1934) before resigning to go work in the oil industry. Prior to attending Yale, he graduated from the Loomis Chaffee School in Windsor, Connecticut.
On January 22, 1941, he enlisted as a private in the Army, while the United States was still neutral during World War II. He was initially assigned to the 26th Regiment of the 1st Infantry Division. He was later assigned to the 77th Infantry Division. He eventually rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel. With the 77th Division he served in the invasions of Guam and Leyte in the Philippines. He earned a Bronze Star with Oak Leaf Clusters and a Purple Heart for his actions aboard the troopship USS Henrico, after a kamikaze attack during the invasion of Okinawa. His image appears in the Infantry Officer Hall of Fame at Fort Benning, Georgia.
Rockefeller resigned his position with the Arkansas Industrial Development Commission and conducted his first campaign for governor in 1964 against Orval Faubus. His campaign was ultimately unsuccessful, but Rockefeller energized and reformed the tiny Republican Party of Arkansas to set the stage for the future. In 1964, Osro Cobb, a Republican former state chairman who had also served as United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas, refused to endorse Rockefeller but openly endorsed Faubus, who subsequently gave Cobb a temporary appointment to the Arkansas Supreme Court.
In his memoirs, Cobb recalls that Rockefeller
had used ruthless tactics to convert the fine Republican state organization into a one-man Rockefeller machine, loyal not to party but to Rockefeller personally. In rapid succession, Mr. Rockefeller captiously took over most of the functions of the state chairman and in a matter of months succeeded in taking over and exercising absolute right of dictation as to each and every important party function at the state level. Such one-man dictatorship is clearly the deadly enemy of any semblance of two-party government. ... Faithful Republican leaders who have worked tirelessly over the years have been pushed aside or replaced. ... A stranger passing through Arkansas at this time and seeing Mr. Rockefeller's advertising on billboards would not know whether Mr. Rockefeller belonged to any political party. Certainly the fact that he is the Republican nominee has not been included. The evidence simply is unanswerable that Mr. Rockefeller is working for his own personal interest to the exclusion of all other considerations, which leaves the Republican Party in Arkansas hanging precariously at the whims of one individual ... .
1966 Arkansas gubernatorial election
When Rockefeller made his second run in the 1966 election, only 11 percent of Arkansans considered themselves Republicans. But Arkansans had tired of Faubus after six terms as governor and as head of the Democratic "machine". Democrats themselves seemed to be more interested in the reforms that Rockefeller offered in his campaign than "winning another one for the party". An odd coalition of Republicans and Democratic reform voters catapulted Rockefeller into the governor's office, as he defeated a segregationist Democratic former Justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court, James D. Johnson of Conway in Faulkner County, who preferred the appellation "Justice Jim".
Former state Republican chairman Osro Cobb reversed himself in 1966 and endorsed Rockefeller. He explains:
Arkansas Republicans were eager to work with Winthrop Rockefeller on another race for governor if he could be led to run as a true Republican to help build the party in the state. I liked him personally. He showed me many courtesies, and I still thought [despite feelings in 1964] that he would make a good governor and could be elected on the Republican ticket. ... He had learned a lesson. And he won his next two races for governor. ... His service contributed greatly to the enormous benefits of two-party government in Arkansas.
At the time Winthrop became governor, his brother Nelson Rockefeller had been the governor of New York since 1959, and remained so throughout Winthrop's four years in office. They are often erroneously cited as the first two brothers to be governors at the same time, but they were actually the third case; the previous instances were Levi and Enoch Lincoln from 1827 to 1829, and John and William Bigler from 1852 to 1855. More recently, George W. and Jeb Bush were both governors from 1999 to 2000.
At the 1968 Republican National Convention, Winthrop Rockefeller received backing from members of the Arkansas delegation as a "favorite son" presidential candidate. He received all of his state's 18 votes; his brother Nelson, then concluding a major presidential bid against Richard M. Nixon, received 277. This was the only time in the 20th century that the names of two brothers were placed into nomination at the same time.
Governor of Arkansas 1967–1971
The Rockefeller administration enthusiastically embarked on a series of reforms but faced a hostile Democratic legislature. Rockefeller endured a number of personal attacks and a concerted whispering campaign regarding his personal life.
Scholars Diane Blair and Jay L. Barth continue: "As long as Rockefeller led the Arkansas Republicans, the party had a progressive, reformist cast, and those whom Rockefeller had brought into the party continued to dominate party offices and shape presidential preferences until 1980," when the nomination and election of Ronald Reagan of California as president and Frank D. White as governor moved power within the state GOP "sharply to the right." Ultimately the growth of the Republican Party was slower in Arkansas than in the other southern states in the post-segregation era. Blair and Barth attribute sluggish GOP development to "tradition, [which] is important to rural people. They are looking for ways to stay with the Democratic Party; they have to be run off."
According to his biographer, Cathy Kunzinger Urwin, Rockefeller's "good-government" reform proposals included: revision of the Arkansas State Constitution, governmental administrative reorganization, election law reform (a "little Hatch Act" to prohibit state employees from engaging in political activities on the job), teacher tenure, taxpayer-funded kindergarten under Amendment 53, adult and continuing education programs, rehabilitation and vocational training in the corrections system, and the recurring attempts at industrial recruitment. One of Rockefeller's most publicized "good-government" reforms was the ending of illegal gambling in the resort city of Hot Springs. He also made headway in streamlining state government and secured passage of a state minimum-wage law.