Winthrop Rockefeller

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 ... .

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.

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.

Urwin determined that Rockefeller's negatives created public perceptions of "his personal flaws, rather than his accomplishments or lack of them, as governor." Considered a weak administrator, he depended too heavily on staff, so improperly managed that the employees often failed to answer mail. He was habitually tardy to meetings. A special legislative session in May 1968 was particularly disastrous. An Oliver Quayle poll in 1968 declared that Rockefeller seemed "strange, alien, and foreign" to many voters. The poll maintained that many thought Rockefeller sought too much power, that he drank too much, and that he spent too little time in his office. A majority said that the wealthy Rockefeller, despite his interest in "good government," could not understand the problems of common people on restricted incomes or those in the middle class with limited investment opportunities.

Rockefeller had a particular interest in the reform of the Arkansas prison system. Soon after his election he had received a shocking report from the Arkansas State Police on the brutal conditions within the prison system. He decried the "lack of righteous indignation" about the situation and created a new Department of Corrections. He appointed a new warden, academic Tom Murton, the first professional penologist that the state had ever retained in that capacity. However, he fired Murton less than a year later, when Murton's aggressive attempts to expose decades of corruption in the system subjected Arkansas to nationwide contempt.

An article in Texas Monthly alleges Candace Johnson née Weatherby, later to become the well-known Houston socialite Candy Mossler, was involved with Winthrop Rockefeller during his military service in the South.

On February 14, 1948, Winthrop married actress Jievute "Bobo" Paulekiute (September 6, 1916 – May 19, 2008). She was previously married to Boston Brahmin socialite John Sears Jr. The wedding took place in Florida, and at the reception, a choir sang Negro spirituals. On September 17, 1948, she gave birth to their son, Winthrop Paul "Win" Rockefeller. The couple separated in 1950 and divorced in 1954. Bobo got custody of Win.

The legacy of Winthrop Rockefeller lives on in the form of numerous charities, scholarships, and the activities of the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation and the Winthrop Rockefeller Charitable Trust, including Winrock International, an international nonprofit organization based in Little Rock, Arkansas whose mission is to empower disadvantaged people, increase economic opportunity, and sustain natural resources. The Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation provides funding for projects across Arkansas to encourage economic development, education, and racial and social justice. In 1964, he founded Museum of Automobiles on Petit Jean Mountain, which after his death in 1973 was given to the Arkansas State Parks system; a non-profit organization was formed to run the museum; in March 2007, the Charitable Trust pledged $100,000 for its ongoing operations if the museum raised an equal amount by the end of that year.

Founded in 2005, the Winthrop Rockefeller Institute (commonly called the Institute) is a nonprofit organization on Petit Jean Mountain that seeks to continue Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller’s collaborative approach to creating transformational change and a 509(a)(3) supporting organization of the University of Arkansas System. The Winthrop Rockefeller Charitable Trust gifted the Institute a $100 million endowment in 2018, which is held by the University of Arkansas Foundation.

Rockefeller's political legacy lives on in both the Republican and Democratic parties of Arkansas, both of which were forced to reform as a result of his presence on the state scene.

Rockefeller was the subject of the December 2, 1966, cover of Time magazine.

Winthrop Rockefeller's son and only child, Win, served as Arkansas lieutenant governor, having won a special election in 1996 to succeed Mike Huckabee. Winthrop Paul Rockefeller then won two full four-year terms in 1998 and 2002. Like his father, Win Paul Rockefeller's political career was cut short by a devastating cancer.