Politics: Rocking Their Boat

New York’s Governor Nelson Rockefeller nervously tapped the dead microphone that stood before him in the Napoleon Room of Miami Beach’s marble-and-glass Deauville Hotel. “Somebody’s cut my wire,” he grinned. Far from getting his wires cut, Rockefeller did some aggressively effective wire-cutting himself at the 55th annual Governors Conference in Miami Beach last week. Leading an outnumbered but united phalanx of Republican Governors, he outmaneuvered the Democrats, achieved a thumping tactical triumph for his party by embarrassing the Democrats on the nation’s prickliest domestic issue: civil rights.

Rockefeller went to the conference armed with a resolution calling for the creation of a special committee of Governors to cooperate with the President in working out “a nationwide program toward achieving equal rights and opportunities.” Mindful that the proposal would spotlight their deep division on the issue, Democrats maneuvered to keep the resolution from ever coming to a vote. In that, the Democrats succeeded, but Rocky kept the fight going for several rounds, and in each round he scored political points.

Round One. The Democrats proposed a talk-only session on civil rights —no troublemaking resolutions allowed. The Republicans challenged the plan. The Democrats won, 34 to 14, but in doing so they put themselves on record as voting to keep civil rights resolutions from coming before the conference.

Round Two. Nevada’s Democratic Governor Grant Sawyer proposed to do away with embarrassing resolutions by the simple expedient of abolishing the resolutions committee. Sawyer’s plan carried 33 to 16 on another party-line vote. Not a single Republican voted for the Sawyer plan, and only one Democrat (Alaska’s William A. Egan) voted against it. “It has now been made clear,” said Rockefeller, “that the Republican Party is the party of civil rights.” Later on, Washington’s Democratic Governor Albert Rosellini angrily accused Rocky of “using the grave issue of civil rights as ammunition for political warfare.” Retorted Rockefeller: “Everybody sitting around this table is a politician or he wouldn’t be here.”

Round Three. Massachusetts Democratic Governor Endicott Peabody read into the record a “Declaration of Conscience” jointly sponsored by six New England Governors. It committed them to the task of trying to “remove all vestiges of discrimination from American life.” Given an opening, Rockefeller moved that the Governors vote to approve the declaration. Rocky lost once again, but again he succeeded in putting the Democrats on the politically wrong side. And poor “Chub” Peabody found himself in the grotesque position of voting against a move to endorse his own declaration.

While bruising Democrats and scoring points for the G.O.P. at Miami Beach, Nelson Rockefeller improved his own in-need-of-improvement political position. The leadership, vigor and fighting spirit he displayed reminded politicians that, although Barry Goldwater is still well ahead in the race for the G.O.P. presidential nomination in 1964, Rocky knows how to run. And outside the meeting rooms of the conference, the New York Governor showed that despite the steep drop in his popularity rating after his remarriage, he is still a political personality. Again and again at Miami Beach, the beaming Governor and his smiling wife Margaretta were surrounded by eager autograph seekers. They did not even need to sign their last name—they just scrawled “Rocky” and “Happy.”