NEW YORK: The Rocky Roll

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For Victor’s Open Kitchen on the western edge of Batavia, N.Y., the breakfast order of poached eggs, toast and coffee was routine. But the customer obviously was not. While his eggs poached, he table-hopped to shake hands. He ducked behind the counter to greet the cook, the counterman, the waitresses and the busboy. For each, he flashed a broad smile, his forehead crinkled into wrinkles. “Hello, I’m Nelson Rockefeller,” he said. “I’m running for Governor. It’s a real pleasure to say hello to you.” When the eggs were served, the candidate invited himself up to a table of sleepy breakfasting Batavians, popped a saccharin tablet into his coffee, chomped and chattered like a traveling salesman in women’s ready-to-wear.

Victor’s Open Kitchen last week was only an oatmeal oasis along the whirlwind political pathway for Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller. Before that day ended in Jamestown, he had traveled 200 miles, made nine campaign stops. At each he eased into a different device for winning friends and influencing voters. In Geneseo Rockefeller happily scribbled autographs for housewives, on handbags and even a check stub (“I never sign my autograph on a check”). In Alfred “Rocky” popped a blue Alfred University beanie on his head while 2,000 students cheered. In Wellsville he solemnly accepted 50¢ campaign contributions from two shy Brownie scouts. In Olean he let ward bosses wait while he strode into W. T. Grant’s to shake more hands and buy a nickel’s worth of green taffy. In Salamanca he grabbed a baton and directed the high school band, grabbed a hula hoop and, with a flourish, tossed it around his neck.

Patronage & Chuckles. From Batavia to Salamanca to Jamestown, Nelson Rockefeller’s polished performance was a crowd pleaser that any practicing politician would have envied. Yet: 1) Rockefeller is a tyro at the game, 2) his background scarcely schooled him for hula hooping and beanie balancing. For Nelson Rockefeller is the grandson of the greatest tycoon of them all, the second son of the nation’s most generous and most retiring philanthropist. He is a man who is a Croesus in his own right ($100 million, give or take a million), a man who in 30 years has counseled three Presidents, changed the living standards of large sections of South America, carved out a place in commerce, culture and international diplomacy. Adding the political touch to all this explains why Nelson Rockefeller is the hottest new Republican candidate on the U.S. political horizon. It also explains why the race for the nation’s top state job, Governor of New York, is turning from a Democratic walkaway into a neck-and-neck sprint.

While the Empire State’s meadows and mountains were greening into summer, Democrats were preening with unqualified exuberance. In the fight for the statehouse, they had an unquestionable advantage, i.e., they held it already. Four years ago Multimillionaire W. Averell Harriman hit the hustings after two decades of public service, squeaked in as Governor by 11,125 votes. Harriman was stopped cold in his attempt to parlay the post into a 1956 Democratic nomination for President. So he decided to dig in at Albany. The Governor shoveled generous chunks of patronage to traditionally starved upstate Democrats to get them to slave for Ave. Periodically he toured all 62 counties. He cut ribbons or pulled switches on new projects, some of them started by his predecessor, Tom Dewey. He funneled money into new roads and schools, did it without substantially increasing taxes. Gaunt, autocratic Averell Harriman, turning 67 and testy, even learned to chuckle while chucking babies and trading supermarket small talk. As the 1958 election approached, Harriman’s party was out of the financial red; his opponents for the moment were out of worthwhile candidates and issues. Honest Ave took a confident, proprietary grip on the ugly, Victorian Governor’s mansion.

And at that point Nelson Rockefeller hove into view.

“He’s Got Magic.” Following a family tradition, Rockefeller one afternoon last winter called an unpublicized family council in the 56th-floor Rockefeller Center suite from which the Rockefellers guide their worldwide enterprises and philanthropies. To his brothers he outlined his newest intention: he was anxious to run for office; some Republicans suggested he announce for Governor. Said he: “I think I’ll give it a whirl.”

Whirling away were four other Republican hopefuls, including former Republican National Chairman Leonard Wood Hall, a Long Islander who had already got President Eisenhower’s off-the-cuff endorsement. But not even sage Len Hall had a chance. By August, Rockefeller had collected delegates enough to turn the state Republican convention into a formality. By September, scarcely pausing for breath, he was on the campaign stump, attracting larger crowds than the most optimistic Republicans had expected. Everyone agreed Nelson Rockefeller was a political golden boy; everyone suggested a different reason why. Said brother Laurance, an amateur psychologist: “He has reached a degree of maturity really free of egotism, fears and frustrations, and is able to project himself into the problems of others.” Said amiably disgruntled Leonard Hall: “He’s got magic.”

The Blue Books. At 50, Nelson Rockefeller is a grandfather four times but does not look it. His figure is sturdy (5 ft. 10 in., 175 Ibs.), his hair all brown and all there, his broad face handsome, his effect on women voters devastating. He has the endurance and enthusiasm required of a modern candidate; after an 18-hour day, he can look out over a street-corner crowd of 50 and say: “This is terrific. Really wonderful!” He has a sense of humor about his own wealth. Walking down a Brooklyn street recently, he found a dime, stuffed it in his pocket, said: “This is like carrying coals to Newcastle.” His favorite promise and a proven laugh-getter: “I’d like to give Averell Harriman a run for his money.”

Rockefeller organized his campaign in the same way he initiated million-dollar South American business enterprises. Before he set foot on the vote-pulling circuit, assistants drew up a set of 25 studies of the major problems of New York government, bound them in blue, annotated them for quick reference. He carries 18 of the reports with him, studies them between stops. He has a dozen people who normally work “for the family” following him (their salaries paid until November from his own $20,000 maximum campaign contribution). He is fretful when time is lost, and his relaxation sometimes takes curious channels. One night he flew to the West Coast, spent the next day padding through art museums, flew home next night, arrived at his desk in the morning with the comment: “Gee, that was a good rest.”

But humor and enthusiasm, efficiency and drive are inert elements in Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller’s chemistry. The catalyst that makes them bubble: an irresistible urge to do big things. Laurance Rockefeller tries to explain it: “Nelson is always working on his environment.”

Rabbits & Flies. The environment into which Nelson was born on July 8, 1908 appeared to need no working on. Grandfather John Davison Rockefeller had hammered together the Standard Oil Trust and amassed a billion dollars along the way. Grandfather Nelson Wilmarth Aldrich, at the time senior Senator from Rhode Island, ruled the Senate and bellowed at the White House. The young Rockefellers, obviously, had wealth, power and prestige. But they were allowed to revel in none of the three. Instead, they learned their gentle father’s code: “Every right implies a responsibility, every opportunity an obligation, every possession a duty.”

Under this goad of a stern Baptist conscience, Nelson Rockefeller listened attentively to Bible readings with his breakfast. In a ledger he entered, as had his father and grandfather, his 25¢ weekly allowance, extra income from raising rabbits or catching flies (at 10¢ a hundred), and the uses he made of the money. Mother Abby Aldrich, less stern of conscience, balanced obligation with games, art and music. When she heard that Columbia University’s new progressive Lincoln School mixed students from townhouse and tenement and put a premium on curiosity, she enrolled Nelson and his younger brothers.

Rockefeller graduated from Lincoln with deficiencies in arithmetic and spelling, but with an urge to learn more about people. He decided Princeton, Yale and Harvard were undemocratic, bypassed them to attend smaller Dartmouth. At Hanover he directed a stirring attack on the fraternity system but eventually joined Psi Upsilon, wielded a fire hose and earned a black eye during a battle between his sophomore class and freshmen, ran and lost for president of the junior class. In the Rockefeller tradition he also taught Sunday school, abstained from smoking and the traditional applejack parties in White River Junction and made Phi Beta Kappa as his father had at Brown.

5,000,000 Sq. Ft. A week after graduation (’30), he married Philadelphia Socialite Mary Todhunter Clark (sniffed a Main Line matron: “A young New York man is marrying into the Clark family”). Wedding present from the groom’s parents: a year’s trip around the world. Armed with letters of introduction to government officials and Standard Oil executives, Nelson and “Tod” Rockefeller journeyed from Europe to India to the Far East, spent most of their honeymoon discussing world problems with Prime Ministers and potentates.

Home again, Rockefeller got a business challenge from his father. To provide a site for a new opera house, John D. Jr. had bought up a dozen acres of mid-Manhattan brownstones just off Fifth Avenue. The opera house fell through. Undaunted, John D. Jr. decided to erect an integrated system of office buildings, courts and shops. Floor after grey granite floor of what was to become the 15-building Rockefeller Center was rising. Nelson Rockefeller’s task: to rent at the depths of the Depression no less than 5,000,000 sq. ft. of floor space. He did it by luring potential tenants with more attractive rents and facilities, sped their entry into Rockefeller Center by buying up their long-term leases in other buildings. Rival landlords fumed, one filed a $10 million damage suit. But tempers cooled and the suit was dropped when Rockefeller Center set up a subleasing office, found tenants for the space from which it had drawn its own clientele.

Beyond the Fence. In 1935 Rockefeller visited South America on a trip that changed his life. In Venezuela he discovered the abysmal difference between the standard of living inside the U.S. oil compounds and outside. Few U.S. executives knew Spanish; as a result, their companies had little contact with the Latin American world beyond the fence. To Rockefeller the environment needed working on. Home again, he enrolled at the Berlitz School (Rockefeller Center class), studied Spanish two hours a day for three months. Returning to Venezuela as a director of Standard Oil’s subsidiary, Creole Petroleum, he hopped from Creole compound to compound, persuaded the company to improve conditions on the outside, urged U.S. oilworkers to learn the language.

To Nelson Rockefeller’s mind, the oil companies were not alone in neglecting Latin America. The U.S. itself had scant contact south of the border, and with war coming, as he saw it, needed Western Hemisphere neighbor nations it hardly knew. Rockefeller put the blame on the State Department for not following up U.S. business entries into Latin America with higher-type diplomacy, said as much in a report he forwarded to White House Chamberlain Harry Hopkins. Hopkins read the report, showed it to Franklin Roosevelt. Roosevelt asked the 32-year-old Rockefeller to visit him. Upshot of the call: Rockefeller’s appointment as coordinator of Inter-American Affairs and the beginning of an intermittent 15-year government career.

During those years, Nelson Rockefeller: ¶As Inter-American Affairs coordinator (1940-44), drew up a blacklist that steered U.S. businessmen away from 1,800 Latin American Nazi-serving firms, also arranged loans by which Latin Americans could buy out German interests. ¶ While Assistant Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs (1944-45), fought for a clause in the United Nations Charter far more vital than he knew; thinking primarily of Latin American relations, he enlisted the aid of Michigan’s late, great Senator Arthur Vandenberg, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, in providing for the right of U.N. members to make regional security pacts, thereby laid the groundwork for such postwar defense alliances as NATO, SEATO and the Baghdad Pact.

¶ As Harry Truman’s international-development adviser (1950-51), wrote the basic proposal (“Partners in Progress”) for the Truman Administration’s Point Four Program.

¶ As Candidate Dwight Eisenhower’s adviser on government operations, drew up plans for coordinating federal agencies; after Eisenhower was elected, served on a three-man (other members: Milton Eisenhower, Arthur Flemming) committee that streamlined government, established —among other things—a new Department of Health, Education and Welfare. ¶As HEW under secretary (1953-54), drafted legislation to extend Social Security benefits and increase vocational rehabilitation. Also offered other proposals, e.g., federal reinsurance to extend private-hospitalization benefits, aid to education, that were too liberal for the Eisenhower Administration.

¶As President Eisenhower’s special assistant on foreign policy (1954-55), helped produce such projects as Atoms for Peace and the U.S. Geneva Open Skies proposal.

In his latter Washington years, Modern Republican Rockefeller clashed more and more often with such Administration conservatives as Treasury Secretary George Humphrey and Budget Director Joseph Dodge, who thought his suggestions sometimes too expensive, and Under Secretary of State Herbert Hoover Jr., who frequently thought them too bold. In 1955 Rockefeller quit Washington, went home to New York. Friends are certain that somewhere along in here he resolved to try for office himself. “He felt,” said a friend, “he had to run for elective office, because nobody really paid any attention to someone who was only an appointee.”

Diverted Streams. For a while Nelson Rockefeller went quietly about his normal New York life—which probably has no parallel among the city’s 8,000,000 other residents. He is board chairman of Rockefeller Center, now mortgage free and conservatively valued at $150 million. From the RCA Building’s Room 5600 (“Rockefeller, Office of the Messrs.”), he presides over some $15 million worth of business investments in 17 other countries. He is a member of 18 boards of directors. He supports with his brothers nearly $4,000,000 worth of charities and special projects a year, from adoption agencies to zoos and including the impressive Rockefeller Reports (initiated by Nelson Rockefeller) on U.S. defenses, economy and education. And he pays special attention to his duties as chairman of Manhattan’s Museum of Modern Art, fostered by his mother.

Art is Rockefeller’s gripping hobby. He has gathered 1,500 primitive pieces, another 1,000 oils, etchings and lithographs, almost all modern. Says Adviser Rene d’Harnoncourt, director of the Modern Museum: “Anyone who is such a doer gets a special kick out of his times.” Some of the best items are in the Rockefellers’ 27-room triplex apartment overlooking Manhattan’s Central Park, others at the family’s 3,000 acre estate in Pocantico Hills near Tarrytown. Rockefeller has built a house in the shadow of the family mansion, where his father still spends the winter. To show off his outdoor sculpture, he has diverted streams, moved walls, replanted the shrubbery around his white shingle Dutch colonial farmhouse.

In addition to the apartment and the farmhouse, the Rockefellers keep a summer place near the big Maine house in which Nelson Rockefeller was born. But currently all the houses are increasingly lonely. Both oldest son Rodman, 26, and daughter Ann, 24, have married, moved away; each has two children. Son Steven, 22, traveling with his father’s campaign caravan this autumn, goes into the Army after Christmas. Only children left: Mary and Michael, 20, the only twins in the Rockefeller clan. Each of the children, in a particular tribute from their father, was informed well in advance that he was about to run for Governor.

Candidate or Chowderhead? Even before Rockefeller left Washington in 1955, seasoned New York politicians thought they saw the start of a Rockefeller-for-Something movement. The clue: in 1953 knowledgeable Lieut. Governor Frank C. Moore was persuaded to step out of a bright future in Governor Thomas E. Dewey’s administration, step into the Rockefeller Government Affairs Foundation as president, a position in which he would be within hailing distance for political counsel. Political geiger counters began to click in earnest last year, when Rockefeller volunteered to help build a stadium for the soon-to-leave-Flatbush Brooklyn Dodgers. He accepted more and more invitations to women’s club luncheons and rubber chicken dinners. He was appointed chairman of a state commission to study proposed changes in New York’s constitution, a role which gave him a chance to see and be seen around the state. The geiger count: a run for Governor.

One of the first to hear the click was State G.O.P. Chairman Judson Morehouse. A year ago Morehouse had scribbled down the names of potential candidates: Tom Dewey, onetime Attorney General Herbert Brownell, U.S. Senator Jacob Javits. onetime G.O.P. National Chairman Hall. As a longshot he added Rockefeller, who had been a dependable campaign contributor ($10,000 a year). Morehouse dispatched poll takers across the state to see which name rang bells, was not surprised when Three-Termer Dewey’s bonged loudest. But chiming in second place and tolling louder with each sample was Nelson Rockefeller. Realist Morehouse tore up his list, began to pump for Rockefeller. Said he to a gathering of county leaders: “Either you guys support me while I pick the best candidate or you will get yourselves some chowderhead and get this election all messed up.”

Debts & Disgust. In winning the G.O.P. nomination, Rockefeller hardly worked up a perspiration. But with Averell Harriman as his opponent, the race is all uphill. Not only is the Governor well entrenched in traditionally Democratic

New York City, but Harriman’s solicitude for upstate Democrats has paid off. In normally Republican districts the party is newly strong. In 1957, for the first time, New York elected more Democratic mayors than Republican; Democrats also won control of seven more city councils.

But the G.O.P. also has points in its favor. This year the Democrats themselves have unleashed the specter of a Tammany Hall that calls the shots even for the Governor: at the August state convention, Tammany Chief Carmine De Sapio humbled Harriman, rumbled through his own personal choice for the U.S. Senate nomination, New York District Attorney Frank Hogan (TIME, Sept. 8). Harlem’s powerful Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr., is running on both tickets and, particularly in the wake of Democrat Orval Faubus’ antics, could conceivably switch 30,000 Harlem votes to the Republicans. A final special advantage: many a New York bloc, e.g., Negroes, plus liberals, art lovers, medical men and the churches, recognize a longstanding debt to the Rockefeller philanthropies, may be moved to pay it at the polls.

But Nelson Rockefeller’s chances depend primarily on Campaigner Rockefeller himself. Polls show that he is making a dent. The gap between candidates, once 20% in Harriman’s favor, has narrowed to a hairline’s difference. And among voters who made up their minds in the last fortnight, Rockefeller is the choice 8-2 in rural areas and a remarkable even-Stephen in New York City, where the heaviest Democratic vote must come from.

Not until next month will New Yorkers know whether personality, teamwork and determination can carry Rockefeller all the way to Albany. But one thing is already clear. Never has the Empire State seen such a handshaking, hula hooping, beanie wearing, bandleading candidate—named Rockefeller. Never would the old environment be quite the same again.