ROCKEFELLER'S LAST STAND
Wechsler, James A.
Rockefeller's Last Stand by JAMES A. WECHSLER T^or several men this November's -*¦ gubernatorial contest in New York will have large private drama with national overtones. The man with his job at...
...As this is written, O'Connor and his supporters seemed determined to ride out the revelations and Kennedy, who alone might have blocked the way, was sadly accepting him as an inevitability...
...In the realm of Latin American policy, where he presumably possessed some special competence as a result of his Washington experience in the Roosevelt years, he has been equally unproductive...
...Soon afterward he released the full text of the documents...
...Rockefeller's troubles were traceable to many factors...
...In the face of these varied circumstances the political bookmakers have been tempted for many months to write off Rockefeller as the man without a chance...
...In world affairs he has become largely indistinguishable from his un-creative Republican brethren...
...Pollsters agreed that the two chief causes of his decline were his divorce and remarriage, and the increases in taxes that had taken place during his tenure...
...In a close race the defectors could tip the balance against Rockefeller...
...He had recorded a slight comeback since the even more disastrous portents found in winter surveys, but at that time it was drily observed that, like the Mets, he had no place to go but up...
...The tax rises were plainly necessary, but Rockefeller had rendered them especially aggravating by bland campaign assurances that no such levies would be required under his enlightened rule...
...Now the indicators point to O'Connor, who has run well in polls and— until the Roosevelt attack—appeared entirely capable of routing Rockefeller...
...His record as governor is hardly as bad as Democratic orators depict it...
...He had violated all the rules of clubhouse etiquette and the substance of what he said was clearly deemed less important by party regulars than the implausible impropriety of saying it aloud...
...alas, he was found to be a registered Republican...
...Conceivably it could be Roosevelt, who has plainly rendered himself persona non grata to the Democratic delegates...
...A man aloof from the partisan feuds of the Democratic organizations would be a welcome sight to many voters and would almost surely be swept into office in the anti-Rockefeller atmosphere...
...And since Kennedy, Humphrey, and other Democratic dignitaries will feel obliged to stump for O'Connor, the magnitude of such a Rockefeller triumph would be dramatically enhanced...
...In the early stages of the selection process Senator Robert Kennedy, who had moved swiftly into the vacuum of New York's Democratic leadership, let it be known that he was seeking a "high-level" candidate to oppose Rockefeller...
...The disclosure stirred wide notice but there was no sign of any major rebellion in Democratic ranks...
...The stigma of the Roosevelt indictment will haunt any O'Connor campaign...
...But the search proved frustrating...
...The idea commanded some popularity among Republican politicos, who increasingly viewed Rockefeller as the carrier of a fatal political ailment which could infect many others on the ticket...
...John Gardner, Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare in the Johnson Administration, was another highly-touted prospect...
...It is possible, if by no means certain, that Nelson Rockefeller's exuberant belief in himself, sometimes defined as vanity, may be vindicated and that the obituaries have been premature...
...The strategy was sound and plausible...
...Buckley, whose reputation for candor in private discourse is well-established, reportedly replied that this was exactly the case...
...But the echoes of the Roosevelt blast are almost certain to grow louder if the Democrats choose O'Connor at their state convention...
...Buckley also furnished additional details about the meeting at which this arrangement was fashioned, including the explosive fact that a leading race track operator, Martin Tananbaun of Yonkers Raceway, was one of the participants...
...Given the clear indications of Rockefeller's decline, they were in the position of a football team leading decisively in the fourth quarter and obliged only to engage in ball-control for the final moments...
...No gubernatorial candidacy is perfumed by the sponsorship of a man with large holdings in the sport of kings...
...it could turn a seeming Democratic sure thing into a Rockefeller upset victory...
...a sweeping gubernatorial victory in 1966 seemed the obvious prelude to a bolder bid in 1968...
...there are some solid achievements...
...even a lesser figure would draw numerous votes from the Democratic line...
...In the year 1966 it may seem idiocy that a man's family life should provide the ground for his political exile, but every survey showed that a significant segment of women voters remained unforgiving...
...he has offered no novel or daring thoughts on the war in Vietnam...
...So negative were the reports that they evoked persistent rumors that Rockefeller would avoid the confrontation and allow Senator Jacob Javits, who remains an incredibly successful votegetter, to make the race for governor...
...The man with his job at stake is, of course, Governor Nelson Rockefeller, whose political career, once so full of promise, could be finally terminated by defeat...
...at a joint news conference Rockefeller beamingly announced that his good friend, the Senator, would head his campaign for reelection...
...the possible conflicts of interest are obvious...
...But what he said remains an extraordinary political exhibit because the flavor of Buckley's dialogue seemed so authentic and because those named, amid angry denials, showed no enthusiasm for further exploration of the charges...
...Beame lost to Republican John Lindsay but O'Connor was elected council president...
...Such a figure would also, it was parenthetically noted, create no serious complexity for Kennedy in the strife-ridden Democratic organization he has inherited...
...Roosevelt says he went to Buckley asking whether the fight was fixed and his own quest for the gubernatorial nomination a waste of effort...
...He is also a personable, articulate man with no record of profound convictions and an increasing responsiveness to liberal counsellors to whom, as one of them has remarked privately, he earnestly pleads for tutelage in the liberal gospel...
...But the advent of August brought no sign that Rockefeller was succumbing to defeatism by seeking a Senatorial exit from his trouble...
...in return, O'Connor would receive the gubernatorial nomination this year...
...Roosevelt, who had declared his own candidacy several months earlier, released what he described as a summary of conversations he had held with Charles Buckley, the venerable Democratic boss of the Bronx...
...the New York Conservative Party, which sponsored William Buckley's widely-publicized mayorJAMES A. WECHSLER is editor of the editorial page of The New York Post and a featured columnist for that paper...
...Roosevelt had prepared three memoranda on the talks shortly after they occurred in July...
...In essence this was the story Roosevelt told: The state was full of rumors that when the Democrats were choosing a mayoralty candidate last year, Buckley, Brooklyn leader Stanley Steingut, Abe Beame, and Frank O'Connor had agreed that Beame would get the mayoralty nomination and O'Connor take second place on the ticket as candidate for president of the city council...
...Unless all the polls were woefully wrong, any respectable figure could win on the Democratic line...
...But they began fumbling as if overpowered by a will to lose...
...Few occupants of any major office have approached a contest for reelection with the odds so overwhelming against them...
...This may have been the last major act of Roosevelt's political life unless a miracle occurs...
...While Kennedy was searching for such an above-the-battle figure, other things were happening on earth...
...O'Connor is a former district attorney whose office in Queens was a haven for clubhouse appointees...
...But he has been less than an inspirational figure and much of the time he has been a prisoner of the sluggish conservatives who dominate the GOP's legislative battalions in the state...
...Out of these developments Rockefeller can glimpse the chance for a reprieve from the doom so widely predicted for him...
...Thus many once disposed to view Rockefeller as the present-day embodiment of Wendell Willkie have been given little recent evidence to sustain the image...
...James Perkins, the distinguished president of Cornell University, was high on Kennedy's list...
...His valorous anti-Goldwater fight at the 1964 GOP convention had deeply embittered and estranged the right-wing faction...
...As late as mid-summer, private opinion-polls were remarkably unanimous in indicating that Rockefeller commanded less than forty per cent of the vote against any one of a series of prospective Democratic aspirants...
...it turned out that he could not meet New York's five-year residence requirement for governor...
...They have already been sufficient to confirm the Liberal Party's resistance to O'Connor, and the Liberals are already planning to run an independent candidate of their own...
...When State Democratic Chairman John Burns publicly asserted that a Rockefeller-Javits trade was in the works, Javits' hand was forced...
...But the capacity for self-destruction of New York's Democrats must never be underestimated...
...In more general terms Rockefeller was caught in a cross-fire of conservative resentment and liberal disenchantment...
...he showed copies to a number of people, a fragment of the story inevitably reached print, and Buckley cried "liar...
...Rockefeller, according to this theory, would abdicate in return for appointment to Javits' vacated Senate seat...
...He voiced no skepticism about our Dominican intervention and he has been apparently unmoved by the erosion of the bright dreams of the Alliance for Progress...
...On the other hand many independent liberals, initially intrigued by Rockefeller's entry into politics, found their passions fading...
...Javits, whose ambition to achieve the Vice Presidential place on the 1968 Republican ticket is frankly avowed, was responsive to such talk...
...alty campaign last year, was preparing to place its own nominee in the gubernatorial field...
...Among his leading adherents are supporters of Vice President Hubert Humphrey, a circumstance which at one time stirred speculation that the Democratic convention might become a Humphrey-Kennedy battleground, with the latter supporting Nassau County Executive Eugene Nickerson of Long Island, but Nickerson's drive sputtered and died...
...Their nature was unfolded when Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr., in a desperate battle for political rehabilitation, dropped his bombshell in late July...
Vol. 30 • September 1966 • No. 9
