Deep, deep pockets - John D. Rockefeller IV

National Review, Nov 16, 1984 by William P. Cheshire

DEEP, DEEP POCKETS

WHEN HE stepped down several years ago as chairman of Jimmy Carter's Coal Commission, West Virginia's Democratic Governor John D. (Jay) Rockefeller IV received as a farewell gift a huge silver bowl.

"Just what I've always wanted,' Rockefeller said, holding up the trophy. "It goes with my spoon.'

Though Rockefeller may joke about being rich--his personal fortune is thought to exceed $150 million--West Virginians have learned to take his money seriously. Four years ago, in what began as a tight race against former Governor Arch Moore Jr., Rockefeller spent $11.6 million, all but $245,000 of it out of his own deep pockets. His lavish outlays buried the $1-million Moore campaign and shattered the political spending record of $10 million set by Jay's Uncle Nelson in New York in 1966.

This year, running for the U.S. Senate against a political newcomer, Republican John Raese, Rockefeller may set another record for luxurious politicking. By Labor Day this year his campaign reports showed expenditures of $5.9 million. "I will spend whatever it takes,' Rockefeller has been known to boast without shame.

The reason he must invest so heavily in beguiling the voters is apparent to anyone familiar with West Virginia, where an historically hardscrabble life has worsened appreciably under eight years of Rockefeller's indifferent stewardship. Elected governor in 1976 largely on the strength of promises to lift the state to its feet, Rockefeller goes out of office amid what can only be described as economic devastation.

"If there is one thing I know I can do as governor better than anyone else,' he had assured the state, "it is to produce jobs for West Virginia. This you can count on or my name isn't Jay Rockefeller.'

Voters drew the intended conclusion: Rockefeller would exploit his family connections to subdue the state's rampaging unemployment. To enhance this impression, Rockefeller's 1980 TV spots featured nationally known industrialists congratulating West Virginians on their good fortune in having a gubernatorial candidate with so much "clout.'

But Rockefeller's influence evidently was exhausted in persuading industrialists to endorse his candidacy. Not only did new businesses not flock to West Virginia; old businesses moved away, fleeing what Alexander Grant & Co., the Chicago accounting firm, described last year as the most poisonous business climate anywhere in the 48 contiguous states.

Since 1981, when Rockefeller began his second term as governor, West Virginia has lost 35,000 jobs in manufacturing and another thirty thousand in coal mining. As he prepares to leave office, while most of the nation celebrates a brisk economic recovery, West Virginia's economy still languishes in double-digit unemployment--at 14.5 per cent, the highest in the country.

Rockefeller's response has been three-fold: to deny the incontrovertible evidence of distress, to browbeat critics of his own performance, and to bamboozle the state's impoverished voters by means of extravagant media hype and less sophisticated diversions such as banjo picking and all the drumsticks they can eat. (Guests at a Rockefeller campaign outing in Huntington once devoured $14,500 worth of Kentucky Fried Chicken.)

"I'm sick and tired of hearing our state talked down,' an irritated Rockefeller fired back at a Beckley newspaperman who raised the unemployment issue at a carefully confected "Rockefeller appreciation' meeting. "I think one problem with the business climate is some people in the media. We can spend our time worrying, listening to people in the media and some business people putting the state down, but I'm getting sick of it.'

The business people to whom he referred included disheartened coal-mine operators, whose association last year bought time during radio broadcasts of West Virginia University football games to complain that state government had "made West Virginia too costly for employers to come to, or stay in.' In response to pressure from Rockefeller, the university's regents, who control the football broadcasts even as Rockefeller controls them, ruled that "issue' advertising would no longer be allowed.

Some West Virginians maintain that, consumed by burning ambition and insulated by great wealth, Rockefeller has no more than a superficial concern for the needs of his adopted state. This was once the view of now friendly United Mine Workers officials, who were then miffed by Rockefeller's early opposition to strip mining.

"It would appear,' the UMW's Griff Jarrell told an angry crowd of miners several years ago, "that Mr. Rockefeller is attempting to get more West Virginians on the rolls of the West Virginia Department of Welfare so he will be able to dominate a greater number of people.' Rockefeller obliged Jarrell by adopting his view of strip mining and now gets the UMW's endorsement.

Jay Off-Balance

ON THIS and other issues--gun control, public-employee bargaining, abortion--Rockefeller has abjured a foolish consistency. He once told the students at a Catholic high school that he opposed abortion and, three hours later, assured a liberal audience that abortion was a woman's right. (He now fudges on the issue.)