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West Virginia: Junior Senator Sen. Jay Rockefeller IV (D) Last Updated July 14, 2003
Jay Rockefeller's full name, John D. Rockefeller IV, has a familiar ring to those who remember his great-grandfather as the oil billionaire who was America's richest man, and his grandfather as the heir who had more than enough money to build New York's Rockefeller Center, restore Colonial Williamsburg, and found the Museum of Modern Art during the Depression of the 1930s. Jay Rockefeller's father and uncles were men of impressive achievement in different fields. His uncle, Winthrop Rockefeller, moved to an impoverished state in the southern hills--in his case Arkansas--and won two terms as governor, running an honest and reforming administration. His other uncle, Nelson Rockefeller, became governor of the nation's then-biggest state and spent money expansively on generous welfare and gigantic monuments. Jay Rockefeller became governor of what turned out to be America's number one population-losing state of the 1980s, leaving behind a network of roads and highways and a progressive tax structure. Both Rockefellers--Nelson and Jay--were mentioned early on as presidential candidates: Nelson, never very shy about running, finally did so in 1964 at 56, and again in 1968, and served as Vice President from 1974 to 1977. Jay for years avoided projecting his name forward, then almost decided to run in the summer of 1991 at 54, but in 2001 said, "No, I'm not interested. If I'd wanted to do it, I would have in 1991." The parallels stop here, for Jay Rockefeller lacks the aloof, imperial bearing of his Uncle Nelson; he is affable, full of self-deprecating humor, tall enough so that he stoops to get through doorways and uses hearing aids because of noise damage from frequent helicopter travel. He was careful to work his way up the political ladder. He grew up in New York, graduated from Harvard, and lived and studied in Japan for three years. He first came to West Virginia as a VISTA volunteer in Emmons in 1964. "Although I went to Emmons to help that community," he reminisced in 2002, "they helped me much more. My experience in Emmons set the course for the rest of my life." He was elected to the House of Delegates in Kanawha County in 1966 and as secretary of state in 1968, and then had the chastening experience of losing a 1972 race for governor to Republican Arch Moore. He served three years as president of West Virginia Wesleyan College in Buckhannon, and became more practical, dropping his opposition to strip mining. He was not shy about spending his own millions--his net worth was estimated at $200 million in 2002--and was elected governor in 1976 and, against Moore, in 1980, after which the state was plunged into deep recession. In 1984, he ran for the U.S. Senate and beat Republican businessman John Raese by just 52%-48% after spending $12 million. Initially in the Senate, Rockefeller deferred to Robert Byrd and compiled a conventional liberal voting record, though somewhat more inclined to free trade because of his experience in East Asia. Then he began his concentration on health care. With a seat on the Finance Committee, he got a place on the Pepper Commission on long-term health care. As chairman, he got majorities on the commission to back long-term care for all Americans regardless of age and, by 8-7, universal medical insurance coverage. But getting others to agree was harder. Rockefeller talked mostly about health care financing when he was mulling a presidential race; but he warmly endorsed Bill Clinton and applauded his emphasis on health care. He was motivated in part by anger at his mother's treatment during a long terminal illness--an experience that would be much worse for people of ordinary incomes, he thought--and he worked to increase the number of general practitioners, especially in states like West Virginia and Arkansas, at the risk of harming the major teaching hospitals. Efforts at compromise came far too late, after voters had turned against a government takeover of health care, and the health care bill crashed and burned in September 1994. Rockefeller has worked on other health care issues since. Perhaps his biggest legislative achievement was his 1992 law, passed over furious opposition from Western coal states, which forced union and non-union coal companies and ''reachback'' companies that had gone out of the coal business to pay for the exploding cost of the United Mine Workers' health care trust funds; he has worked ever since to continue funding of this program for retired miners and their widows. Rockefeller was a member of the Medicare commission set up under a 1997 law. He opposed the recommendations of John Breaux of a premium-support system, under which seniors would be given a certain amount of money and could choose between offerings from different insurance companies, much as federal employees choose from among a series of approved plans today. Breaux won a 10-7 margin for his plan, but it was below the 11-vote supermajority required to make it an official recommendation; Rockefeller vigorously opposed the proposal. On the Finance Committee and, if it comes to that, on the floor he is likely to be a staunch opponent of similar proposals if advanced by George W. Bush, Frist and Breaux. Rockefeller still would like a system-wide health care reform but recognizes that it cannot pass, and so he works on incremental changes, like the amendment he got passed unanimously in July 2002 to route $6 billion to Medicaid programs in the states. On some issues, Rockefeller has not taken stands on the left. He supported the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, working to maintain programs for abused and neglected children. For a dozen frustrating years, one of his major causes was a uniform federal product liability law, to reduce the burden of expensive lawsuit settlements on manufacturers. Bill Clinton vetoed one version in May 1996; another was sidelined by the production of the Starr report in September 1998. In 2001, Rockefeller vehemently opposed the Bush tax cuts and argued that West Virginians, with the lowest incomes in the nation, received relatively little. "I understand that we are in a war against terrorism and money is tight," he wrote in May 2002. "But I have trouble understanding why money is tight when it comes to funding health care programs that benefit the poor and middle class but is readily available when it comes to funding a tax cut that dramatically favors the rich." Steel has been a preoccupation of Rockefeller for a long time. He was one of those who helped Weirton Steel, now West Virginia's fourth largest employer, become employee-owned in 1984. In the late 1990s, he called for aid to steel makers in the face of what he regarded as a flood of subsidized steel imports, arguing that workers and companies that have "played by the book" should get government help to allow them to continue in their jobs and their homes. In 2002, he called for 40% tariffs for four years on steel imports. The Bush administration in March 2002 imposed a 24% tariff in the second year and 18% in the third; Rockefeller complained when the administration made exceptions. Rockefeller has worked for several years to provide health care benefits to retired steelworkers whose former employers have gone out of business or filed for bankruptcy. He scaled down his original proposal to a $179 million refundable tax credit to cover 70% of health care costs. In May 2002, the Senate voted for this 56-40; not enough for approval, which required 60 votes, but it did signal progress for Rockefeller on a long-term project which he says will make possible a consolidation of the steel industry. Rockefeller is vice chairman on the Intelligence Committee and participated in the joint intelligence committees' investigation of intelligence before September 11. In January 2003 he was involved in a dispute with Chairman Pat Roberts over the apportionment of funding for the committee; the rift nearly prevented the organization of the Senate for the 108th Congress. According to Roberts, Rockefeller also proposed firing the entire staff of the traditionally non-partisan committee and rehiring the positions on a partisan basis. On Iraq and homeland security, Rockefeller took stands opposite to those vehemently urged by his West Virginia colleague Robert Byrd. In October 2002, Rockefeller voted for the Iraq war resolution. After the November 2002 election, he voted for the Department of Homeland Security as a "bold and necessary step." But he took care to thank Byrd for leading the opposition to it with "clarity, conviction and passion," and with Byrd, he voted against limiting debate on the measure. Rockefeller is in strong shape politically--strong enough that he no longer spends any of his own money and wins handsomely. He won by 68%-32% in 1990, 77%-23% in 1996 (duplicating Robert Byrd's feat of winning all 55 counties) and 63%-37% in 2002.
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