Rockefeller finds it hard to settle for the big-picture gloss. He is a cosponsor of the Democratic national health bill and, as chairman of the Pepper Commission, last year recommended a $66 billion overhaul of the health system. “The more serious matter is if there were nothing to reduce to a sound bite,” he says. In the Senate, he is highly regarded for the zeal he brings to issues. Next week, he will report on the findings of a National Commission on Children. “I don’t know if he’s got the magic, or any magic,” says Democratic consultant Michael McCurry. “But someone with a good basketful of ideas can go a long way in this race.”
Rockefeller may find it hard to talk convincingly about the squeeze on middle-class voters. His wealth has been estimated at $100 million; his Washington home has 11 bathrooms and a treehouse that could pass for a starter home. But the Democrats have had good luck with the moneyed class (FDR, JFK) And Rockefeller has paid his dues. He was a VISTA volunteer in the 1960s, working with the poor in West Virginia. “I was a New Yorker; I had Washington license plates; I was 6 feet 6 1/2 inches. I went around saying, ‘I want to do good’.”
The experience radicalized Rockefeller, a Republican and a nephew of Nelson Rockefeller, and prompted him to become a Democrat. He virtually bought his way into West Virginia politics, spending $12 million to be re-elected governor and $12 million on his 1984 Senate race. But it took decades before he convinced people he was motivated by more than ambition. “I’m the first Rockefeller in a thousand generations to put poor people to work and not make money at it,” he once joked.
His two terms as governor aren’t a compelling case for what he would do for the country. West Virginia’s grinding poverty continues; what’s left of its steel mills and coal mines symbolizes the past, not the future. But Rockefeller has overcome the suspicion of Yankee outsiders in one of the nation’s poorest states. He says his forays around the country have been “exhilarating,” and that he will decide whether to run this summer. He’s not worried about raising money. “People get a kick out of writing a check to a Rockefeller,” he says. But will anyone get a kick out of voting for him?
