The Democratic Rockefeller

Tall, tanned and toothy he moves through the poor farm and hill towns of West Virginia like some cultured country slicker. Striding into one tiny town hall he purposely bypasses the speaker's podium, hikes one shiny size-12 shoe onto a folding chair, unbuttons his navy blue cashmere blazer, loosens his wide striped tie and says with a slight twang: "They say, 'Now you know Jay. He's a carpetbagger. He came down here to use this state.' " He flashes the neon smile. "Now I criticized my parents because they didn't allow me to be born here." As the titters subside, he turns superserious. "But you know, don't you, just like I know, that it's not important where a man is born but what he loves." When everything goes right, he leaves the impression that, well--old Jay is regular folks.

Gutsy but Risky. Old Jay is any thing but, of course. He is John Davison Rockefeller IV, 34, an emigre to Appalachia by way of Exeter, Harvard, Yale, the Peace Corps and the U.S. State Department. He is young, handsome, rich and married to the pretty blonde daughter of Illinois' Republican Senator Charles Percy. So what is a guy like that doing in a place like West Virginia? He is running for Governor and, for all the opportunistic, Johnny-come-late-ly overtones, his commitment to the state runs deep. He went there eight years ago as a poverty-program worker. After toiling for two years in Emmons, a creek-bed hollow five miles from the nearest road, he decided that "politics was the only way to accomplish anything in West Virginia," where 30% of the people are considered poor. In 1966, he won a race for the state legislature by a record margin and two years later was elected secretary of state. Last week in the West Virginia primary, liberal Democrat Rockefeller won the party's gubernatorial nomination with a thumping 72% of the vote.

Though there are twice as many registered Democrats as Republicans in the state, Jay Rockefeller is far from being a shoo-in. In fact, his gutsy but politically risky call for an end to strip mining in the state "completely and forever" has turned his race against the folksy, foxy Republican incumbent, Arch A. Moore Jr., 49, into one of the nation's tightest and most exciting state-level battles. To many voters, Rockefeller's stand on strip mining, a $200 million industry employing many of the state's 44,000 miners, is somewhat like proposing a ban on oil in Texas or oranges in Florida. Nevertheless, preaching that strip mining is a "cancer of the earth" that mutilates the hills "like a knife slash through a painting," Rockefeller supports the expansion of deep mining, a far less unsightly operation. "When I see one stripper working," he says, "I see three deep miners out of work." So do the mineowners--and that is one reason why they are solidly aligned behind Moore, a native West Virginian and a supporter of strip mining.

With mining money expected to flow to Moore like water in back-hollow creeks, Rockefeller's rich-boy image is not likely to hurt him. He spent $319,000 on his campaign, downplaying TV pitches for fear of coming on as the big-moneyed media candidate. In last week's primary there were signs that the ecological message was getting through: 11 of the 23 candidates who won seats in the House of Delegates had the endorsement of the increasingly popular "Citizens to Abolish Strip Mining Inc." Sweeping out Moore, a savvy campaigner whose vote-pulling power started with the student body presidency at West Virginia University and ran through six terms as a U.S. Congressman, is something else. But Rockefeller has his own tradition to uphold. Harking back to his great-grandfather, the first John D., Jay Rockefeller says matter-of-factly: "Rockefellers always get their way. I don't know if I like that, but that's the way it is, isn't it?" November will tell.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.