The Moderate Republicanism of Nelson Rockefeller

Nelson Rockefeller was “born Republican.” At least, that was what he said to the New York Post, when he was asked to explain his party affiliation despite being a “distinct New Deal” type.² This question from the then-liberal New York Post could give the impression that Rockefeller’s politics represented a unique position in the GOP. However, the party of Herbert Hoover and Robert Taft—who reflected the laissez-faire business-centric and noninterventionist foreign policy wing of the party—was also the home of progressives such as Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge. Rockefeller was part of an at least two-generations-long legacy of Republicans who argued that an activist government that provided a social safety net was required to meet the needs of modern society. Although Rockefeller was part of a tradition of moderate Republicans that had become a fixture in the urban Northeast and West since the turn of the twentieth century, his linkages to the Republican Party went all the way back to its origins in antebellum America. His grandfather John D. Rockefeller Sr. cast his first presidential vote for Abraham Lincoln. His grandmother Laura Spelman Rockefeller’s father, Harvey Buel Spelman, joined the early Republican Party primarily because of its opposition to slavery and support of free enterprise. Harvey Spelman, who helped found the public school system of Akron and served in Ohio’s state legislature, alongside his wife made their home a stop on the Underground Railroad and instilled in their daughters an interest in the advancement of African Americans.³

In addition to his paternal ties to the party, Rockefeller’s namesake and maternal grandfather Nelson W. Aldrich was the influential Republican senator from Rhode Island, who served in Congress for thirty years (1881–1911) and was the near embodiment of the Republican Party’s turn away from policies that might assist African Americans. After the ferment of Reconstruction and during the height of Aldrich’s political career, the Republican Party retreated from efforts to protect African Americans, instead trying to become a national party under the unifying principle of support for the protective tariff. The protective tariff raised taxes on certain foreign goods to protect US manufacturing and infuse the federal government with more funds to take on national initiatives such as settling western territories, promoting transcontinental railroads, and protecting corporations from foreign competitors. Unlike his grandson, who would come alive shaking hands on the campaign trail, Aldrich merely tolerated electoral politics, instead preferring to pull the strings behind the scenes to secure the free rein of trusts such as Standard Oil Company.⁴ Furthermore, for Aldrich, reform was anathema. The social inequality of the day that increasingly outraged many in the industrializing nation was just a matter of course that should be ignored. The aloof statesman did assure his grandson Nelson’s Republican pedigree but linked him to the wing of the Republican Party that was the target of moderates and progressives like Theodore Roosevelt and Robert M. La Follette.⁵

Rockefeller was as much defined by his identity as the grandson of John D. Rockefeller as his desire to transcend his family’s legacy by bridging the divide between elites and the masses. He began setting out to create his own path separate from—or at least adjacent to—his family that illustrated his approach to politics and business at least two decades before he publicly considered a run for office. In 1937, he planned an almost two-month trip across South America from Venezuela to Brazil and then up to the Panama Canal. He brought an entourage of five that included his wife, Mary, and his brother Winthrop. Nelson had fallen in love with the pre-Colombian artwork of Mexico a few years before, which inspired him to enroll in Spanish classes, invest in the Standard Oil of New Jersey’s Venezuelan subsidiary Creole, and eventually take this trip that included purchasing the work of local artisans at almost every stop and touring the countryside with the assistance of Standard Oil officials. Provincial governors and oil company executives extended generous hospitality to the group wherever it went, but Nelson became concerned by the callousness of the Standard Oil employees in South America who were extracting the continent’s oil with no concern for its impact on native employees and communities.

In a letter to his father, John D. Rockefeller Jr., Rockefeller complained that representatives of Standard Oil were to blame for the tense relationship between the United States and Argentina. “Without a question they are responsible for the poor relations between the two countries.” The representatives “have as little to do with the Argentinians as possible and consider them natives.” Rockefeller expressed his dismay by underlining the word “natives” twice. He also lamented the unsophisticated nature of the Standard Oil representatives. “The trouble is all but one or two of the Americans here are of a class that they just can’t mix socially with the best Argentinians—they just don’t know how to act and are therefore very uncomfortable.”⁶ Nelson cut the trip short when he learned of the death of his grandfather, but later that year, he attended the annual conference of Standard Oil of New Jersey and requested permission to give a speech to the three hundred executives on moral and social responsibility. The trip was a formative experience that preceded what historian Darlene Rivas calls a career-long interest in Latin America that peaked between 1939 and 1953. Rivas writes that Rockefeller came to believe that “local elites in Latin America acted in a purely self-interested manner and lacked genuine desire to advance the common good through productive investment.”⁷

Rockefeller’s experience shaped his views on not only Standard Oil but also corporate responsibility and the role of government in the United States. The twenty-nine-year-old warned the room that if corporations did not “contribute to the general welfare of society,” the people would strip them of their property “through legislative action or otherwise.” “The only justification for ownership is that it serves the broad interest of the people,” he opined. “We must recognize the social responsibilities of corporations and the corporation must use its ownership of assets to reflect the best interests of the people. If we don’t they will take away our ownership.” Journalist and Rockefeller biographer Joe Alex Morris called his performance “perhaps the most unpopular speech ever made to such a meeting.” Despite the speech’s reception, his words would seem prophetic to company officials a year later when the Venezuelan government demanded double the oil royalty it received for leasing its land to Creole, which stoked fears that expropriation would soon follow. The inspiration for Rockefeller’s speech was his experience in South America, but he saw parallels within the United States. Rockefeller praised the Roosevelt administration for bringing about reforms that addressed corporate abuses in the United States that he believed companies should have made on their own.⁸ Three years later—after a great deal of maneuvering on Rockefeller’s part to get himself on the president’s radar—Roosevelt appointed Rockefeller coordinator of the Office of Inter-American Affairs. The new agency was intended to improve diplomatic relations between the United States and South American countries and counteract Nazi Germany’s influence in the region.⁹ The role Rockefeller held for over four years allowed him to develop a relationship with the president who became one of the most influential people in his life.¹⁰ For Rockefeller, “[Roosevelt] had shown how a Hudson Valley aristocrat could both capitalize on and transcend his background, could outfox the ward heelers and command the devotion of sharecroppers and slum dwellers.”¹¹ Although Rockefeller would not use the same party as the vehicle for his political aspirations, he believed that he could achieve the same success by building on—and transcending—his Republican pedigree and Rockefeller name.

After leaving public service in 1945, Rockefeller joined the Harry Truman administration as chairman of the International Development Advisory Board in 1950 and later worked under Dwight D. Eisenhower.¹² Rockefeller, the presidential adviser, earned a reputation for boundless enthusiasm, a disregard for protocol that upset senior advisers, and a custom of hiring huge personal staffs to aid him in his attempt to turn any appointment, no matter how inconsequential, into a prominent position. Rockefeller first began working in a Republican administration in January 1955 but soon learned that his political views put him at odds with the conservative wing of his party. During Eisenhower’s first term in office, Rockefeller served as a special assistant on foreign affairs. Eisenhower requested that Rockefeller generate progressive strategies to revitalize the United States’ political, economic, and cultural relations abroad, but Rockefeller had no power of his own—although he hired a personal staff of twenty-seven and sat in on meetings of the cabinet and the National Security Council, among other high-level groups. Rockefeller and Eisenhower agreed that foreign aid could help ward off the spread of communism, but their approach to foreign policy upset the more conservative old guard Republicans, who prioritized balanced budgets, legalism, and protective tariffs instead of free trade. Although Rockefeller was committed to Eisenhower’s stated mission to “serv[e] the needs, rather than the fears of the world,” he made little progress with the administration’s senior advisers such as Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and Undersecretary Herbert Hoover Jr.¹³ Regardless, Rockefeller remained a staunch advocate of increasing aid to so-called underdeveloped nations in hopes of insulating them from Soviet influence. Even though Rockefeller did find some success during his time as special assistant, he resigned after a year. Stepping down allowed Rockefeller to sponsor his own study of American policies—the type of work he had wanted to see done in the Eisenhower administration.

Observers often thought that Rockefeller would be a better fit in the Democratic Party since most of his friends and advisers were Democrats. He had also proven himself to be an outsider in the one Republican administration he joined.¹⁴ When asked by a fellow New York Republican about his political affiliation, he explained, “There was one point, down there [in Washington], I didn’t know which way I’d go. And I said if I became a Democrat, I’d probably have to spend a lot of energy holding back people in the Democratic Party from engaging in certain programs or activities. Whereas, I think I can spend my energy more effectively in the Republican Party by leading and drawing them in the right direction and toward some of the programs and policies that I believe in.”¹⁵ In a similar conversation, Rockefeller explained that he was uncomfortable with the views of Democrats such as Henry Wallace and Rexford Tugwell—whom he knew through playing tennis—because of their “very leftish views.”¹⁶ Despite Rockefeller’s resolute dismissals, his associates argued that he was more likely to succeed in the mold of wealthy politicians such as Herbert Lehman, Franklin Roosevelt, and the current governor of New York, W. Averell Harriman, who had “embraced the masses” and won as Democrats. Thomas E. Dewey, the popular former moderate Republican New York governor who won the Republican presidential nomination in 1944 and 1948, agreed, telling Rockefeller that someone as rich as Lehman could never be elected in New York on a Republican ticket because of the GOP’s reputation as being the party of the wealthy. He attributed his own victory to his reputation as a racket-busting district attorney, not his Republican affiliation.¹⁷

Upon returning to New York in 1955, Rockefeller decided to take the helm of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, a philanthropic organization that he and his brothers had founded in 1940. He would use its resources to assemble a group of experts from various backgrounds to evaluate the state of the nation’s economic and foreign policy as it approached the bicentennial. The endeavor, which cost $500,000, produced six reports outlining the major problems and opportunities that the nation would face in the next ten to fifteen years. Overseen by Henry Kissinger, then a professor at Harvard University, the project brought together numerous leading experts in a wide range of fields. Rockefeller enlisted the participation of over a hundred people, including Adolf A. Berle Jr., Columbia University law professor and former member of Roosevelt’s administration; Margaret Hickey, Ladies’ Home Journal’s public affairs editor; Henry R. Luce, editor in chief of Time, Life, and Fortune magazines; Charles H. Percy, president of Bell and Howell Company; and Dean Rusk, president of the Rockefeller Foundation and former State Department official. The study had the lofty objective of clarifying the nation’s purpose and devising a plan for the United States to meet what it identified as the ultimate challenge, communism. Its first report on military defense spending, released in early 1958, attracted much more attention than a typical nongovernmental think tank report. The reports were ultimately published in one volume titled, Prospect for America: The Rockefeller Panel Reports, in 1961. Although the reports were focused on communism, the participants argued that to seek peace and justice throughout the world, it was necessary to attend to domestic problems such as the “slow progress in solving racial tension,” the “deterioration of our cities,” and the need for more schools and “improved quality in education.”¹⁸

Prospect for America provided a blueprint for understanding Rockefeller’s worldview and the ideas that influenced his understanding of the purview of government in the late 1950s. In the field of domestic policy, the report stated that the nation needed a 5 percent rate of economic growth and proposed the government achieve this goal by encouraging initiative and enterprise; reforming the tax system to reinforce growth; reducing tariffs; eliminating restrictive practices on labor and management; and providing urban redevelopment for schools, roads, hospitals, and water supply systems. It encouraged maximizing personal development by curbing discrimination against racial minorities, women, the poor, and older workers so the nation could benefit from their underutilized resources. There was a call for greater investment in education at all levels so that individuals could reach their highest potential. Finally, the reports’ writers espoused great faith in democracy and its ability to benefit the world.¹⁹ To varying degrees, these themes remained a constant in Rockefeller’s proposals for New York and the nation most of his career.

Major newspapers reported the findings of the Rockefeller panel reports and the aspirant politician increased the exposure by discussing the findings on television shows such as Meet the Press and Today. In part, the panel garnered attention because of its distinguished contributors, but the press made much of Rockefeller’s differences with the Eisenhower administration. One report in particular reinforced fears of a “missile gap” and inspired front-page headlines that the Soviet Union would lead the arms race in less than two years if the administration did not increase defense spending. Another report called for government intervention to counteract the effects of the current recession, which could be interpreted as a criticism of the president’s economic policies. The media’s attention to these differences raised the profile of the reports more than Rockefeller could have hoped. Whereas the press focused on the calls for increased defense spending, Eisenhower was more interested in the reports’ recommendation to reorganize the Pentagon and increase cooperation between the branches of the armed forces. One downside to the publicity for Rockefeller, however, was that many Republicans concluded that the reports’ calls for more government intervention in domestic and foreign policy—and Rockefeller, by extension—were too liberal for the GOP.²⁰

Rockefeller was part of an established moderate Republican tradition that he could draw on to make a case for his electability, but moderate Republicans were a minority faction in their party and supported policies that displeased conservatives. When Rockefeller considered a gubernatorial candidacy, moderate Republicans, despite being a minority in the New York state party, had a strong record of winning statewide offices. In recent memory, moderate Republican Dewey presided as governor of New York from 1943 to 1954. When Rockefeller contemplated a run, two moderate Republicans represented New York in the US Senate: Irving M. Ives, who took office in 1947 until his retirement in 1959—he was replaced by another moderate Republican, Kenneth Keating (1959–1965)—and Jacob Javits. New York was not unusual; moderate Republicans represented states such as Connecticut (Prescott Bush), Maine (Margaret Chase Smith), Massachusetts (Leverett Saltonstall), and New Jersey (Clifford P. Case) in the US Senate when Rockefeller considered his chances. Despite prominent roles in government, moderate Republicans were outnumbered by conservatives, even in the Northeast, who doubted their commitment to Republican principles. Rockefeller would need to present elements of his moderate Republicanism, such as a vocal support for strengthened antidiscrimination legislation, as consistent with the conservatism of the state Republican Party.

The Republican Record on New York’s Antidiscrimination Laws

In the spring of 1958, a staff member of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund produced a report on New York’s antidiscrimination laws to help Rockefeller identify issues of concern and potential policy positions.²¹ The report, which traced demographic changes in postwar New York and the passage of antidiscrimination laws at the state and federal levels, noted the bipartisan support of antidiscrimination laws in the state that had positioned New York as a leader in the field. The report dated the origin of New York’s pioneering record to 1938 when, under Democratic governor Herbert H. Lehman, the state amended the constitution to prohibit discrimination based on “race, color, creed, or religion by any person, firm, corporation, institution, the State of New York, or any of its agencies or subdivisions.” Since the amendment, the state passed nine provisions intended to counteract racial and religious discrimination in public and private employment, labor unions, education, government-assisted public and private housing, and public accommodations. Unlike the state, New York City also outlawed discrimination in private housing, effective April 1, 1958. The report found that both parties had supported the state’s antidiscrimination laws, which were more stringent than federal laws. While Dewey was in office, New York became the first state to outlaw discrimination in employment based on race, creed, color, or national origin in 1945. The Ives-Quinn Law was the first state law of its kind in the nation and created the State Commission Against Discrimination (SCAD), also a first of its kind, within the executive branch of the government to enforce the law.²² In 1948, the state passed the Education Practices Act or Quinn-Olliffe Law, which prohibited discrimination based on race, color, religion, creed, or national origin for nonsectarian colleges, universities, and professional schools. Both laws had bipartisan sponsors and the support of Governor Dewey.²³ In 1952, Dewey signed into law a civil rights law that prohibited discrimination in hotels, restaurants, and other public accommodations. The bill was sponsored by the Senate Republican leader Arthur H. Wicks of Kingston and Republican assemblyman Samuel Roman of Manhattan.²⁴ While Dewey was in office, New York Republicans took a leadership role in shaping an antidiscrimination record that made New York a forerunner in the nation, but they receded from that role once Dewey left office. By the time Rockefeller was considering his candidacy, the Republican-majority legislature had prevented the state from passing new laws that would improve the enforcement apparatus of its groundbreaking antidiscrimination laws.

The creation of SCAD put New York at the forefront of antidiscrimination law in 1945, but by 1957, it was clear that the agency lacked the enforcement capabilities necessary to produce widespread change. SCAD consisted of five members chosen by the governor who served five-year terms along with a support staff tasked with publishing policy statements against discrimination, crafting rules and regulations to enforce state laws and policies, investigating reports of discrimination, holding hearings on the matter, and issuing cease and desist orders. A crucial limitation was that SCAD could only investigate reports submitted to it by a complainant and, if the report was substantiated, use persuasion and conciliation to convince the institution to rectify its policy or practice. If the respondent refused, SCAD would then hold hearings and possibly issue a cease and desist order and require that the complainant receive restitution. Therefore, the person who complained might be able to get the job he or she was denied, but the ruling only applied to that one person and the offending institution or entity. SCAD, however, tried to avoid court proceedings, further limiting its effectiveness.²⁵ By 1957, less than 1 percent of complaints ever received a formal hearing, and the process of submitting a complaint required considerable time and effort for the person who reported.²⁶ The most important limitation for SCAD, however, was its inability to launch its own formal investigations without receiving a complaint. This was in comparison to the Education Practices Act, which was enforced by the State Commissioner of Education who could initiate its own enforceable actions. SCAD’s inability to launch its own investigations meant that New York was no longer in the vanguard in terms of enforcement, while eight other states’ fair employment agencies had the power to initiate legal action.²⁷

Once Dewey left office, the Republican legislature relinquished its leadership role in support of antidiscrimination laws in favor of obstructing the efforts of Democrats who sought to strengthen SCAD’s enforcement capabilities. The chairman of SCAD, Charles Abrams, argued that the agency’s inability to initiate actions weakened its effectiveness. He also advocated for SCAD calling industry-wide conferences on employment that could lead to agreements with employers that SCAD could then enforce against individual employers who refused to comply, rather than work on individual cases that often only forced redress from a single employer. During the 1957 legislative session, the GOP majority rejected a bill that would expand the powers of SCAD in favor of advocating for the establishment of a special division within the attorney general’s office that was empowered to initiate enforceable action. Governor Harriman vetoed the bill on the grounds that the special division would replicate the work of SCAD and create inefficiencies that would undermine antidiscrimination efforts in the state.²⁸ Civil rights groups voiced their support for Harriman’s decision and expressed the view that Republican legislators were only seeking to increase the power of the attorney general for partisan reasons. In January 1958, the Republican state party released a statement pledging its “wholehearted support” for minority rights, but Republican legislators again blocked a bill introduced by the governor to strengthen SCAD as it did the year before.²⁹

Freeman concluded that in recent years, Republican legislators continued to verbalize support for antidiscrimination laws but resisted the legitimate effort to expand “minority rights.” Republicans argued that increasing the power of SCAD would allow it to “harass selected groups,” but Freeman noted that empowering the attorney general could increase the potential for harassment because the chairperson of SCAD had to answer to fellow commission members, while the attorney general worked alone.³⁰ Freeman reasoned that it was debatable whether strengthening SCAD would be effective, but he did explain that the agency would be “immeasurably strengthened at [the] bargaining table if employers and real estate groups knew that their failure to abandon discriminatory practices could immediately result in SCAD legal action against them.” The current system put little pressure on those groups because of the time it took for SCAD to receive a suitable complaint that it could use as a means to begin enforcement proceedings. He also noted that the current model of enforcement, when successful, typically resulted in only an individual or a small number of minorities gaining access to a home or resort, for example, while the rest of the industry could continue to discriminate. Freeman also found merit in Harriman’s objection to empowering the attorney general, which, he concluded, would likely “divide SCAD’s authority and diffuse responsibility.” He also noted that the Republican-led legislature had blocked the bipartisan-sponsored Metcalf-Baker Bill in 1958, which sought to extend the state’s ability to enforce antidiscrimination laws in the field of housing to include “rentals of privately financed multiple dwellings and sales of single-family units when in developments of ten or more, even when no public assistance is involved.” Republicans had blocked similar bills while in committee in 1956 and 1957. The Metcalf-Baker Bill, which was opposed by real estate groups, had the support of Harriman and civil rights organizations. While Republicans successfully blocked such efforts on the state level, New York City passed a similar bill in 1958. By the time Rockefeller considered running for governor, the Republican-controlled legislature had opposed several antidiscrimination bills that put them at odds with not only Harriman but also civil rights organizations, particularly regarding employment and housing.

Rockefeller intended to pledge a strong commitment to civil rights that would pick up where Governor Dewey left off when he ran for office, but his fellow Republicans’ opposition to recent antidiscrimination bills meant he would be at odds with his own party. Freeman observed that Harriman’s support for strengthening SCAD, for example, would garner strong voter support in New York City but would not hurt him among white voters outside of New York City and its suburbs, who typically opposed such measures because they did not consider it a major issue in their communities. Meanwhile, he explained, “minority groups have identified [the] GOP’s move to expand [the attorney general’s] civil rights authority as either a crass political maneuver or an attempt to block all action.” Freeman concluded that a “GOP candidate will have difficulty dealing with [the] current GOP record” because of Harriman’s support for strengthening SCAD.³¹ Freeman explained that if a candidate opposed the Metcalf-Baker Bill on the grounds that it would enable the state to infringe on individual and private rights, one would face various critiques that would be problematic for someone like Rockefeller. Freeman warned that supporters of the bill would argue that allowing individuals to discriminate would be an insult to democratic ideals and provide the Kremlin with anti-American propaganda. They would also say there was no moral justification for denying minorities their ability to pursue happiness. Additionally, there was a possibility that they would argue that allowing discrimination in housing and employment contributed to systemic problems such as crime, rising welfare and health-care costs, and subsequent burdens on taxpayers.

If Rockefeller opposed the recent efforts to expand antidiscrimination laws in New York, it would put him at odds with public statements he had made as a private citizen. In the fall of 1957, for example, Rockefeller asked an audience a question one could imagine him posing to his fellow New York Republicans: “Why do we accept equal opportunity in principle and yet so often reject it in practice?” His answer: “I think if we’re really honest with ourselves, each of us will have to admit that our failures spring from varying degrees of personal prejudices, fears and ignorance.” Rockefeller posed the question to a gathering of the National Urban League, a civil rights organization founded in 1910 to help African American migrants from the South acclimate to life in the North.³² During his speech commemorating the Urban League’s Equal Opportunity Day, Rockefeller argued that it was not enough to eliminate individuals’ prejudices. Instead, he said it was necessary to provide “positive leadership to overcome prejudices in the economic, social and political institutions with which we are associated.” Rockefeller reiterated that message the following May during a speech before one thousand attendees of an event hosted by an African American Masonic order at Riverside Church in Manhattan’s Morningside Heights. He said the nation must “accelerate our efforts” to make “full civil rights and equal opportunity for all men a reality in our country.” He also called for a “comprehensive program, at every level of our national life” to not only counteract the “economic waste” caused by racism and discrimination but the resultant “moral erosion.”³³ The efforts to strengthen SCAD could qualify as the positive leadership Rockefeller championed and Republican legislators opposed repeatedly. Republican legislators’ efforts to block new antidiscrimination measures demonstrated that there was opposition to the liberal racial consensus Rockefeller expected to help carry him to victory, but there were additional signs of cracks in the consensus he expected in New York and they extended far beyond the state GOP.

Racial Tension in Postwar New York

In the fall of 1957, Rockefeller commissioned a private survey of New Yorkers to decide if he should run. From the outset, Rockefeller was concerned with gauging the needs and desires of New Yorkers regardless of party affiliation; he knew that to defeat Harriman, he had to create the broadest voting base possible, like that of Harriman’s predecessor, Dewey. The survey was intended not only to aid Rockefeller’s decision-making process but to help shape his campaign if he did run. To conduct the study, Rockefeller turned to the well-known political analyst and occasional Columbia University lecturer Samuel Lubell. Rockefeller had previously retained Lubell as a writer on the thirty-one-person staff that he assembled—and paid with his own money—when he served as chairman of the International Development Advisory Board under Truman in 1950.³⁴ Lubell approached Rockefeller’s assistant Frank Jamieson in 1956 about a study of New York State, proposing a survey that went beyond ascertaining public opinion on candidates and issues to understand “what lies behind those opinions and how they were interwoven with more enduring relationships such as partisan feeling, changes in social and economic standing, ethnic background, [and] migration to new areas of residence.”³⁵ Rockefeller accepted this proposal and commissioned Lubell, at a cost between $12,000 and $15,000.³⁶ Lubell and his staff conducted in-person interviews in fifty-six election districts: seven upstate cities, four farm counties, fifteen suburban communities in Nassau and Westchester Counties, and twenty-seven election districts in the five New York City boroughs.³⁷ Although much of the report focused on public attitudes toward Harriman and the prospects for a Republican candidate, the report also provided a wealth of data about New York’s political terrain and the worldview of New Yorkers in the late 1950s. A topic of particular interest was the fraught racial dynamics in New York that were often obscured to outsiders by the state’s liberal reputation but could potentially cause problems for a politician like Rockefeller who hoped to appeal to a diverse bipartisan base. Ultimately, Lubell contextualized often ugly divisions among New Yorkers that were fueled by racism, the in-migration of nonwhites to cities, white flight, and growing opposition to the social safety net among whites who wanted to exclude African Americans and Puerto Ricans.³⁸

Lubell found that the migration of Puerto Ricans was the most often-cited problem according to New York City respondents. Whites throughout the boroughs complained without prompting about this issue more than any other. Estimates in the Lubell study revealed that approximately 34,000 Puerto Ricans entered New York City every year. Whereas Manhattan had the largest concentration of Puerto Ricans with a community that had expanded from 138,000 in 1950 to 240,000 by the end of 1956, other boroughs’ populations doubled in the same period. For example, the community of Puerto Ricans in Brooklyn expanded from 40,299 to 105,000 between 1950 and 1956.³⁹ Many white New Yorkers expressed their dismay over the transformation of their neighborhoods by attributing problems caused by overcrowding and housing discrimination to characteristics inherent to the migrants. One woman declared, “It’s terrible the way the Puerto Ricans are moving in. We have them all around us. They live like cattle so many in a room.” White respondents who complained about overcrowding associated with Puerto Ricans wanted to halt their migration. They attributed problems caused by a lack of suitable housing to the people rather than their difficult circumstances. There was a precedent for Lubell’s findings; New York City press outlets and officials referred to a “Puerto Rican problem” in the city and categorized Puerto Rican migration as an unprecedented burden on the city shortly after World War II.⁴⁰

This issue became especially fraught when it came to the construction and maintenance of low-cost public housing in communities heavily populated by Blacks and Puerto Ricans. The more recent influx of Puerto Ricans made them an easy target. When whites discussed the issue of building low-cost public housing, their first complaint was an opposition to spending, but second was an antagonism toward Puerto Ricans. One respondent, a mechanic and former military serviceman from Albany, explained, “When I came out of the service I thought low cost housing was a good thing. There were lots of fellows who couldn’t afford to buy a home and who needed a place to live. But we don’t need that now.” The mechanic’s sentiment reflected an important trend. As whites’ economic standing improved, their support for low-income public housing declined, especially when they felt it only helped people unlike themselves. The report noted, “Both in New York City and in Westchester criticisms were also voiced of ‘spending the state’s money to keep Puerto Ricans on relief.’ ” Lubell spoke to a man who said he would have liked to move because of the Puerto Ricans who had come into his neighborhood, but he could not find another apartment that cost less than $90 a month. When Lubell asked him if he had considered moving to a housing project, “he replied, ‘They’re too much like a prison. Besides they mix the races.’ ”⁴¹

Unsurprisingly, Lubell found that whites were not alone in their concern about housing. As the targets of housing discrimination, African American respondents expressed great concern about their lack of access to desirable housing. When asked to identify the issues that most concerned them, Blacks cited housing followed by taxes, roads, and school discrimination. Lubell was not alone in identifying housing as a major problem for African Americans. SCAD Chairman Abrams also remarked on the severity of the housing issue in November 1957 when he noted that despite the influx of nonwhites to the New York City metropolitan area, “virtually no private construction” had been made available to nonwhites since 1950.⁴² Lubell’s report noted that housing discrimination was the issue that created the most tension between Blacks and whites, and it was more important to Blacks than school and job discrimination. Lubell believed this concern over where they lived reflected the economic advancement of African Americans who now made enough money to afford new housing if it were available to them.⁴³

One of the most noticeable changes in the 1950s that exacerbated social and political divides in New York was the exodus of many white urban dwellers who left cities for suburbs. William J. Levitt contributed to the trend in Long Island by employing nonunion labor to transform onion and potato fields into communities of racially segregated low-cost housing beginning in 1947. Levittown, which ultimately consisted of 17,447 modest modular homes, provided affordable houses with the aid of Federal Housing Administration–insured mortgages that made suburbia available for as little as a $100 down payment. This enabled whites to become first-time homeowners while denying nonwhites the same opportunity in the name of protecting property values. Historian Kenneth T. Jackson observes that while the segregation in these communities was not new, the “thoroughness of the physical separation which it entailed” was unique. The Levitt organization, like other postwar residential home builders, refused to sell to African Americans for two decades.⁴⁴ The new community in Nassau County was just one example; there were significant population shifts among whites in New York City and its suburbs between 1940 and 1957. The white population of the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Manhattan declined by 12 percent or 5.5 million to 4.8 million, while the white populations of Queens and Staten Island increased by 29 percent and 18.8 percent, respectively. Meanwhile, the increase in Long Island was far higher at 183 percent or less than 600,000 in 1940 to 1.6 million seventeen years later.⁴⁵ Residents of new suburbs began to complain about the lack of services and poor roads in their towns and quickly came to resent what they felt was the misuse of their state tax dollars on the cities they had left behind. The result was a protracted struggle led by suburbanites to use zoning laws and strengthened county governments to divert tax dollars and resources to burgeoning suburbs.⁴⁶ The establishment of Levittown occurred after Governor Dewey signed into law the Ives-Quinn Anti-Discrimination Bill, which was the first state law passed in America to outlaw discrimination on the basis of race, religion, or creed. Despite the popularity of the antidiscrimination bill and SCAD, which was intended to enforce it, Levittown flourished, demonstrating the lack of enforcement. Within this incongruity lies an essential story about race relations in the state that can be obscured by the passage of this landmark legislation that established New York as a leader against discrimination.⁴⁷

Although New York’s cities experienced rapid change due to suburbanization in the 1950s, they had been in transition for decades. The racial makeup of New York City and other urban areas such as Buffalo and Syracuse had undergone significant transformations due to the Great Migration that resulted in an influx of African Americans. While the African American community had doubled, for example, to 413,000 or 3.3 percent of the state population between 1920 and 1930, the vast majority lived in Harlem due to the allure of the nation’s largest Black community and housing segregation that gave them few other options. Between 1940 and 1957, the nonwhite population of all five boroughs increased significantly. The biggest increase occurred in the Bronx where the population increased from 24,392 to 220,282 for a percentage change of 803 percent. During that period, the nonwhite population of the Bronx rose from 1.7 percent to 15.5 percent of the total population. The nonwhite population of Manhattan increased from 312,299 or 16.5 percent of the total population to 418,285 or 23.3 percent of the total population. The nonwhite population of Queens increased from 26,903 to 122,989 or 2.1 percent of the total population in 1940 to 7 percent in 1957.⁴⁸ As these shifts occurred in communities such as the Bronx or Brooklyn, conflict was never far away. Historian Martha Biondi asserts that the perception of a racially liberal city is due in large part to the anti-racist agitation of African Americans in the postwar era that fought to desegregate the public sphere, in particular in the face of zealous defense of “white” spaces.⁴⁹ In some ways, by the 1950s, the most striking demographic change in New York’s communities was the growth of the Puerto Rican population, which first consolidated in East Harlem and then put down roots in Washington Heights, the South Bronx, and Brooklyn. The increase in diversity in the city strained already difficult race relations.⁵⁰

Lubell found that white respondents who experienced racial change in their neighborhoods were more likely to oppose desegregation efforts nationwide. Three-fourths of non-Blacks surveyed by Lubell supported Eisenhower’s decision to send National Guard troops to desegregate Little Rock Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. On September 24, 1957, Eisenhower ordered 1,200 troops to protect nine African American students who were attempting to desegregate the high school. For some, however, anger over the growing minority population in the city made them sympathetic to white southerners’ attempts to maintain the status quo. Lubell found that nearly every person he approached in Sunset Park, Brooklyn—a community that was experiencing an influx of Puerto Rican migrants—said that Eisenhower moved too quickly on Little Rock. He explained that across the country, whites “show[ed] a high hostility to all types of proposals for expanded recognition of the civil rights of Negroes.” Lubell posited that respondents projected their resentment over minorities moving into their communities onto national trends regarding racial problems. “I used to be against segregation,” proclaimed a sixty-three-year-old laborer, “but I’m for it now because Negroes are coming into the neighborhood causing crime and robberies.” Similarly, a tailor complained, “Eisenhower should have left things to the state. The Negroes are trying to go too fast. That whole mess down South is just stirred up by Northern agitators.”⁵¹ Statements such as these revealed that white support of desegregation commonly faltered when it affected people personally.

Although Lubell did not make any specific recommendations to Rockefeller based on the sometimes concealed but deeply rooted racial divisions in the state, he did offer some revealing commentary about the political significance of anger triggered by neighborhood change. A white police officer from Sunset Park, Brooklyn, who was interviewed for the survey, blamed liberals for the changes he observed: “Those so-called liberals who are always worrying about Negroes and Spics. Why don’t they think of white people? I’ll work with Negroes but I won’t live in the same house with them.” Lubell said he was unsure how Rockefeller could take advantage of this issue politically because people did not blame one party or political figure, but he noted that the feelings attached to it were “so intense and bitter” that “figuratively one might describe the problem as a load of explosives which currently lies buried deep in frustration but which if it were ever touched off could change the whole political landscape in the city.”⁵² Although most concern centered on housing and the integration of communities, there was also tension over the possibility that new migrants would begin to take jobs from whites. Lubell made no specific recommendations, but he did observe that the racism and anger expressed by respondents could be used to great advantage if a politician chose to tap into it.

Nelson Rockefeller and the Black Electorate

By the late 1950s, African Americans were increasingly known as Democratic voters, but Rockefeller saw them as a potential constituency. Lubell surveyed ninety-three Black New Yorkers in nine election districts and found positive sentiment toward the Republican Party nationally and Rockefeller locally. The survey takers found that some Blacks were very cognizant of conservative southern Democrats’ domination of Congress. Subsequently, some of those surveyed were willing to vote against a Democratic candidate for US Congress in New York if that meant weakening conservative southern Democrats. Lubell noted, “Some Negroes have also come to think of their party preference in terms of the struggle to control Congress.” “As one Queens Negro expressed it, ‘Every time you knock a Democrat up North, you weaken him in the South.’ ” Overall, those surveyed said they felt the Republican Party was more responsive to the Black community’s needs regarding civil rights, while the Democratic Party benefited them economically. The political analyst explained, “The Republicans have made considerable headway in convincing Negroes that the GOP is the better party on civil rights. Among the Negroes interviewed the GOP is chosen as the better party by a five-to-two ratio.”⁵³ Blacks in New York may have also associated the Republican Party with advances in civil rights because of Dewey’s advocacy for antidiscrimination laws.⁵⁴ Lubell also found that “the better income Negro neighborhoods show a higher proportion of people who voted for Eisenhower than do the lower income districts.”⁵⁵ The survey found that many would vote for Harriman again, but it was also apparent that there was room for a Republican to make strides in the state because of Blacks’ conflicted relationship with the national Democratic Party.

The survey responses highlight important realities of a complicated relationship between African Americans and the Democratic Party. Loyal to the Party of Lincoln since the Civil War era, Blacks were one of the last ethnic groups to begin voting Democratic during the Great Depression. Whereas African Americans remained loyal to the Republican Party in 1932, by 1936, they moved resolutely into the Democratic column, with three-quarters voting for Roosevelt. Although they did become the group who most consistently voted Democratic, their initial attraction to the party was not due to the New Deal’s often-unfulfilled potential to advance civil rights. Historian Nancy Weiss argues that “despite the willingness of the Roosevelt administration to make some symbolic racial gestures, the race issue never became part of the New Deal agenda. It was Franklin Roosevelt’s ability to provide jobs, not his embrace of civil rights, that made him a hero to Black Americans.” Neither party had a consistent record on civil rights or the protection of African Americans’ freedoms. Lubell’s findings supported the premise that although Blacks were committed to the Democratic Party, it was foremost because of the economic benefits. Truman’s work to help advance civil rights pleased many Blacks, but they never discounted the presence of southern Democrats and their influence over the party. The timing of the survey may have also affected people’s answers because many of the Blacks surveyed by Lubell expressed approval for Eisenhower’s intervention in Little Rock. Additionally, the positive responses in this case may have reflected local realities and the progressive records of Republicans such as Dewey and New York City mayor Fiorello LaGuardia. The survey findings reflected a period when both national parties were ideologically and regionally diverse enough that Black voters had difficult decisions to make when considering local and national politics.⁵⁶

Several African American respondents called Rockefeller a friend of the Negro, particularly because of his family’s philanthropy and his previous association with the Roosevelt administration. An African American pianist and composer from Westchester, for example, explained his support for Rockefeller by remarking, “I remember the people in Atlanta saying he helped build schools for Negroes there.” While a sixty-two-year-old superintendent from the Bronx concluded, “[Rockefeller] would work for racial equality.” The Rockefeller family’s philanthropy had undoubtedly helped burnish its reputation that had been damaged during the Gilded Age. Although the family’s philanthropy forever linked the Rockefellers to racial liberalism, their donations also played a role in maintaining the South’s two-tiered Jim Crow society. In the final decades of the nineteenth century, John D. Rockefeller Sr. turned philanthropy into a family enterprise. He encouraged his entire family to judge the merits of the various applications they received and follow his example of taking great interest in the progress made by those he granted aid.⁵⁷ Long before he established the Rockefeller Foundation in 1913, the family’s patriarch demonstrated a particular interest in improving education in the South.⁵⁸ In 1884, Senior gave a gift that prevented the closure of the nation’s first historically Black institution of higher education for women in Atlanta. After the initial donation, Senior made a regular practice of donating to the women’s institution in 1889—the first check was for $100—and in 1897 provided the majority of the funds needed to purchase additional land for the institution, and as a result, the school was renamed Spelman Seminary in honor of his wife, Laura Spelman Rockefeller.⁵⁹ Rockefeller was also one of the earliest and most consistent donors to Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama, which had become one of the nation’s largest institutions of higher education.⁶⁰ In the 1890s, he donated $10,000 a year, which was 10 percent of the school’s annual operating budget.⁶¹

A culture of giving developed among many industrialists in the Gilded Age. The majority of northern industrialists who donated to the effort to educate African Americans subscribed to the “Hampton-Tuskegee idea,” which argued that the solution to the Negro problem—and their need for a reliable and pliant labor force—was to train African Americans to work in the lowest tiers of labor and accept second-class citizenship defined by segregation, disfranchisement, and civil inequality.⁶² In 1902, John D. Rockefeller Sr., on the urging of his son John D. Rockefeller Jr., created the General Education Board (GEB) with an initial endowment of $1 million, along with subsequent endowments totaling $53 million by 1909. The younger Rockefeller had been expressly interested in the education of Negroes but decided the year before that solely focusing on Black schools when southern schools in general were extremely underfunded would lead to increased racial animosity. Initially, the GEB granted only “scattered” small donations to southern schools so as to not offend white southerners. To further allay fears that northerners were not trying to upend the status quo, an early official of the GEB gave speeches across the South assuring audiences that the foundation would respect southern “traditions and institutions.” Those trained at the institutions were then expected to socialize the next generation to accept the South’s racial hierarchy. A 1915 report revealed that most of the money bestowed to southern schools by the GEB went to institutions that denied access to African Americans, while the money given to Black institutions came with the condition that it fund students’ education in the industrial trades. Ultimately, the Rockefeller family’s donations aided African American educational institutions in the South, while funding an education model intended to maintain the social apartheid of the Jim Crow South; it supported the continued segregation of public schools in the South.⁶³

Based on the generally positive view of Rockefeller among African Americans, Lubell concluded that Rockefeller could possibly translate African Americans’ anger toward southern Democrats into an advantage in a gubernatorial contest. Lubell had found that Rockefeller had a 64 percent favorable rating among African Americans. The next closest group with a positive view of Rockefeller was Jews at 56 percent. Lubell ascribed the consistently favorable reactions of African Americans and Jews to Rockefeller’s “philanthropies, his civic-mindedness, and ‘international outlook.’ ” To capitalize on this strength, he suggested Rockefeller commission a study on the housing problem and possible solutions because housing was “clearly the issue that concerns Negroes the most.”⁶⁴ The report’s focus on the African American community reflected Rockefeller’s interest in courting African American voters. However, Rockefeller’s appeal to African Americans—or perceived affinity—could be a liability for him with Republican voters. This was Rockefeller’s dilemma: his electability was based on the idea that he could appeal to supporters of the New Deal and voters who were not avid Republican partisans. This meant that he had the potential to fuse together a broad base of support, but his most difficult task was to prove to traditional Republican voters that he was aligned with their interests while also being electable. Rockefeller’s electoral strength, at least as envisioned by Lubell, depended on his ability to unite voters who tended to be at different ends of the political spectrum. If the liberal consensus was as dominant as Rockefeller thought, he had the potential to be an incredible vote getter, but the fractures within the New York electorate that Lubell identified highlighted vulnerabilities that threatened this model even before Rockefeller announced his candidacy.

A Tough Year for Republicans

The Lubell survey, in addition to focusing on racial dynamics and the political concerns of various groups, also assessed how the general election prospects for Republicans could affect Rockefeller. As Lubell surveyed New Yorkers on Rockefeller’s behalf, the nation was in the middle of its third and worst economic downturn in the postwar period. Signs of a recession had become apparent in the spring of 1957, and by November, experts deemed it a serious recession.⁶⁵ Eisenhower was slow to take action, which was customary for economically conservative Republicans, who preferred to let the economy go through fluctuations with as little interference as possible.⁶⁶ This conservative approach to economic policy was unpopular among voters who expected the government to intervene and still associated the GOP with the Great Depression. Lubell found that Eisenhower’s response to the downturn exacerbated long-standing negative perceptions of the GOP. The perception that Republicans had failed to ease the impact of the recession could hurt Rockefeller’s chances, and if the economy did improve by the November election, voters would then likely vote for incumbents.⁶⁷

The recession aside, Lubell’s report noted that New York, perhaps more than any other state, excluding California, benefited from postwar growth and affluence. In the 1950s, it was the most populous state in the nation—a position it would maintain until 1964, when California overtook it—with an unsurpassed influence over national politics. Even though New York did not escape the recession, the economy still benefited from defense industries and innovative industrial firms such as IBM and Eastman Kodak, which helped the state provide the highest incomes in the nation. To outsiders, the boroughs of New York City dominated New York, but more than half of the state’s land was devoted to farming in a state divided into what was commonly known as “upstate” and “downstate.” Much of the state was rural, with a booming suburban population that radiated from New York City into Long Island and Westchester County. The lean years of the Great Depression were far from the reality of the 1950s, but New Yorkers began to realize that their state was not impervious to a national recession or job loss due to companies relocating to southern states.

The economic downturn nationwide paired with the relative prosperity in New York posed a significant challenge to Rockefeller. Most New Yorkers were disinclined to vote for Republicans and were satisfied with Harriman’s performance. Harriman’s reputation was bolstered by a general contentment over the state’s overall condition. Lubell reported, “Many people, even when pressed, cannot volunteer a single state issue that troubles them. For example, in one Staten Island election district I went into, not one of the families talked with could bring forward anything that they felt was an ‘important state issue.’ ” Some people in upstate New York did complain about Harriman’s wealth or his status as a “city man,” but his popularity had grown there due to his extensive travel through the state as governor. When people did express concern over the loss of industry and juvenile delinquency, for example, they believed that neither Harriman nor any politician could reverse those trends. As one respondent explained it succinctly, “Harriman hasn’t done anything good. But he hasn’t done anything bad either. We might as well stick with him.” Despite what looked like the makings of a good election year for Harriman, Lubell did identify a bright spot for the Republican Party despite the economic downturn. He found that a significant number of young whites with white-collar jobs continued to reject their family’s history of voting Democratic in favor of the Republican Party as their personal success grew during the postwar period. These young voters wanted to support the party that they perceived as better for business. This development—coupled with whites’ migration to suburbs—made those new communities strongholds for the Republican Party, while cities were becoming tougher territory for the Republican Party.⁶⁸

Although Lubell found that Rockefeller had an advantage over other potential Republican candidates, he advised him not to run because his background was too similar to Harriman. Lubell warned Rockefeller to be cautious about testing his strength too soon because failure to draw initial support would lead party leaders to abandon his candidacy. Instead, he urged Rockefeller to avoid announcing his interest in a run until he could disprove the perception that he was too inexperienced to be governor. Lubell concluded that Rockefeller should wait and run in 1962 with hopes that he would face an opponent other than Harriman with whom he shared numerous similarities that neutralized his political advantages. Lubell was not alone in his opinion; Rockefeller’s closest adviser, Frank Jamieson, who handled public relations for Rockefeller for almost two decades, agreed.⁶⁹ Jamieson, who was unyieldingly loyal to his boss, was said to have admired Rockefeller greatly despite his worry that Rockefeller had shown himself to be susceptible to the influence of advisers like Henry Kissinger, who worked on the Rockefeller panel reports, and would begin parroting their views as if they were his own. He also had a tendency to latch on to “faddish” thinking.⁷⁰ Perhaps it was the downside to his pragmatic and open nature that also led him to look to and adopt the ideas of experts he often hired to examine problems and strategize solutions. Although it may have been true that Rockefeller was easily influenced by advisers, he did not share Lubell and Jamieson’s conclusion. Rockefeller forged ahead with his plan to run for governor in 1958 equipped with a significant amount of data about New York voters and the state GOP.

Regardless of Lubell’s advice to wait, the report seemed to influence Rockefeller’s eventual strategy in several ways. As recommended, he would indeed focus on his experience in Washington as a presidential adviser to counterbalance his lack of experience in electoral politics. He also waited until long after reporters and onlookers announced his interest in the governorship to declare his candidacy. Rockefeller portrayed himself as a figure new enough to state politics to remain untainted by machine politics, while hurling the same accusations at Harriman that disgruntled Republicans mentioned to the survey takers. Hiring Lubell exemplified Rockefeller’s consistent use of polling throughout his career in an attempt to understand and appeal to voters. Late in Rockefeller’s career when he began espousing conservative views that contradicted his long-held positions, his advisers would often credit this to his devotion to polls. This is not to say that Rockefeller was without his own views and political compass, but he was very much interested in forwarding ideas that he thought would resonate with voters. The survey revealed that New Yorkers were open to a politician like Rockefeller who advocated for an activist government that met the needs of everyday citizens. What Rockefeller eventually learned was that in a time of relative prosperity, it was politically acceptable and even welcomed to tell suburban white voters that the government would invest in schools and roads that would benefit everyone. It was also possible to make a case for universal health care, the construction of affordable housing, or increased spending to assist the poor, but this second group of issues would soon run up against the race-based animosity toward African Americans and Puerto Ricans expressed in the survey. For the moment, however, the political survey produced for Rockefeller revealed a difficult but not impossible situation for the political newcomer in part because he was not your typical Republican politician.

During the 1956 legislative session, the Republican majority fought Democrats’ efforts to increase SCAD’s budget. At first glance, the Republicans’ opposition to increasing SCAD’s budget may appear to be nothing more than the usual deliberations over a state budget, but it indicated the possibility of a major problem for Rockefeller. The Republican-controlled finance committee, for example, cut $38,122 from Harriman’s proposed $486,245 budget for SCAD, but ultimately, the legislature restored $14,472 of the proposed cut. The additional funds were intended to help with staffing and to increase the chairman’s salary $2,300 to an annual total of $16,000, which Republicans blocked successfully. If approved, the additional staffing would bolster SCAD’s ability to enforce a law passed the previous year that banned discrimination in housing built with federal assistance.⁷¹ Republican legislators did not limit their objections to the typical arguments for fiscal responsibility; instead, Senate Majority Leader Walter J. Mahoney, the top conservative Republican in the state, argued that Democrats were trying to “build a phony record” in relation to SCAD and just wanted “to get a few more jobs.” Meanwhile, Assembly Majority Leader Joseph F. Carlino contended that racism was not a problem in New York. “It is true that the problem of discrimination exists in the South,” explained Carlino, “but … the Democrats there are responsible for the situation.” He then “accused Mr. Abrams of looking for trouble where there wasn’t any, and stated that the problem of discrimination does not exist in New York State.” Mahoney shared this sentiment and reminded his fellow senators that the murder of Emmett Till and the acquittal of his killers took place in Mississippi, a state controlled by Democrats. According to James H. Scheuer, a member of SCAD, Republican legislators claimed on numerous occasions during the session that “there was no discrimination in New York State” despite the well-known fact that “qualified workers and qualified tenants who are members of minority groups do suffer discriminatory treatment.”⁷² Whether the Republican leadership’s claims were bewilderingly ignorant or brazen rhetoric, their statements represented a meaningful rejection of Dewey’s record of advocating for legislative answers to combat discrimination in New York.

The Republican record on antidiscrimination legislation was mixed in 1956, as it remained throughout Harriman’s tenure. Republicans allowed SCAD to enforce the antidiscrimination legislation passed the year before, but they reduced the funding that would help staff the agency as it took on new duties. A Republican-led committee also blocked a bipartisan-sponsored bill that would have banned discrimination in the rental or sale of housing in multiple dwellings or developments of ten or more single-family units, regardless of the financing source.⁷³ Despite registering reluctance to expanding some antidiscrimination efforts, it was striking that Republican leadership would claim that there was no discrimination in New York. In the first ten years of SCAD’s existence, the number of complaints had risen steadily, even though the agency’s work had made relatively little impact. By design, SCAD’s decisions did not apply to entire industries and only the complainant could reap the rewards of a successful case, if at all. Mahoney and Carlino’s argument that discrimination was merely a southern problem in 1956 was diametrically opposed to the research Rockefeller commissioned in 1958 and the public statements he had made identifying prejudice as a national problem. Rockefeller could harken back to the civil rights record of Dewey as often as he liked and search for strategies to appeal to African American voters, but his advocacy for strengthened antidiscrimination laws, a major issue for Black voters, put him at odds with the current leadership of the New York Republican Party.⁷⁴

In the spring of 1958, Rockefeller prepared to launch his first political campaign armed with extensive data about New York’s race relations, efforts to protect the civil rights of minorities, and the electability of Republicans who were considering a run for governor. As a moderate Republican who had already put himself on the record as an advocate for civil rights, Rockefeller planned to campaign on a Republican record supporting antidiscrimination laws that he hoped would appeal to African American voters. However, Rockefeller’s planned support for civil rights contradicted prominent New York Republican legislators’ opposition to new and enhanced antidiscrimination legislation since 1955. Lubell’s data had shown that there was a real possibility that Rockefeller could attract African American voters. Black voters and other supporters of New Deal policies, in fact, could be a critical demographic for Rockefeller in a general election because his appeal was uncertain among conservative Republicans who thought he was too liberal or inexperienced to win. Regardless of the doubts among some of his advisers, Rockefeller decided to prepare his gubernatorial campaign as the Rockefeller panel reports remained in the public sphere the spring and summer of 1958. In May, he stepped down as chairman of the project to focus his attention on his run for office.

The survey conducted by Lubell found that Rockefeller may have been just the right kind of politician to match the concerns and aspirations of the average New Yorker accustomed to postwar prosperity and a government geared toward the delivery of services. However, his strengths were also liabilities for many Republican voters who opposed his moderate Republicanism. Rockefeller sought to understand and appeal to disparate voters including African Americans and pro-business white suburbanites who were raised in families that once voted Democratic. In an era when it seemed like the New Deal consensus might still be expansive enough to include these groups, Rockefeller’s prospects looked promising. When those same voters perceived themselves to be increasingly at odds, however, Rockefeller’s path forward became less clear.