Arkansas: Opportunity Regained

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For its economic and social transformation, Arkansas owes much to a transplanted Yankee whose surname—connoting vast wealth, liberal Republicanism and cosmopolitan interests—once seemed as alien to the state as fine champagne. Winthrop Rockefeller has not only devoted his time and fortune over the last 13 years to improving the quality of life in Arkansas. He has also succeeded almost singlehanded in renovating its political structure. His electoral victory in November was a historic event: he will become Arkansas' first Republican Governor since 1874.

In paving the way for that achievement, Rockefeller served as financier, architect and mason of a two-party system more promising than any in the South. For if Republican successes across the nation last month constituted a renascence for the G.O.P., the party's triumph in Arkansas was simply a nascency. And it was based squarely on the enlightened issues that Democratic politics had evaded for decades in Dixie. While his opponent, James ("Justice Jim") Johnson, 42, inveighed against the "other" Johnson's Great Society, Rockefeller talked about education, roads, governmental reform and accelerated economic progress for Arkansas.

Realistic Conservative. To be sure, the Southern Republicans have been on the march for years, but their principal successes have been in presidential elections—particularly 1964—rather than in state and local races. Moreover, many successful G.O.P. candidates in the South have battened on racism, as Southern Democrats have done for a century. In Arkansas, Rockefeller went the opposite way. While Jim Johnson churlishly refused even to shake hands with Negro voters, Rockefeller captured more than 80% of the Negro vote and appealed to moderate Democrats as well as to Republicans.

Johnson ranted that the Republicans would "seek new ways to force race mixing on the people." Rockefeller labeled himself a "realistic conservative" and proclaimed: "Our party in Arkansas has not and will not become an arm of the right-wing crusade or of the other extreme." His slogan: "Win with Win." In the end, more than 54% of the voters decided to do just that. (He is particularly proud of his showing in school mock elections, in which students gave him 77%.) More significant for the Arkansas party's future, the G.O.P. this year fielded 520 candidates —more Republicans than have run in all Arkansas elections combined since Reconstruction—and elected 163, or 31%. The other winners included the Lieutenant Governor, a Congressman, three state representatives, three judges, four sheriffs and a mayor.

Incentives. Rockefeller admits that all this has cost him millions—just how many millions he prefers not to say—as well as punishing physical exertion that can be calculated only by the fatigue etched in his broad face. His mission has not been entirely quixotic. Win Rockefeller, at 54, needs Arkansas as much as it needs him. Indeed, his brothers David, 51, president of New York's Chase Manhattan Bank, and Nelson, 58, Governor of New York, both use the same words to describe his incentives: "Win found himself in Arkansas." Adds David: "It was just what he wanted and needed."