Republicans: It's the Right Thing'

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Rocky urged the New York delegation to "unanimously endorse" Nixon, and pledged his wholehearted support. During the campaign, he made 400 speeches for Nixon, and Nixon later said that "no one in the country worked harder for the Nixon-Lodge ticket than did Governor Rockefeller." But many Republicans still thought they detected a lack of enthusiasm in Rockefeller's stumping, and they resented his support of Kennedy's plan for medical care for the aged and his refusal to agree with Nixon that U.S. prestige was at an alltime high. After Nixon lost, Rockefeller lost no time in announcing that he would seek re-election as Governor of New York—and made it clear that he recognized no national G.O.P. leader. "Between elections," he said, "when a party loses the presidency, I don't think that the party has an actual head." Enjoying Problems. With ex-President Eisenhower making only rare public pronouncements and Nixon busy in California, the field was left open to Rockefeller to capitalize on his position as the reigning Republican of a powerful state whose Governors are traditionally considered presidential possibilities. Rockefeller's speeches are now mailed to state G.O.P. organizations around the country, and a card file of "friends" across the U.S. is growing steadily. Every day more than 20 requests for appearances, sometimes as many as 35, arrive at the Governor's headquarters. His political aides keep in closest touch with party developments around the U.S., and some of them canvass the nation talking up Rocky's record in New York.

Without that record, all the fence mending in the world could hardly have made Rockefeller the top possibility for the 1964 nomination. The rich and cosmopolitan state of New York is a typical social laboratory that contains within itself all of the domestic problems—from dairy farming to police protection—found on a grander and more remote scale in the Federal Government. In an era in which many big-state Governors are defeated by their task, Rockefeller has been a successful Governor. "It's like an intensive graduate course in social, economic and po-,. litical problems," says Rocky. "I enjoy solving problems." In that graduate course, solving his problems as he went along, Nelson Rockefeller has garnered some high marks: FINANCE. When he took office, the state faced a potential deficit of $700 million.

Rockefeller wiped it out with the help of an unpopular—but fiscally wise—tax hike of $277 million. Every year he has balanced his budget, and has steadily reduced the state's debt service charges from $53 million to $40 million a year.