Republicans: It's the Right Thing'

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-THE ECONOMY. "Jobs depend on industrial growth, and government does too," says Rockefeller. During his governorship, more than 1,700 plants have been built or expanded in the state; economic growth has increased 16% over 1958 (based on such state commerce department indexes as employment, retail sales, and investment in plant and equipment); and jobs have climbed by 450,000, pushing New York's unemployment rate well below the national average. Rockefeller sponsored several measures aimed at improving the state's business climate, but he did not forget labor: he pushed through the first statewide minimum-wage law, increased workmen's compensation and unemployment benefits.

-HOUSING. Rocky set up a housing-finance agency to attract private capital to build badly needed middle-income housing, established the nation's first plan in which the state lends the buyer part of the down payment for cooperative-apartment housing, and presented New York City with an imaginative plan for a ten-year, $4 billion program to provide middle-income apartments for 1,000,000 persons by erecting buildings in the air space above such public facilities as piers, schools, police stations and expressways (two such buildings are already under way).

-EDUCATION. Rockefeller has increased state spending on primary and secondary education from $580 million to more than $1 billion, launched a $750 million building program, and vastly expanded the state's loan program for students. Under Rockefeller, the state has quadrupled its budget for scholarships, tripled its contribution to universities.

Despite such accomplishments, Rocky's term as Governor has not been all roses.

In his first two years, he set up so many task forces—48 in all—that the legislators became incensed at what they took for a usurpation of their powers. To pacify them, Rocky had to drop the task forces and modify his technique. Though he is extremely well informed in many areas of state government and quotes statistics endlessly, Rockefeller has sometimes shown embarrassing gaps in information.

While discussing reapportionment, he be trayed the fact that he simply did not know that New York City council dis tricts are identical with and based on state senate districts.

Rocky can be as unyielding as granite.

His aides strongly advised him that fallout shelters were the least exciting subject he could possibly dwell on ; but he insisted on pushing a massive New York shelter pro gram in the 1960 legislature — and his bills were predictably tabled (a vastly watered down version was passed the following year). Such stubbornness can be coura geous: in Election Year 1962 both par ties were determined to pass a political bonbon in the form of a Korean war bonus. Rockefeller thought the notion was unwise, and went before a meeting of the American Legion four months ago to tell the veterans nothing doing. That bill was also tabled.

The Unhappy Months. On the morning of March 3, 1961, the executive mansion in Albany burned, and Governor Rockefeller and his wife, Mary Todhunter Clark Rockefeller, escaped together by climbing down a ladder from the roof. To many, that date seemed to mark a turn for the worse in Rockefeller's personal fortunes.