Winthrop Rockefeller - End of The Rockefeller Era

End of The Rockefeller Era

In the 1970 campaign, Rockefeller expected to face Orval Faubus, who led the old-guard Democrats, but the previously unknown Dale Bumpers of Charleston in Franklin County rose to the top of the Democratic heap by promising reforms. Bumpers' charisma and "fresh face" were too much for an incumbent Republican to overcome. Rockefeller lost his third-term bid, but he propelled the Democrats to reform their own party. The Republicans were reduced to a single member of each legislative chamber, Preston Bynum of Siloam Springs, Danny Patrick, elected with Rockefeller, went down to defeat in Madison and Carroll counties at the hands of Stephen A. Smith, who at twenty-one became Arkansas' youngest-ever state legislator, a designation that Patrick himself had taken only four years earlier.

As a dramatic last act, Governor Rockefeller, a longtime death penalty opponent, commuted the sentences of every prisoner on Arkansas's Death Row and urged the governors of other states to do likewise. Thirty-three years later, in January 2003, Illinois' lame duck governor, George Ryan, would do the same, granting blanket commutations to the 167 inmates then sentenced to death in that state.

Before he left office, Rockefeller appointed a young public administrator, Jerry Climer, to the vacant post of Pulaski County clerk. Two years later, Climer ran for secretary of state. He later founded two Washington, D.C.-based "think tanks." and left office on January 12, 1971.

In 1972, Rockefeller persuaded Len E. Blaylock of Perry County, his former welfare commissioner known for expertise in government administration to be the Republican gubernatorial nominee. Blaylock lost to Bumpers by an even greater margin than had Rockefeller in 1970. Rockefeller that year also supported the unsuccessful candidacy of Wayne H. Babbitt, a North Little Rock veterinarian who became the only Republican ever to challenge the reelection of U.S. Senator John L. McClellan.

Rockefeller hired as a $300-a-month secretary Judy Petty, who went on to serve two terms in the state legislature and to carry the Republican standard twice in races for Congress.

In September 1972, Rockefeller was diagnosed with inoperable cancer of the pancreas and endured a devastating round of chemotherapy. When he returned to Arkansas the populace was shocked at the gaunt and haggard appearance of what had been a giant of a man.

Winthrop Rockefeller died February 22, 1973, in Palm Springs, California, at the age of sixty. He is buried at Winrock Farms, his ranch, in Morrilton, Arkansas.

Jeannette Rockefeller also died in Palm Springs at the age of 79, where she had resided since the divorce. As a civic leader in the community, she a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars was dedicated to her in 1998.