First Political Campaigns
In 1960, Rockefeller did not seek the governorship but instead raised funds for the Republican nominee, Henry M. Britt, a conservative lawyer from Hot Springs, the seat of Garland County. Britt lost in every county and barely polled 30 percent of the statewide vote in his loss to Faubus. In 1961, Rockefeller was named Arkansas Republican national committeeman, having succeeded Wallace Townsend, a lawyer in Little Rock who had held the position since 1928. In 1962, Rockefeller supported Willis Ricketts, another in a long line of failed Republican candidates who sought to topple Faubus. He also supported a slate of Republican legislative candidates. Soon, he quarreled with state Republican party chairman William L. Spicer of Fort Smith over the direction of the party. Spicer favored a stronger conservative approach compared to Rockefeller's moderate-to-liberal outlook.
Rockefeller resigned his position with the AIDC and conducted his first campaign for governor in 1964 against Faubus. His campaign was ultimately unsuccessful, but Rockefeller energized and reformed the tiny Republican Party to set the stage for the future. In 1964, Osro Cobb, a former Republican state chairman who had also served as United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas, not only refused to endorse Rockefeller but openly supported Faubus, who subseqauently gave Cobb a temporary appointment to the Arkansas Supreme Court.
In his memoirs, Cobb recalls that Rockefeller:
had used ruthless tactics to convert the fine Republican state organization into a one-man Rockefeller machine, loyal not to party but to Rockefeller personally. In rapid succession, Mr. Rockefeller captiously took over most of the functions of the state chairman and in a matter of months succeeded in taking over and exercising absolute right of dictation as to each and every important party function at the state level. Such one-man dictatorship is clearly the deadly enemy of any semblance of two-party government ... Faithful Republican leaders who have worked tirelessly over the years have been pushed aside or replaced ... A stranger passing through Arkansas at this time and seeing Mr. Rockefeller's advertising on billboards would not know whether Mr. Rockefeller belonged to any political party. Certainly the fact that he is the Republican nominee has not been included. The evidence simply is unanswerable that Mr. Rockefeller is working for his own personal interest to the exclusion of all other considerations, which leaves the Republican Party in Arkansas hanging precariously at the whims of one individual...
Read more about this topic: Winthrop Rockefeller
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