NOMINATION RACE Remarriage Handicap For Rockefeller?

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30137, 22 May 1963, Page 18

NOMINATION RACE Remarriage Handicap For Rockefeller?

{Specially written for the N.ZJ>.A. by FRANK OLIVERI x NEW YORK, May 20. The first reactions by politicians to the remarriage of Governor Nelson Rockefeller were easy to forecast. x

When the expected news was released those politicians who do not want to see him nominated in 1964 called his remarriage political suicide.

Those who hope he will be the Republican standardbearer said it would do no harm at all and might do the Governor good—people liked a Presidential candidate to have a good-looking attractive wife and a display of married happiness never did anyone harm, least of all a political candidate. Now reactions less coloured by political feeling have been coming'; in from all parts' of the country and they ire being carefully analysed by politicians from two points of view. First, what will the Governor’s remarriage do to his chances of nomination and. second, what will it do to his chances of winning the 1964 election if he is nominated. Private Reaction As a “New York Times" correspondent has written, the public reaction has on the whole been lenient and sophisticated, but questions involving divorce, remarriage and the future of young children are very private things "and private reaction is likely to be much more severe.” The evidence so far supports this view. A correspondent in the “New Republic” says: “The American Presidency is a quasi-priestly function’’ and a lot of people demand marital orthodoxy of a President jus; as the British people did of Edward VIH. Another writer points out that what the nation will accept in an individual or even a governor it will not necessarily tolerate in a candidate for the Presidency. Conversations I have had

with a variety of Americans indicate that in general the man in the street is not too happy about what the Governor has done. Until reports began to be printed that the Governor intended to remarry his Presidential nomination stock was very high. He was far ahead of all other possible candidates in all polls, but his “poll” popularity shrank visibly after his marriage was announced. The two men who benefited from this were Senator Barry Goldwater and Governor George Romney though the polls show them still behind Rockefeller,

Senator Goldwater clearly would dearly love the nomination. although in a prospectively easier year than 1964 and Governor Romney keeps saying he is not a candidate and is not going to be a candidate, but “Newsweek" says nobody in Washington’s hothouse political atmosphere really believes him. The suspicion is that both men would like to be candidates, but don’t crave a fight against John F. Kennedy in 1964. The year 1968 probably looks a much sunnier prospect to both men. Richard Nixon has put himself out of the picture and Governor Scranton says definitely no. and people believe him. Still in Front Thus at this stage Governor Rockefeller must still be regarded as the “front runner” for the nomination next year, especially as it is argued that a year from now the professional politicians will have forgotten the Governor’s personal problems.

The chances seem to be that if the professional politicians think Governor Rockefeller is the best bet next year then he will get the nomination. Conventions are largely run by professional politicians and candidates to the convention do not often kick over the traces.

But, as ’one wnter asks, what w'ill the voter do about Governor Rockefeller? If he is nominated can Republican voters and a sizeable number of independents be persuaded to vote for him?

It is pointed out that the core df the Republican Party is not in the sophisticated cities but in the States that make up the great plains. The rural areas are much more conservative in all things than are the big citlts. It is

felt too that many Republican Catholics will be hesitant to vote for a divorced man who is now remarried to a divorced woman. They may not vote for Mr Kennedy, but they could stay home on election day. James Reston, in the “New’ York Times,” points out that the President is not a symbol of the norm |n American life, but of the ideal and that what the nation will accept as a private right in an individual it will not necessarily tolerate in a Presidential candidate.

He adds that in many areas the President “is still looked upon, not only as a politician and Chief Executive, but also an idedl, and it is there in the rural areas, as well as among Catholic citizens, that Governor Rockefeller is now in trouble."