West Virginia Senator: Jay Rockefeller dies at 89
The grandson of John D. Rockefeller Jr. served five terms in the US Senate, championing healthcare for the poor and criticizing the Iraq War intelligence.
By Yasmin Nasser ·
John D. Rockefeller IV died on Friday at his home in Washington, D.C. He was 89. The family did not disclose a cause of death.
Rockefeller represented West Virginia in the US Senate for 30 years. He served five six-year terms after winning his first election in 1984. Before the Senate, he served two terms as governor of the coal-mining state.
He was a Democrat with liberal views who focused on poverty and healthcare. In the 1990s, he supported Bill Clinton's failed plan for near-universal health insurance. Later, he backed Barack Obama's healthcare overhaul, which was signed into law in 2010. During that debate, Rockefeller tried to add a federal government insurance program for the general population as an alternative to private plans. He also helped shape a 1997 program that allowed the federal government to help states provide medical coverage for uninsured children.
The senator faced criticism for his vote on the Iraq War. In 2002, he voted in favor of the measure authorizing the conflict, which began with a US-led invasion in 2003. He later regretted that vote. As chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, he accused President George W. Bush of taking the nation to war on false premises. A 2008 report from his committee found that Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and other officials exaggerated intelligence findings about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and its ties to al Qaeda.
Rockefeller told the Charleston Gazette in 2004 that he would have voted against the war authorization if he knew what he knows now. He stated that the intelligence and its interpretation were shaped by a president determined to go to war. When the intelligence report was released in 2008, he said that telling the American people Iraq and al Qaeda had an operational partnership was fundamentally misleading.
The senator was a great-grandson of oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller. He was born in New York on June 18, 1937, weeks after his great-grandfather died. His uncle Nelson Rockefeller served as US vice president and governor of New York. His uncle David Rockefeller headed Chase Manhattan Bank, and his uncle Winthrop Rockefeller was governor of Arkansas.
His political path shifted after he graduated from Harvard and served in a national service program in rural West Virginia from 1964 to 1966. He was elected to the state legislature in 1966 before age 30. He then served as West Virginia's secretary of state from 1968. He lost a bid for governor in 1972 but was elected to that office in 1976. He spent millions of his own money to fund his successful 1984 Senate campaign.
During his Senate tenure, he also chaired the Commerce, Science, and Transportation committees and the Veterans Affairs committee. He often supported the state's coal and steel industries but clashed with coal executives in 2012 when he fought against Republican efforts to limit emissions regulations from coal-fired power plants.
In 2013, at age 75, Rockefeller announced he would not seek a sixth Senate term. He said championing those most in need had been his life's calling. He was married to Sharon Percy Rockefeller, a public television executive. They had four children.
