page_title: Nelson Rockefeller
section_title: Governor of New York (1959–1973)
hierarchical_section_title: Nelson Rockefeller / Governor of New York (1959–1973)
caption_attribution_description: Nelson Rockefeller (left) with President Lyndon B. Johnson at the White House.
context_page_description: Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller was an American businessman and politician who served as the 41st vice president of the United States from 1974 to 1977, and previously as the 49th governor of New York from 1959 to 1973. He also served as assistant secretary of State for American Republic Affairs for Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman as well as under secretary of Health, Education and Welfare under Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1953 to 1954. A grandson of billionaire John D. Rockefeller and a member of the wealthy Rockefeller family, he was a noted art collector and served as administrator of Rockefeller Center in Manhattan, New York City.
  Rockefeller was a Republican who was often considered to be liberal, progressive, or moderate. In an agreement that was termed the Treaty of Fifth Avenue, Rockefeller persuaded Richard Nixon to alter the Republican Party platform just before the 1960 Republican Convention. In his time, liberals in the Republican Party were called "Rockefeller Republicans".
context_section_description: Rockefeller resigned from the federal government in 1956 to focus on New York State and on national politics. From September 1956 to April 1958, he chaired the Temporary State Commission on the Constitutional Convention. That was followed by his chairmanship of the Special Legislative Committee on the Revision and Simplification of the Constitution. In the state election of 1958, he was elected governor of New York by over 570,000 votes, defeating incumbent W. Averell Harriman, even though 1958 was a banner year for Democrats elsewhere in the nation. Rockefeller was re-elected in the three subsequent elections in 1962, 1966 and 1970, increasing the state's role in education, environmental protection, transportation, housing, welfare, medical aid, civil rights, and the arts. To pay for the increased government spending, Rockefeller increased taxation - for example, a sales tax was introduced in New York in 1965. He resigned three years into his fourth term and began to work at the Commission on Critical Choices for Americans.
caption: Gov. Rockefeller meets with President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968
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