The Right Places by Stephen; Birmingham

Rockefellers’ exhausting campaigning trips through West Virginia (trips conducted in Chevy station wagons, not limousines). The journalist happened to be wearing a Bill Blass suit (slightly nipped waist, slightly flared trousers), and Gucci shoes. Jay Rockefeller suddenly turned to the journalist and said, “Look—don’t take this personally, but would you mind not standing so close to me? I mean, you look just a little bit too New Yorky, if you know what I mean—and that could really hurt me here. It’s what I’m trying to get away from, see?” Also, until recently, Jay and Sharon Rockefeller systematically turned down interviews from national magazines. Asked why the change of policy had come about, Sharon Rockefeller gave a disarmingly honest answer: “Well, perhaps if we’re nice to reporters, they’ll write nice things about us.” She may be right, because the Rockefellers quickly got an affectionate national press.
    The crucial point in Jay Rockefeller’s campaign for governor—and the point that he knew could cost or win him the election—was his dramatic stand against strip-mining. If elected, he promised, he would see to it that strip-mining was abolished. Strip-mining, meanwhile, was a political issue in West Virginia only depending on where you happened to be. That is, if one inveighs against strip-mining in a county where it’s being heavily done, one may find oneself in heavy trouble.In non-bituminous areas of the state, nobody could care less. Strip-mining is accomplished by bulldozing, and also by blasting, and in the latter area West Virginia’s explosives industry has much at stake. A telling message on the marquee of a Boone County motel said recently: “ WELCOME STRIP-MINERS — THE WEST VIRGINIA EXPLOSIVE MANUFACTURERS ASSN .” Explosives manufacturers, it may not be necessary to point out, know how to make bombs, and during the Rockefeller campaign there were threats and unsettling moments such as an incident when two hundred angry strip-miners pressed in on Jay Rockefeller at a meeting and it was necessary to employ a bodyguard to hold the crowd back. Jay Rockefeller himself remained cool.
    Men such as Washington’s Charlie Peters who have worked hard for Rockefeller behind the scenes were convinced that his stand on strip-mining would win him the election. “It took a lot of guts to come out against that,” Peters says, “and I think the people of West Virginia admire guts, and even those people who were profiting from strip mines privately admitted that what they were doing was ruining their state, making it unlivable. Deep well drilling does cost more, but it’s still profitable, and it employs more people—which the state needs in order to get men off the relief rolls. Anyway, Jay has winning qualities that will take him a long way. He really likes meeting people, he likes being the center of the stage, and he gets a tremendous kick out of campaigning. Also, he has no impulses to be autocratic. I’ve never seen Jay be nasty. Bobby Kennedy could be nasty—shouting orders at people, telling them where to get off. But Jay is a persuader. He’s more like Jack Kennedy than Bobby. I used to say that I’d never seen Jack Kennedy be nasty, but one afternoon one of Jack’s aides said to me, ‘You’ve never seen Jack blow up? You should be upstairs in the suite right now.’ And Jay has a great asset in Sharon. She’s enthusiastic, and bright, and pretty. If you compare Jay with Ted Kennedy, you have to admit that in that respect Joan is not a political asset. Oh, Joan is pretty—but she’s so shy and standoffish and ill at ease. Wherever she is, Joan Kennedy looks as though she wished she weren’t there.”
    Understandably, the greatest criticism leveled against the Rockefellers is that they are really not sincere about West Virginia, that they are using this