The 1970s and the End of Rockefeller Republicanism

During the summer of 1971, construction sites and union halls across Buffalo, New York, bore witness to the undoing of the “Rockefeller Republican.” As governor of New York, Nelson Rockefeller embodied a nationwide movement of liberal Republicans that for decades had governed the urban-industrial north. They did so precisely by struggling to accommodate an increasingly diverse working class alongside the party’s core rural and business constituencies. But in beleaguered and rusting Buffalo this unstable electoral amalgam finally exploded. Building on the Nixon administration’s “Philadelphia plan,” Rockefeller looked to integrate the notoriously racist Buffalo building trades unions. The proposal immediately exposed the deep contradictions at the heart of Rockefeller Republicanism. Rockefeller pitched the proposal as an effort to combat job discrimination.  Faced with a looming fiscal crisis, it became the centerpiece of Rockefeller’s new “welfare-to-work” program. It also doubled as a means to flood the construction industry’s labor market and curb union bargaining power. The result immediately fragmented what had been a durable Republican coalition. It fueled the anger of white workers fearful of losing their racialized job privileges. It also became a flashpoint for a growing Black Power movement all too aware that Rockefeller’s policies would only exacerbate the material impacts of racial discrimination. The case of the Buffalo building trades reveals a new story about the intersection of race, class, and party attachment in a moment of intense economic decline for working people.