John D. "Jay" Rockefeller IV, the Standard Oil heir who made West Virginia his home, led it as governor and then represented it in the U.S. Senate for 30 years, died Friday at his home in Washington, D.C. He was 89.
His family did not disclose a cause of death. A Democrat, Rockefeller was governor from 1977 to 1985 and served five Senate terms, from 1985 to 2015.
Health care defined his Senate career. He helped build bipartisan support for the Children's Health Insurance Program, which President Bill Clinton signed in 1997 to cover uninsured children, and he also created the child tax credit, expanded the earned income tax credit and shielded Medicare from budget cuts.
He kept coal country in focus, helping pass a 1992 law that preserved health coverage for retired miners and their families and sponsoring a 2006 bill that updated mine-safety rules. He also backed legislation expanding research into illnesses tied to military service.
Rockefeller chaired a congressional commission on health coverage and long-term care, supported then-first lady Hillary Clinton's national health care push and voted for the Affordable Care Act in 2010. He led the Senate's Commerce, Science and Transportation, Veterans' Affairs and Intelligence committees.
Donald A. Ritchie, historian emeritus of the Senate, once described him as a workhorse rather than a showhorse, a senator who did detailed committee work away from the cameras and who could work with friends across the aisle.
Rockefeller was the great-grandson of John D. Rockefeller, who founded the Standard Oil Company in 1870. After graduating from Harvard University in 1961, he arrived in West Virginia in 1964 as a VISTA volunteer, part of President Lyndon B. Johnson's War on Poverty, which required a vow of poverty.
Assigned to Emmons, he spent months earning residents' trust. He went on to start the town's first Little League team, lead construction of a community center, launch a mobile health-screening service for women, open a library and secure reliable school bus service to Charleston, 20 miles away. In his 2014 farewell speech to the Senate, he called that time transformative.
It explains every policy I have pursued and every vote I have cast.
Jay Rockefeller, in his 2014 Senate farewell speech
He stayed in the state and moved quickly into politics, winning a seat in the West Virginia House of Delegates in 1966 and the secretary of state's office in 1968. He lost his first race for governor in 1972 but won four years later.
In 1968, his uncle Nelson Rockefeller, then governor of New York, offered to appoint him to the Senate seat left vacant by the death of Robert F. Kennedy. Rockefeller turned it down at once, later saying he wanted to serve in the Senate but did not want the seat handed to him.
He is survived by his wife, Sharon Percy Rockefeller, president and CEO of the Washington public broadcasting station WETA; four children, John D. Rockefeller V, Valerie Rockefeller, Charles Rockefeller and Justin Aldrich Rockefeller; and nine grandchildren.
