“As I approach 50 years of public service in West Virginia, I’ve decided that 2014 will be the right moment for me to find new ways to fight for the causes I believe in and to spend more time with my incredible family,” Rockefeller said the morning of January 11, 2013. He announced that he will not run for Senate at the end of his current term.
Rockefeller, born in 1937, has been elected to 6 terms in the senate, and served alongside Senator Robert Byrd for over 25 years. Before that he served as governor of West Virginia for two terms, was a member of the House of Delegates, and West Virginia Secretary of State. He is the great-grandson of John D. Rockefeller, oil tycoon, industrialist, and patriarch of a mostly Republican dynasty. Senator Rockefeller has remained a Democrat throughout his long career as elected official.
In the Senate Rockefeller has served on several committees including Commerce, Veterans Affairs, Taxation, and the powerful Finance committee.
Rockefeller will be remembered as a champion for healthcare for the needy, and has been a strong supporter of the fight against Alzheimer's disease. He founded the Blanchette Rockefeller Neurosciences Institute in 1999 to help advance medical and scientific understanding of Alzheimer's and other diseases of the brain. It is the world's only non-profit institute dedicated exclusively to the study of both human memory and diseases of memory.
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