Rockefeller Challenges Nixon.

As vice-president for eight years under the popular President Eisenhower, Richard M. Nixon was heir apparent to the presidency in the eyes of most Republican Party regulars. He faced early opposition from Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller of New York. Rockefeller had quit an appointed position in the Eisenhower administration because he considered its politics indecisive; he disliked Nixon and considered him incapable of being an effective president. Rockefeller had ranked slightly ahead of Nixon in a spring 1959 poll of Republicans, but on his trip to the Soviet Union that summer, Nixon enhanced his image as a natural leader in the so-called kitchen debate with Premier Nikita Khrushchev at a Moscow trade fair.

Party Regulars Back Nixon.

By December 1959 it was apparent to Rockefeller that the party regulars who controlled most convention delegates were committed to Nixon, as were the...