As a great-grandson of oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, who died less than a month before Jay's birth, he was the only serving politician of the prominent six-generation Rockefeller family during his tenure in the United States Senate and the only one to have held office as a Democrat in what has been a traditionally Republican family, though he too was originally a Republican until he decided to run for office in what was then a strictly Democratic state. Rockefeller did not seek reelection in 2014 and was succeeded by Republican U.S. Representative Shelley Moore Capito.