Initially elected in 1966 with Winthrop Rockefeller, the first Republican governor of Arkansas since the Reconstruction era, Nowotny left politics in 1972, when he declined to seek a fourth term as a legislator.
[citation needed] In addition, Rockefeller chose Nowotny as the "Governor's Representative" on the Arkansas Legislative Council.
Senator J. William Fulbright in 1968,[7] considered running for governor as conservatives and stressed their differences with Rockefeller on a few issues.
Ernest Clifton Dumas of Little Rock, a journalist with the former Arkansas Gazette newspaper, recalls Nowotny from the hindsight of nearly four decades as "a bright guy, effective legislator, and not extremely partisan.
Smith recalls the Rockefeller legislators overall as having been more liberal in political philosophy than subsequent Arkansas GOP lawmakers, who inched toward majority status by the second decade of the 21st century.
[14] After his divorce from his first wife, Lura, Nowotny wed the former Dena Logan Dills (born c. 1927), a widow from Oklahoma.