The Dinosaur Hunter - George Romney
Time Magazine April 6, 1959

George Romney - Time Magazine April 6, 1959

George Wilcken Romney, at 51, is a broad-shouldered, Bible-quoting broth of a man who burns brightly with the fire of missionary zeal. On the Lord’s Day, and whenever else he can find time, he is a fervent apostle for the Mormon Church, in which he is a high official. But at all other times his missionary zeal is best defined by a plaque that hangs in the walnut-paneled Detroit office where he reigns as boss of American Motors. A facetious gift from the Cleveland Auto Dealers Association, it reads: “To George Romney, critic, lecturer, anthropologist, white hunter of the American dinosaur.”

The American dinosaur, to Romney, is the long, low, chrome-laden U.S. auto, i.e., any car of his Big Three competitors. Where does he hunt it? At conventions, Rotary meetings, congressional hearings, wherever he can find a platform or a soapbox. He closes in on the quarry with a verbal barrage. Back and forth he rocks, clenching his fists, screwing his handsome face into an intense mask. Out shoot the words in evangelical, organlike tones; down flies his big fist to shake the dust from the table.

He even carries his own props. “This fellow here,” he says, suddenly snatching a green china dinosaur from his briefcase, “is called a triceratops. He had the biggest radiator ornament in prehistoric history. It kept getting bigger and bigger until finally he could no longer hold up his head. He had a wheelbase of nearly 30 feet. The dinosaur perished because he got too big.”

Then Romney pauses dramatically, juts his formidable jaw. “Who,” he challenges, “wants to have a gas-guzzling dinosaur in his garage?” In the silence that follows, Romney races on to introduce the creature he would most like to see replace the dinosaur: American Motors’ compact little Rambler.

Now, Ladies. With inexhaustible energy Romney last year traveled 70,000 miles across the U.S. to preach his message, sometimes sleeping and eating in his Rambler. He wears an alarm wrist watch to remind himself when to stop talking, but no one can remember a time when he ever heeded it. He likes to get up before women’s clubs, fix the ladies accusingly with his blue-grey eyes. “Ladies,” he says, wagging his finger at them, “why do you drive such big cars? You don’t need a monster to go to the drugstore for a package of hairpins. Think of the gas bills!” No audience is too small for him. Caught in a taxi in the middle of a St. Louis traffic jam, he lectured the captive driver: “Now if we all drove small cars, we’d have a lot less trouble like this.” His parting tip as he abandoned the cab and sprinted off on foot: “Next time try a Rambler.”

Recently, when an American Motors executive showed up at an automobile manufacturers’ meeting in place of Romney, a Big Three auto official asked: “Where’s the boss?” Said the substitute: “He’s making a speech.” Yawned the Big Three man: “So what else is new?”

Through his talkathon, George Romney has brought off singlehanded one of the most remarkable selling jobs in U.S. industry. He has taken a company that only three years ago was on the brink of the grave, the butt of countless jokes (”Did you hear about the man who was hit by a Rambler and went to the hospital to have it removed?”), and given it a new and vibrant lease on life. More remarkable, he has done it all by selling an “economy” car that, in 1956, actually cost $4 more than the Big Three’s cheapest car (it is now $311 cheaper), and that takes an expert driver to get the company-boasted gas mileage (more than 30 miles to the gallon). Snorts a General Motors executive: “Romney’s been selling a dream—price and economy—but he’s done a helluva good job at it.”

Just as remarkable, Romney has proved a powerful competitor not only against the Big Three but against a flood of small imported cars, whose chief selling point is even lower cost and greater economy than the Rambler. This year the 60-odd foreign cars coming into the U.S. are expected to account for 560,000 units, or more than 10% of the U.S. market. But Rambler’s sales have risen faster than any of the imports.

Fifth Place.
 Rambler has done so well that it is in fifth place in U.S. auto sales (after Chevrolet, Ford, Oldsmobile and Pontiac); its share of the market has risen from 1.6% to 6.2% in two years. This week it made its 20th successive increase in production in 1½ years. Yet the public is still ordering Ramblers faster than American can produce them. Romney is in the midst of a $10 million expansion program that will lift the company’s capacity to 440,000 cars a year.

For all Rambler’s success, the Big Three are not hurting much. Last week the auto industry showed promise of the first spring pickup in sales since 1955, chalked up a record near two-year, midmonth high of 174,780 new car sales. Automen are confident of a 5,500,000-automobile year. That is good news for George Romney; the more car sales, the bigger the share he expects to get.

Rambler’s success is writ large in the company’s books. American’s earnings after taxes for the first six months (ending this week) of its fiscal year will reach almost $35 million, or about $5.80 a share v. $26 million for the whole twelve months of the last fiscal year. For the entire year, American should earn upwards of $50 million, and may easily earn as high as $64 million, or about $11 a share, if Romney’s confident expectation of 350,000 Rambler sales holds up. Earnings are piling up so fast that Romney is expected to ask the company directors to declare the first cash dividend since 1954, when it was 12½¢; this time it looks as if the dividend will be about 50¢.

Pat Answer.
 All this success has raised an important question: Has George Romney won a quick victory at the price of losing a war?

His astounding sales and profits have spurred the Big Three to ready their own compact cars. General Motors is pressing its suppliers in hopes of getting into pilot production in May, is expected to be the first to introduce its compact car, a rear-engine job, in August or early September. Ford’s economy car is scheduled for December introduction, Chrysler’s for February, although both are considering bringing out their cars on a small scale in the fall to take the edge off G.M.’s lead.

G.M. is tentatively planning to call its compact car the “Invader.” Both Ford and Chrysler, unknown to each other, had tentatively decided on the “Falcon.” When they found this out, they had an amiable discussion; now Chrysler is thinking of giving Ford the bird and finding another name.

When the new cars wheel on to the market, what will become of American Motors? Some Big Three officials who wrote off the compact and small foreign cars only two years ago now have their own pat answer. Says one high-ranking automan: “Give the Big Three a year or so in the economy market, and Romney will be flat against the wall.” But such crapehangers underestimate Romney’s passion and skill in battling against odds.

Loyal Owners.
 Though Romney has loudly condemned annual styling changes (the Rambler has changed little in two years), he will meet the threat of the Big Three’s new compact cars by giving Rambler a fresh, crisp look for 1960. If his sales should be hurt, no one doubts that he would completely restyle the Rambler in 1961 to make it competitive with anything that the Big Three can throw at him.

Moreover, Romney has a more subtle factor working in his favor. The success of his long crusade has made him a symbolic figure—a sort of Johnny Appleseed of the auto industry. He is besieged by pleas for help, love letters, poetry, suggestions that he run for Governor of Michigan or President of the U.S. Wrote a Los Angeles admirer: “With you as President, America would once again become a great power.”

Around Romney has grown up an army of surprisingly loyal and enthusiastic Rambler owners. Some of them go so far as to call the Rambler “the most reliable car since the model T.” Others take their pleasure in less rhapsodic praise. Women like it because its compact size (15.9 ft. long, 6 ft. wide, 108-in. wheelbase v. 17.3 ft. long, 6.4 ft. wide, 118-in. wheelbase for the standard Ford) makes it easy to handie in traffic, easy to park. The Rambler’s unitized frame construction, in which body and frame are welded into a single unit (Ford, G.M. and Chrysler will also use this construction in their compact cars), eliminates most of the rattles and squeaks that often occur in other cars. With detachable front fenders and parts that are easily accessible, Rambler is easy and comparatively cheap to repair.

Hidden Ingredient.
 But the hidden ingredient of Rambler’s success is the Big Three themselves. “They are,” says George Romney happily, “my best salesmen.” The Big Three have used every device of the designer’s art and the engineer’s skill to make cars steadily bigger, sleeker, more luxurious, almost self-operating. Surrounded by soaring fins, dazzling in their chrome, perched behind an engine of steadily, growing power, the U.S. driver had what Detroit says he wanted. But was he happy?

There were signs that he was not. Cars were often too big to park easily or put in a garage. Gas mileage dropped as gas prices rose. Much of the prestige that once went with a big car disappeared as new prestige articles became popular. Many consumers were apt to pass up Detroit’s wiles, instead spend their money for recreation, housing, travel, boats.

In 1954 Detroit sniffed the first faint signs of dissatisfaction: a ripple of interest in imported cars. At first Detroit wrote it off as reverse big-car snobbery and the desire to have something different. Where the snobs led, the mobs followed. When foreign imports rose from .8% of the market in 1955 to 8% last year, it became clear that more than snobbery was at work.

Today no one lifts an eyebrow when his neighbor shows up in a foreign car, and no one need explain or apologize for driving one. With thousands of war babies coming of driving age and crying for their own cars, countless families have found the foreign car an inexpensive playmate for Junior—and a less precious article to entrust to freewheeling Mom. The number of two-car families has grown to 17% of all car owners. Now the three-car family is coming along; there are an estimated 375,000 such families.

Detroit had always brushed off demands for a lower-priced small car with the remark that motorists could buy a good secondhand big car for about the same price. But the purchase price proved not the chief factor. The secondhand car usually burned more gas and oil, needed more repairs, was less economical than the foreign car.

Best of Two Worlds.
 Profiting by this change, foreign manufacturers have poured into the U.S. market. West Germany led with the Volkswagen (1958 sales: 102,035), France sent the Renault (47,567), Italy the Fiat (23,000), Britain the Hillman (18,663). Japan has entered the U.S. market with its Toyopet, Sweden with its Volvo. Italy has just brought out a sleek new Fiat, and the Dutch announced only last week that they will soon bring their brand-new Daf into the U.S. market. Even the babies of the import family, e.g., West Germany’s tiny Isetta and Goggomobile, found a market for around 10,000 cars last year.

Detroit was still not sure. It knew that it could not manufacture small cars in the U.S. for the same price, so it compromised. To cash in on the trend, it brought in cars from foreign companies in which the Big Three held big stock interests. General Motors imported the West German-made Opel and the British-made Vauxhall; Chrysler brought in the French Simca, Ford the English Prefect, Consul, Anglia. Since 1955, the Big Three have hiked imports of these foreign cars from 2,100 a year to 79,600.

What caused the Big Three to make up their minds was the take-off of Rambler sales in 1958. Belatedly, Detroit’s Big Three (and little Studebaker-Packard) saw that there was a big market for the kind of car they themselves could make in the U.S. Dubbed a “compact” car to distinguish it from the tiny imports, the Rambler had offered the economy and easy handling of the foreign car plus much of the comfort, power and durability of the U.S. big car.

The Big Three quizzed Rambler buyers, discovered that economy of operation was twice as important in their choice as initial price, that the Rambler was bought no oftener as a second car (one in three sales) than Big Three low-priced cars. George Romney became a prophet with honor in his own country. In 1955 he had predicted: “By 1960, the compact car will be a top contender with present-type cars for the bulk of the market.”

No Kissing.
 From his birth, Romney had little choice but to become a missionary of one kind or another. The grandson of a Mormon who sired 30 children by four wives, he was born into a monogamous family in Colonia Dublan, Mexico, where Mormons from the Southwest had settled 20 years earlier. When George was five, Pancho Villa drove the U.S.-born Mormons out of Mexico, and the family went to Los Angeles. In kindergarten, children taunted him mercilessly with the sneering cry “Mexican!” Said George one day: “Look, if a kitten was born in a garage, would that make it an automobile?'’ The logic was overpowering; the kids let him alone.

George’s father went broke five times, ended up as a builder in Salt Lake City. From the age of twelve, George worked to help support the family, still found time in high school to play football, basketball and baseball. There he met one of the few people ever to make him speechless: a stunning brunette named Lenore Lafount. Even for parents used to the mysterious fixations of adolescence, George was a caution. He decided that Lenore was the girl he was going to marry; just as he later could not understand why people hesitated to buy Ramblers, he could not understand why she did not jump at his offer.

He was so smitten that he followed Lenore whenever she went out with another boy, sat behind them in a movie or trailed their car. When she starred in a high-school play that involved kissing a boy, he insisted that there be no kiss at rehearsals, stuck around to make sure. “Sometimes I wondered if he was right for me,” says Lenore, “but gradually I understood. He really cared.”

Biggest Selling Job.
 At 19 he was selected by his church to spend two years as a Mormon missionary, took off for Great Britain. He spent 18 months in Scotland preaching the Mormon gospel from door to door, then went to London to preach for six more months from a soapbox in Hyde Park and at Tower Hill. The competition from other soapboxers for listeners was so tough that Romney teamed up with a red-bearded Socialist to catch an audience. They agreed to heckle each other’s meetings regularly, thus both drew crowds. Says Romney: “I suppose some people thought I was eccentric. But I found it an illuminating, uplifting experience.”

Back in the U.S., Romney spent a year at the University of Utah before heading for Washington in search of a job—and Lenore, who had moved there when her father took a Government job. Romney was hired by Massachusetts’ Democratic Senator David I. Walsh as a speedwriter. When his speedwriting turned out to lack speed, Walsh kept him on anyway, put him to work keeping track of legislative matters.

When Lenore Lafount moved to New York to study acting, he spent all his weekends there. In 1930 he went to work as a lobbyist for Aluminum Co. of America; when Lenore got an offer from Hollywood (she was a bit player), he convinced Alcoa that he would be more valuable in their West Coast office. “I kept thinking,” he says, “that some movie hero would get her.” Lenore thought she wanted a career, but George’s persistence was overpowering. Just as M-G-M offered her a three-year contract, he persuaded her to marry him instead, took her back to Washington as his wife. Says Romney: “It was my greatest selling achievement.”

Short Trips.
 At Alcoa, Romney was frustrated by lack of opportunity to advance through the layers of executives. “As near as I could figure it,” he says, “I would have been about go by the time I rose to the top.” When the Automobile Manufacturers Association offered him a job as manager of its Detroit office, he jumped at the chance.

Romney’s first big job for the A.M.A. was a study of car use, and it shaped his whole thinking about the role of the auto. The overriding finding was that the U.S. auto was being used less and less for long trips, more and more for short, essential trips, such as going to church, to work, to stores. Romney saw its meaning immediately: an inevitable trend toward more functional, basic transportation.

As director of the Automotive Council for War Production during World War II, Romney worked up a cooperative system that enabled companies to share one another’s production advances. At war’s end he performed one of his biggest services by persuading Government officials to cut short cumbersome contract-termination procedures that might have tied up auto plants for months. Instead, automakers began rolling out new cars almost immediately after war’s end, thus averting heavy unemployment.

Out of Gas.
 After the war, Romney went to work for Nash-Kelvinator as assistant to President George Mason. The company, which had started in 1902 with Founder Thomas Jeffrey’s Rambler, a one-cylinder runabout, was bought in 1916 by Charles Nash, president of General Motors, who introduced the first Nash in 1917. As solid and conservative as its uninspiring cars, Nash had for years been a profitable but never a spectacular company.

Romney picked Nash over other jobs because George Mason, like Romney, believed in the future of the smaller car. The company had started developing one before World War II, was ready to introduce a new, compact Rambler. Also in the works: the Nash Metropolitan (wheelbase: 85 in.).

Nash was convinced that it was on the right road with its small cars—but the company was running out of gas. The war had spawned many bad habits. Competition was rough. Mason made a move to keep the company going by merging Nash-Kelvinator with Hudson to form American Motors Corp., but before he could straighten the company out he died of pneumonia in 1954. Romney was elected president—and heir to a mess of troubles.

Pray & Work.
 His first act as president was to give his problems “thoughtful and prayerful consideration.” Says he: “Prayer is not a substitute for work. First we have to do all we can ourselves to understand a situation. Then when we ask for help, sometimes it is very evident, sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes we may well be helped by not getting a decision.”

Having prayed, Romney got to work. He reorganized top management, retired older executives to bring in new hustlers. He built up American’s selling organization by thinning out weak dealers, got rid of a sales manager who did not believe in the small car. Despite the belt-tightening, American lost nearly $7,000,000 in 1955, lost another $20 million in 1956. Bus drivers stopping at the entrance to the company’s cathedral-like headquarters in Detroit called out: “All out for the old folks’ home.”

Romney cut out the ailing Nash and Hudson big-car lines, concentrated on the Rambler (the Metropolitan now sells about 1,000 units a month). “I knew we were on the right track,” says Romney. “The question was: Would the car-buying public discover that in time?”

Wolfson at the Door.
 Just when American was in deepest trouble, Raider Louis Wolfson appeared on the scene, waving 200,000 shares of freshly bought American Motors stock. Wolfson had chilling news: he wanted to sell off the company’s automaking facilities—and had $8,000,000 more to buy stock control if there was any argument. Wolfson was a tough in-fighter who had won many victories, but Romney treated him just as if he were another heckler in Hyde Park.

Romney glowingly described the future of American Motors, and Wolfson decided to let matters stand—if he could have a man on the board of directors. Romney also talked him out of that. But he knew he was living on borrowed time, with only a few months to go before bankruptcy—or liquidation—would swamp the company. Later, after Wolfson had bought 220,000 more shares, he wanted American Motors to finance his acquisition of other companies by trading stock. Romney flatly refused to go along. Then the public finally took to the Rambler. In late 1957 the company nudged into the black—and has been there ever since. Wolfson secretly sold his holdings, later said that American Motors stock was fully priced at 13. Last week it was selling at 35.

The Ghost.
 Never has Detroit seen an auto executive like Romney. In an industry noted for hard drinking and tough talk, Romney does not drink (not even tea or coffee), or smoke or swear. He is the president (i.e., bishop) of the Detroit stake of twelve Mormon churches, was the leader in building a new $750,000 Mormon tabernacle in suburban Bloomfield Hills. He gives 10% of his $100,000 salary, and sometimes more, to the church. He reserves his Sundays exclusively for church activities, often travels to other Mormon churches to set up conferences or deliver sermons.

“My religion,” says Romney, “is my most precious possession. Except for it, I could easily have become excessively occupied with industry. Sharing responsibility for church work has been a vital counterbalance in my life.”

Romney keeps his athletic frame (5 ft. 11 in., 175 lbs.) in top shape (”Our body is the temple of our spirit”), plays competitive sports with his two sons, Mitt, 12, and Scott, 17 (his two daughters are married ). The Romneys live in a $150,000 modern Swiss-chalet house (with a waterfall in back) that he built last year in fashionable Bloomfield Hills. (When he invited the auto industry brass for a housewarming, one G.M. wife remarked dryly: “George, you’ve bought yourself quite a gas guzzler.”) He begins his day at 5 a.m., uses the first daylight hours, except when snow is on the ground, to play solitary golf with luminous balls at a country club next to his home. He keeps no score, dashes up and lunges at the ball, then chases it across the fairway at a fast jog. Caddies call him “the ghost.”

He makes his daily 20-mile trip from home to office in about half an hour (most of his colleagues would rather walk than ride with him), rolls up his shirtsleeves for the day’s work. American Motors headquarters is perhaps the most relaxed and informal in Detroit’s auto industry. Romney often leaves his modest office (18 ft. by 18 ft.) to drop in on executives down the corridor. When he has anything important to say, he is not above calling them together, sitting down on the back of a chair to give a talk.

Once, while attending a musical in Manhattan with other company executives, he drafted the announcement of a major reorganization of American’s divisions between the acts, using an aide’s shoulder as his desk. When the British Broadcasting Corp. recently asked him to take part in a small-car panel, and submitted a list of ten questions beforehand, Romney summoned an aide. The aide began briefing him, but Romney cut him short. “Never mind the answers,” he said. “Just give me the questions.”

Change in Thinking.
 One big question for which Romney thinks he can create his own answer is the fate of American Motors after the Big Three roll out their compact cars. “They will come in partially at first,” says Romney, “at about the same volume at which we operate. But sooner or later they will be in on an all-out basis, with no holds barred. If we are right, they will have no alternative.”

By being “right,” Romney means that the compact-car market is far bigger than other makers have previously estimated. One prime piece of evidence: the entrance of Studebaker-Packard’s compact Lark, which has not hurt Rambler at all, even though the Lark is being turned out at the rate of 4,300 cars a week. A year ago, the Big Three’s experts estimated the compact-and small-car market at 500,000 a year—at most. Last week they had raised their sights, expect the compact market to range from 1,500,000 to 3,000,000 within five years, exclusive of imports. Says Romney: “In five years the compact car will have at least half the auto market.”

That market may be 7,000,000 cars by 1965, as the U.S. population explosion continues and all the World War II babies reach car-buying age. Thus, in a growing market, the Big Three’s compact cars will not necessarily be sold at the expense of the Rambler.

No one expects that the market for small foreign cars will disappear, but most automakers estimate that it will grow no bigger. In fact, it may shrink. One indication is that foreign cars are no longer as hard to get as they once were, and order backlogs have dwindled. The Big Three’s compact cars will also be competing against their own imports.

No one expects the big car to disappear, but its market, too, may shrink. While working on their compact car, the Big Three are gambling on continued demand for bigger, flashier cars by planning 1960 models that are longer, lower and wider—with new fin treatments. G.M.’s cars will be completely done over; the Ford, Edsel and Mercury will also be completely redesigned; while Chrysler is planning changes, its main emphasis will be on new interiors.

But there is little doubt that the big car’s medium-priced lines will be hard hit by the approaching battle of the compact cars. Their sales, which were 37% of all sales only four years ago, last week were down to 25%—and still slipping. Most experts expect the new compact cars to occupy the spot once held by the Ford, Chevy and Plymouth before they got big enough to push out the medium-priced cars.

Auto Bigamists.
 In the upcoming battle Romney will have one great advantage that the Big Three cannot match: his low break-even point. He can turn out considerably fewer cars than now and still make respectable profits. In its last fiscal year American Motors netted its $26 million profit on sales of only 169,000 units. Ford and Chrysler together, on the other hand, sold 1,429,000 cars in the first nine months of 1958—and lost $61 million between them. Romney can also count on financial backing from his Kelvinator appliance division, which he has thoroughly overhauled; Kelvinator sales are up 18.7% over last year.

On the other hand, Romney will have a problem with some of his dealers. Some 30% of them are auto bigamists; they sell a Big Three car as well as the Rambler, will probably carry the Big Three’s line of small cars (though only Chevrolet, Ford and Plymouth dealers, of which Rambler has practically none, are expected to). Romney hopes that his hard core of 2,800 dealers will stick with Rambler. During the industry’s 1958 slump, Rambler saved many of them; last year they made a 2.8% profit on their total sales v. .2% for the average U.S. dealer. Another reason for holding on: Rambler has a current resale price advantage of from $99 to $191 over a same-year Chevrolet, Ford or Plymouth.

Fall Flat?
 For all his confidence, Romney does not underestimate the threat he faces—or expect anyone to underestimate him. “We don’t have research and development facilities in magnitude equal to the Big Three,” he says. “But we have greater freedom and flexibility of operation. We’re leaner. We’re harder. We’re faster. I’ve seen halfbacks, out in the clear, trip and fall flat with a sure touchdown in sight. That sort of thing could happen to anybody.” Then Romney breaks into a wide grin: “But I don’t intend to let it happen to us.”

———
The Citizen’s Candidate
Nov. 16, 1962

George Romney - Time Magazine Nov. 16,1962

The father of the compact car got up and dressed at 6 a.m. Usually he takes a prebreakfast jog around the grounds of suburban Detroit’s Bloomfield Hills Country Club, which is adjacent to his $150,000 contemporary home. At the very least, he plays a fast game of “compact golf”—six holes, three balls. But on this particular morning, he and his wife Lenore hurried over to the polling place—to vote for George Wilcken Romney, 55, Republican candidate for Governor of Michigan. Many a politician might then have rewarded himself with a well-deserved rest on the day of days. But not Romney, a man of depthless energy and evangelical fervor about everything that engages his interest. On Election Day 1962, Romney went out campaigning.

He flew to Lansing to help dramatize the G.O.P. get-out-the-vote drive. There he baby-sat for a mother who could not otherwise leave her three children to go out and vote. (She went straight Republican.) Then he flew to Bay City, marched up and down Washington Avenue, stopped off at a garment factory to shake the hands of the women workers, got back into his plane to head for a round of electioneering in Port Huron. In that city, he slid behind the wheel of a new Rambler and chauffeured a 75-year-old spinster to the polls. On the way, Salesman Romney asked his passenger if she had ever before been in a Rambler. “No,” said she with a twinkle, “but I’ve done quite a bit of rambling in my life.”

Keeping Company.
 She voted for Romney. So did 1,419,000 other Michigan voters—a sizable segment of whom had felt the grip of the man’s hand, seen the lean, jut-jawed face and the fire in the light hazel eyes—and heard his message about citizens’ participation in government. All together, those voters, and those personal qualities, helped Romney defeat Governor John B. Swainson by some 78,500 votes—thereby ending a 14-year Democratic dynasty in Michigan.

No sooner was the outcome known than Romney became a major Republican presidential possibility for 1964. Come what may, he will be a force in national G.O.P. politics for at least the next few years. In that sense, he finds himself in the company of two other big Republican winners:

∙ Pennsylvania’s Representative William Scranton. 45, who was elected Governor over Philadelphia’s former Mayor Richardson Dilworth by 470,000 votes. Scranton (TIME cover. Oct. 19), who matched Dilworth insult for insult in one of the most savage campaigns in recent U.S. history, cut deeply into the Democratic fortress of Philadelphia, won ordinarily Democratic Allegheny County (Pittsburgh) by 52,000 votes. With a Republican legislature to help him, plus patronage powers that will give him control of 50,000 state jobs, Scranton awoke on the morning after Election Day as a Republican really to be reckoned with. So desperate is Pennsylvania’s economic condition that Scranton can hardly help improving things. An admirer of New York’s Governor Rockefeller, Scranton pooh-poohs all suggestions that he himself might seek the nomination. But it could happen.

∙ Rockefeller remains by every standard the front runner for the Republican nomination in ‘64. Last week he won re-election as Governor by 518,000 votes over U.S. Attorney Robert Morgenthau, about as pitiable a candidate as any party ever put up for office in a major state. Because this plurality was down from Rocky’s 573,000-vote margin over Averell Harriman in 1958, many analysts argued that he had suffered a loss of prestige. Yet. in fact, he not only survived the handicaps of a tax increase and a divorce from his wife of 32 years, but took 53.5% of the total vote, nearly equaling his 1958 percentage. Among Rocky’s major assets for the 1964 presidential nomination: he is one Republican who acts as if he thinks he can beat Jack Kennedy.

The Schizophrenic State.
 Michigan’s Romney denies any presidential pretensions. Yet whether he likes it or not—and he is not the sort to stay awake nights worrying about it—Romney will certainly be talked about, along with Rocky and Scranton. More important, he is an activist Republican whose views will certainly be a major influence upon the national Republican Party.

In the 14 years that Michigan Democrats held the Governor’s chair (twelve under ‘’Soapy” Williams, two under Swainson). Michigan’s economy went to pot, largely as a result of political schizophrenia. On one side were the Democrats, monolithically supported by the United Auto Workers and other unions. On the other side was the rural-dominated state legislature, a kind of feudal barony perpetuated by malapportionment and chartered by an antiquated state constitution. Over the years, the bickering and battling between the two sides put Michigan $85.6 million into debt. Auto companies began building new assembly plants in other states; the population explosion and the absence of industrial diversification added further economic headaches. Michigan was ripe for change.

Selling Power.
 George Romney had experience in the business of change. Back in the ’50s, while the Big Three auto companies patiently explained that the U.S. could not market a small family car to compete with European imports. American Motors President Romney led a lone revolution, put over the Rambler with such success that it revitalized his foundering company and forced the automotive giants of Detroit to bring out their own compacts. Romney sold the idea—and he is a super salesman. He went out on the road in a crusade against the “gas-guzzling dinosaurs” in the big-car field. That was the same sort of zeal that he applied to politics.

Borrowing a line from a well-known Democrat.
 Romney set out to “get this state moving again.” He called for citizen participation at all levels of government —and with it an end to the “monopoly” of power groups, whether of the left, center or right. He developed a theory, similar to that of the University of Chicago’s late Professor Henry Simons, that the overwhelming power of great corporations, pitted against that of big unions, serves only to enlarge the power and size of the Federal Government, which must regulate both forces. Michigan, he insisted, needed a leader who could rise above the pressure politics of special-interest groups and put an end to partisan wrangling. “The individual,” he cried, “is being engulfed in vast organizations and power groups.”

“That’s What’s Wrong.”
 Romney tore through Michigan on his people-to-people campaign, propelled like a man with a divine mission. He drove 37,000 miles, flew 13,000 more, knocked on 2,000 doors, shook more than 100,000 hands at factories, shopping centers and meetings. He tried not to label himself a Republican. None of his campaign literature identified his party. When pressed, he said: “I’m a citizen who is a Republican, not a Republican who is incidentally a citizen.”

He rode a variety of comic animals, slid down a firemen’s pole, peeled potatoes and performed the thousand other idiocies expected of a candidate. He accosted people on the street, poked a finger into their chests and told them what he thought about politics. Once he walked up to a man and asked him to shake hands. The fellow refused. A crowd gathered. Romney challenged him once more, and still the man declined. Roared Romney as the man stalked away: “See what I mean about partisanship? This man won’t even shake hands with me! This is what’s wrong with Michigan!” More than once he turned up uninvited at labor gatherings and demanded to be heard. More than once, he was sent away. At last union leaders decided that they were getting a reputation for undemocratic attitudes. After that they sent Romney invitations, and he did not hesitate to appear and preach his gospel.

In the end, Romney won because he appeared to be a prophet at a time when Michigan desperately needed one. His victory was one of charisma, that indefinable quality of leadership, force and spiritual magnetism that defies pat explanations. The fact that he is a Mormon—and president of the Detroit Stake (district) of the Mormon church—had much to do with it. For devout Mormons count as cardinal principles of their religion individual responsibility and dedication to public service.

Soapbox Missionary.
 Romney was born in Mexico. His grandfather, who had four wives, fled across the border from Arizona in 1885 to avoid antipolygamy laws in the U.S. But Romney’s father was a monogamist, and brought his family back to the States when George was five.* George studied for a year at the Latter-day Saints Junior College in Salt Lake City, in 1927 went to England and Scotland as a Mormon missionary. There he got his first experience in public speaking, preaching from a soapbox in London’s Hyde Park. Returning after two years, he got in some more schooling at the University of Utah and at George Washington University, went to work in Washington as a tariff specialist for Massachusetts’ Democratic Senator David Walsh. In the 1930s, he was a lobbyist for the aluminum industry: in 1939 he became Detroit manager of the Automobile Manufacturers Association, and during the war he helped to organize the Automotive Council for War Production. In 1948 he joined Nash-Kelvinator—forerunner of American Motors—as assistant to the chairman, took over the presidency of the company in 1954.

From 1956 to 1959, Romney was chairman of the Detroit Citizens Advisory Committee on School Needs, brought together divergent views of all segments of the community. The committee submitted 182 proposals to the board of education. All but a few of them have since been incorporated into the Detroit school system. That success led in 1959 to the idea that perhaps Michigan’s economic troubles could be cured by a nonpartisan “citizen’s approach.” Romney discussed it with friends, brought together a group of Michigan leaders (including Ford Motor Co.’s Robert McNamara, now Secretary of Defense), and by June of that year had formed a 300-man group called “Citizens for Michigan.”

How to Get Along.
 From that came the organization of Michigan’s Constitutional Convention—popularly known as the “Con-Con.” It was meant to modernize the state’s preposterously out-of-date constitution, and Romney was the unquestioned leader of the conclave. But very soon it was a wide-open secret that Romney meant to run for Governor, and in due course the convention bogged down in partisan politics. Romney was forced to make concessions to ultraconservative rural Republicans—and even if he hadn’t. Democratic delegates would have found political cause for criticism. As a result, in running for Governor, Romney’s main problem was answering charges that he would be subservient to the “Neanderthals” who continue to dominate the state legislature. Said Romney: “If men are treated like Neanderthals, they respond like Neanderthals. I’ll get along with them.”

He may at that. For Romney is far from being a pragmatic politician. His politics, he believes, are neither liberal nor conservative nor moderate. He is an anti-organization man. “I believe in the deathless freedom of the individual,” he said during the campaign, “and the sacred right of individual choice. I believe that these basic fundamental freedoms of individuality are in imminent danger of being smothered within the drift of our social, economic and political institutions toward impersonal organization control. I believe that one of the greatest dangers in our society comes from the concentration of excessive power in business, in unions, in the Federal Government. I am convinced Michigan is about to see a bold new dimension in public affairs: the return of their state government to genuine citizens’ control.”

Within that philosophical framework, Romney struck some specifics. He was against the “excess concentration of power” that arises from industry-wide collective bargaining. He opposed businessmen who organize politically “as businessmen” to fight unions. He argued for the re-establishment of the independence of state governments: “I don’t talk about states’ rights; I talk about state responsibilities.” He criticized the G.O.P. as being identified “too much as a business party.”

Destiny & Decision.
 Romney ran his own campaign in his own way. Recalls a Romney aide: “Whatever heights and depths our campaign reached were a result of George Romney and no one else. Sometimes we’d sit there in horror listening to a new idea from George. Then we’d all try to dissuade him. Sometimes it worked. But most of the time he’d say, ‘Well, you’re all very persuasive, but this is the way I’m going to do it. We’ve been tied to traditional methods too long.’ ”

Romney is an untraditional sort of politician, with a deep sense of divinely guided destiny. He prayed and fasted for 24 hours last February before announcing his candidacy for Governor. “I have a very simple formula for reaching decisions,” he explained. “First, I diligently search out the pertinent facts. This means getting the viewpoints of others. The second step is prayer. I believe firmly in prayer. I believe that if we want to make decisions as wisely as possible, we can get much help through prayer.”

Pressure Points.
 Believing that, Romney takes poorly to mortal criticism. “He is compulsively good.” says a friend, “and compulsively right. He finds it so hard to be wrong, that when he is, he convinces himself that he isn’t.” Romney’s temper is both famed and feared—yet, so far in his brief political career, he has generally managed to control it. Once, after a bitter debate at Con-Con, when Democrats impugned his motives, Romney returned home for the weekend, and that Sunday delivered an impassioned sermon at the Bloomfield Hills Mormon Church. He climaxed it with a quotation from Othello: “Who steals my purse steals trash . . . ‘Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands—But he that filches from me my good name robs me of that which not enriches him and makes me poor indeed.”

Again, during the arduous gubernatorial campaign, Romney visited the office of the Detroit Free Press to submit to a group interview. During that session, he hotly accused a Free Press reporter of prejudice against him. That was too much for Managing Editor Frank Angelo, a Romney admirer, who jumped to his feet and cried: “That’s a goddamned lie, George.” Retorted Romney: “The hell it is.” He spun on his heel and headed out. Then he regained control, returned and submitted to more questioning.

“I Can So.”
 For the next two years, George Romney’s performance as Governor of Michigan is going to be watched with eagle eye by politicians of both parties. Whether he likes it or not, Romney will be thought of and talked of in presidential terms. Despite his denial of White House ambitions, he does not slam the door. “There is a remote possibility,” he says, “that either of two things would happen—that the problems of Michigan can be sufficiently dealt with in the two-year period to feel that the responsibility there has been completed or discharged, and that someone who is not actively a presidential candidate would become a candidate.”

That “someone” would be George Romney. Years ago, in Salt Lake City, Romney’s younger brother Charles—who was born shortly after the family returned from Mexico—could always get a rise out of George by saying: “I’m the only Romney who can be President, because I was born in this country.” Invariably George Romney cried out: “That’s not so. My mother and father were citizens, and I can so be President!”

Maybe he can. But for the moment, and for the next two years, his importance will lie in how he revitalizes Michigan and what he can do to reshape the G.O.P. so as to meet his own prescription for it as a national party dominated by citizens without regard to special interests.

* His Mexican birth has raised some questions about Romney’s constitutional qualifications for the presidency. Article Two of the Constitution specifies that only a “natural-born citizen” is eligible. Some legal authorities say that this means only those born on U.S. soil. But a law enacted by the first Congress in 1790 stipulated that children born of U.S. citizens beyond the boundaries of the country “shall be considered as natural-born citizens of the U.S.”

——
From the Elect Romney in 2008 site.

I was doing a search on google, and found this funny tidbit. In light of Jeff’s previous Michigan story, I thought that it would be a “sentimental” read. At first I thought it was about the Massachusetts Romney, but upon closer examination (the date on top says October 23, 1964) I realized it was about the father.

See Romney and Party in Kingston Tuesday Oct 27 4 to 5 P.M.

Governor Romney will lead a Republican campaign blitz through 34 southern Michigan cities on October 27, 28, and 29.

The motorcade will begin in Detroit on the afternoon of October 27 and cover the Thumb area; then on October 28 head west into the central part of Michigan; then south and west on the next day, and finally head back east into the Metropolitan Area on the evening of October 29.

House Speaker Allison Green, Republican candidate for Secretary of State, and Meyer Warshawsky, Republican candidate for Attorney General, are scheduled to accompany Governor Romney on the three day campaign blitz.

Other statewide Republican candidates and other local Republican candidates are expected to join the blitz caravan as it makes it way through the 34 cities.

Governor Romney and the caravan will move out of Detroit about noon on Oct. 27, with the first stop at Oxford in Oakland County early afternoon. From there, the blitz will visit Lapeer, Imlay City, Marlette, Kingston (which is Speaker Green’s home town); Bad Axe, and Cass City before winding up with an evening rally in Caro.

On October 28, the blitz will begin at 7 a.m. in Saginaw, then visit Pinconning, Midland, Clare, and Mt. Pleasant before noon; then head south into Alma, St. Johns, Owosso, Howell, and Mason in the afternoon; and wind up with an evening rally in Charlotte (which is the home town of Mrs. Elly Peterson, Republican candidate for United States Senator).

The final day of the blitz, October 29, will begin at 7 a.m. in Battle Creek then before noon visit Hastings, Plainwell, Allegan and South Haven (which is Mr. Warshawsky’s home town); then visit Niles, Dowagiac, Cassopolis, Three Rivers, Coldwater, Hillsdale, and Albion before an evening rally in Jackson. Gov Romney will round out the blitz with a late evening meeting back in Detroit.