Fresh Face in an Open Field

All the columnists started talking about him. He was introduced on Meet the Press as a "strong contender" for the 1964 Republican presidential nomination. Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon both mentioned him as a possibility. President Kennedy even went to the trouble of up staging him when he was asked about the man's presidential potential at last week's news conference.

Not since Wendell Willkie had the Republicans seen anything quite like him.

For the man everyone was talking about had only within the past year identified himself as a Republican, and it was not until last weekend that George Romney, 54, president and board chairman of American Motors Corp., announced that he would make his first run for elective of fice. Said Michigan's Romney: "I will be a candidate for the Republican guberna torial nomination." Although Romney is a cinch to win that nomination, he faces an uphill fight against Incumbent Democratic Governor John Swainson in the fall. Yet many a politician and pundit were already measuring him for 1964, and the reasons were plain enough. The Republicans have three much bigger names than Romney, but each carries some weighty liabilities. Nixon bears the onus of his 1960 defeat; he has his hands full this year in his campaign to be Governor of California, and he has pledged that if elected he will serve out his full four-year term. Marital and home-state political problems have piled up on Nelson Rockefeller; Rocky has never been very popular with G.O.P. regulars anyway, and in a closed-circuit TV 'appearance last fortnight at $100-a-plate Republican dinners in 17 cities, he was actually booed. Barry Goldwater is considered too conservative to appeal to the independent, middle-of-the-road voters that the G.O.P. must woo if it hopes to win. All of which leaves the field wide open for a new face.

Car-Borne Catnaps. A ruggedly handsome man, Romney is a Mormon leader who neither smokes, drinks (not even tea or coffee) nor swears, and who gives 10% of his annual income (which amounted to $250,000 last year) to his church. Before he announced his gubernatorial candidacy last week, he fasted for 24 hours in prayerful consideration. A physical-fitness bug, he arises each morning at 5, jogs for a mile or so in a sweatsuit or bangs golf balls around the country club adjoining his $150,000 house in Bloomfield Hills, a Detroit suburb. Because of the many irons he has in the fire, Romney has little time to spend with his attractive family (the Romneys have four children, five grandchildren). To catch up on sleep, he often catnaps in the fold-back bed of his chauffeur-driven Rambler as he spins around Michigan on a round of speeches and meetings.

Romney was born in Chihuahua, Mexico. His parents were U.S. citizens (so he presumably meets the "native-born" constitutional requirement for President); his Mormon grandfather had moved to Mexico with his four wives after the U.S. outlawed plural marriages in 1885. George Romney served as a youthful Mormon missionary in England and Scotland, briefly attended the University of Utah, and wound up in Washington, D.C., first as an aide to Massachusetts Senator David I. Walsh and later as a lobbyist for the Aluminum Co. of America. He switched from Alcoa to the Automobile Manufacturers Association in Detroit, became director of the Automotive Council for War Production during World War II, and in 1954, at 47, became head of American Motors.

Forced to Identify. American Motors, born of a merger between Nash-Kelvinator and the Hudson Motor Car Co., was in sad shape. Romney concentrated on its compact Rambler, took on Detroit's Big Three in an aggressive missionary effort (he traveled some 70,000 miles a year) to sell the U.S. public on the compact at the expense of "gas-guzzling dinosaurs," and built the company to robust health. At the same time, Romney plunged into civic activities. In 1956 he became chairman of the Citizens' Advisory Committee on School Needs, which made 182 recommendations to the Michigan Board of Education in 1958.

When Michigan staggered into a state of near bankruptcy early in 1959, Romney got the idea for a nonpartisan group to come to the state's aid. He became the chairman and driving force of Citizens for Michigan, whose chief accomplishment was the formation of a state convention to revise Michigan's badly outdated constitution. Romney became a vice president of the convention, but in order to sit on it, he says, he "was forced to identify as a Republican." He thus ended a non-partisan period in which he had attacked both parties "because they did not represent what I really felt a political party ought to be." Romney still attends daily sessions of the "con-con," which is due to submit its recommendations to the voters this fall. His activities there persuaded him that he should seek public office.

As an aggressive and articulate businessman, Romney is on record with a number of pronouncements on labor and anti-trust policy. He is opposed to right-to-work laws. Although he is proud of his friendly dealings with the United Auto Workers, he has spoken out against industry-wide collective bargaining (insisting that any employer with 10,000 or more employees bargain only with his workers). Says he: "Excessive concentration of power is a fat repudiation of our constitutional principles. One regrettable aspect of American life today is the fact that union power--and employer power--can be so concentrated as to shut down an entire industry basic to the welfare of the nation." In the spectrum of G.O.P. opinion. Romney is not yet firmly pinned. He feels that neither major political party lives up to his ideal of dedication "to preserving human liberties on the basis of modern application of our proven American principles." He says: "My real concern is the development of a political approach that will undertake to deal with the individual interests of people and the special interests of groups on the basis of what is good for the state or the country as a whole."

When Romney comes up against Incumbent Swainson, who has a lackluster record but is a Democrat in a state that has elected only Democratic Governors for the past 14 years, his attractions will be sternly tested. A recent Detroit News poll indicated that if the election had been held in January, Swainson would have won, with 50.7% against 41.9% (7.4% were undecided).

First Romney must be elected. Then he must face up to the problems of a state still deep in financial difficulty. Then, if he has built a record of achievement, he may indeed be a formidable presidential contender.

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