Citizens' Victory

In his own brisk, tenacious way, Michigan's Republican Governor George Romney has striven to prove his campaign contention that he was a "citizen's candidate." Right after his inauguration last January, he established "Citizen's Thursdays," an open-door invitation to anybody who has anything whatever to say to him, provided the visitor says it within five minutes--a timer rings a bell to mark the close of each interview.

Citizen's Thursdays have been an immense popular success. So, too. was Romney's thrust to make sure of Detroit's selection as the official U.S. choice for the site of the 1968 Olympic Games. Confronted with eager competition from Los Angeles, Romney swiftly steered through the legislature two bills enabling Michigan to raise the funds and build the necessary facilities. Armed with the new legislation, he sped to New York to present Detroit's case before the U.S. Olympic Committee. The winner: Detroit (which must now compete with several cities in other countries).

The Con-Con Battle. Romney's No. 1 objective during his first months in office has been to persuade the citizens of Michigan to adopt a new state constitution. The old one, written in 1908, has been amended 67 times, runs nearly three times as long as the federal Constitution and, Romney argues, acts as a drag on Michigan's progress. It was the fight for a new constitution that brought Romney from automaking to politics. Having started the compact-car revolution with the Rambler, Romney in 1959 sparked Michigan's constitutional convention (called Con-Con for short). In the midst of the Con-Con struggle, he declared that he was going to run for Governor. Romney proceeded to build his gubernatorial campaign around Con-Con, and when he won, his victory seemed a victory for the proposed new constitution as well.

Last week, in a statewide referendum, the citizens of Michigan voted to adopt the new constitution, and its victory seemed a victory for Romney as well.

Allied with Romney in the battle to get the Con-Con constitution adopted was an array of civic and professional organizations, as well as the Republican Party. The most important opponents were the Democratic Party and the United Auto Workers. What the opponents objected to most strenuously was the proposed constitution's provisions on legislative reapportionment. At the convention. Democrats had argued for legislative representation based solely upon population, but Con-Con adopted instead a complex provision giving 80% weight to population and 20% to "land area." The area factor would give extra representation to the state's predominantly Republican rural sections.

The Legendary Cry. Romney planned to go to bed early on referendum night, but the tallies ran so close that he had to stay up late to see the outcome. At one point during the night, the Detroit Free Press started rolling with an edition proclaiming that the proposed constitution had been defeated. Then somebody discovered arithmetical errors, and that legendary cry "Stop the presses" actually rang out in the pressroom. The final vote count has yet to be made, but the margin of victory was only about .6% of the 1.609,600 votes cast.

Michigan's new constitution provides for four-year terms (instead of two-year) for the Governor and Lieutenant Governor and other high officials. It requires that the Governor and the Lieutenant Governor be members of the same party (the present Lieutenant Governor, T. John Lesin-ski, is a Democrat). It erases Michigan's strangling short-term-debt limit of $250,000 by authorizing short-term borrowing of up to about $70 million. And it provides for combining the state government's bewildering jumble of 120 administrative segments in a manageable pattern of 20 agencies.

On balance, the new constitution makes it possible for the Governor of Michigan to do a much more effective job of running his state and coping with its economic and fiscal difficulties. "Despite the narrow margin," said Governor Romney, "this appears to be a citizens' victory."

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