George W. Romney

George Wilcken Romney
3rd United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
In office January 22 1969 – January 20 1973
President	Richard Nixon
Preceded by	Robert Coldwell Wood
Succeeded by	James Thomas Lynn
43rd Governor of Michigan
In office January 1 1963 – January 22 1969
Preceded by	John Swainson
Succeeded by	William Milliken
Personal details
Born	(1907-07-08)July 8, 1907 Chihuahua, Mexico
Died	July 26, 1995(1995-07-26) (aged 88) Bloomfield Hills, Michigan
Political party	Republican
Spouse	Lenore Romney
Children	Mitt Romney
Profession	Automobile industrialist Politician

George Wilcken Romney (July 8, 1907 – July 26, 1995) was an American businessman and a politician. He was chairman of American Motors Corporation from 1954 to 1962. He then served as the 43rd governor of Michigan from 1963 to 1969.

Romney was a candidate for President in 1968, ultimately losing the Republican nomination to Richard Nixon. He is the father of former Massachusetts governor and 2008 presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

Background

Romney was born in Colonia Dublán, Galeana, in the Mexican state of Chihuahua to Gaskell Romney (1871-1955), of English ancestry, and wife Anna Amelia Pratt (1876-1926), born to an American father and a German mother. Romney's grandparents were polygamous Mormons who fled the United States because the federal government was hunting down polygamists. Anna's father Helaman Pratt was the son of early Mormon apostle Parley P. Pratt. Helaman had served as president of the Mexican mission in Mexico City before moving to Chihuahua State, and George's uncle Rey L. Pratt would be president of the Mexican mission, president in exile, during the Mexican Revolution and on into the 1930s. When the Mexican Revolution broke out in late 1910, Romney's family went to Oakley, Idaho, and finally ending up in Salt Lake City, Utah. (Some would later ask questions about Romney being eligible for the presidency as a "natural-born citizen" when he was born in Mexico.) Romney's parents married in 1895; they had three older sons, Maurice, Douglas, and Miles, and a younger son, Lawrence.

In 1926, Romney spent two years as a Mormon missionary in England and Scotland.

Romney took coursework at the University of Utah and George Washington University, but never completed work on a college degree.

In the late 1920s, Romney followed his high school sweetheart, Lenore LaFount, to Washington, DC after her father had accepted a government position. Romney became a speechwriter for Massachusetts Democratic senator David I. Walsh, then moved on to become a lobbyist for Alcoa in 1930. When LaFount, an aspiring actress, began earning bit roles in Hollywood movies, Romney arranged to be transferred out West to continue the relationship. When LaFount had the opportunity to sign a three-year contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios, Romney convinced her to return to Washington, and married her on July 2 1931 in Salt Lake City, Utah. They had four children: Lynn, Jane, G. Scott, and Mitt.

Automobile industry

File:George W Romney TIME.jpg

Romney on the cover of Time Magazine

After nine years with Alcoa, Romney's career had stagnated, so he moved to Detroit with his wife and their two daughters to become the local manager of the American Automobile Manufacturers Association (AAMA). During World War II, Romney headed the Automotive Council for War Production, which worked to optimize automotive companies' war production.

He rose to managing director of the AAMA and became good friends with George W. Mason, then president of the organization. When Mason became chairman of the manufacturing firm Nash-Kelvinator Corporation in 1948, he invited Romney along "to learn the business from the ground up" as his roving assistant. As Mason's protégé, Romney worked up as an executive and played an important role in the development of the Rambler. Under the strategy of Mason, Nash-Kelvinator merged on May 1 1954 with Hudson Motor Car to become the American Motors Corporation (AMC). Romney became Vice President at AMC. A short time later, Mason suddenly died of acute pancreatitis and pneumonia and Romney was named AMC's Chairman and CEO.

Together with chief engineer Meade Moore, Romney elected to phase out the well-known but poor selling Nash and Hudson brands in favor of the Rambler nameplate, as part of a then-untried strategy of focusing on making compact cars exclusively, an approach that led to unexpected financial success for AMC. At the time of the decision, the company had been on the verge of being taken over by corporate raider Louis Wolfson, but the company's resurgence made Romney a household name, and he capitalized on it by entering politics.

At the same time he was serving as President of American Motors, George Romney also presided over the Detroit Stake of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which included not only all of Metro Detroit, Ann Arbor, the Toledo area of Ohio but also the western edge of Ontario along the Michigan border.

Political career

He led the Constitutional Convention that revised Michigan's Constitution from 1961 to 1962 and followed this up with a successful 1962 campaign for Governor of Michigan. However, his running mate was defeated by the Democratic candidate and incumbent, Thaddeus Lesinski. Romney was a strong supporter of civil rights and was generally considered a moderate Republican, perhaps a bit to the right of Nelson Rockefeller, but well to the left of Barry Goldwater or Ronald Reagan.

After deciding to wait out the 1964 election, Romney announced on November 18, 1967 that he had "decided to fight for and win the Republican nomination and election to the Presidency of the United States." Polls in 1967 showed him the leader among rank and file Republicans, especially among the "moderates." Romney’s membership in the Mormon church was a factor in his campaign, with attention focusing on his church’s policy at the time of not allowing blacks to participate fully.

On August 31, 1967, Governor Romney made a statement that ruined his chances for getting the nomination. In a taped interview with Lou Gordon of WKBD-TV in Detroit, Romney stated, "When I came back from Viet Nam [in November 1965], I'd just had the greatest brainwashing that anybody can get." He then shifted to opposing the war: "I no longer believe that it was necessary for us to get involved in South Vietnam to stop Communist aggression in Southeast Asia," he declared. Decrying the "tragic" conflict, he urged "a sound peace in South Vietnam at an early time." Thus Romney disavowed the war and reversed himself from his earlier stated belief that the war was "morally right and necessary."

The connotations of brainwashing, following the experiences of American prisoners of war (highlighted by the 1962 film The Manchurian Candidate), made Romney's comments devastating to his status as the GOP front-runner. The topic of brainwashing quickly became newspaper editorial and television talk show fodder, with Romney bearing the brunt of the topical humor. Republican Congressman Robert Stafford of Vermont sounded a common concern: "If you're running for the presidency," he asserted, "you are supposed to have too much on the ball to be brainwashed."

The infamous 12th Street riot in Detroit took place on July 23, 1967. It continued until July 29th and eventually escalated to the point where president Lyndon B. Johnson called in federal troops, perhaps dimming Romney's chances for the presidency.

Romney announced his withdrawal as a presidential candidate on February 28, 1968. At his party's national convention in Miami Beach, Romney finished a weak sixth with only fifty votes on the first ballot (44 of Michigan's 48, plus six from Utah).

From the book, With No Apologies: The Personal and Political Memoirs of US Senator Barry M. Goldwater: "The official records all say Barry Goldwater, Republican candidate for the office of President of the United States in 1964, was defeated by Democrat incumbent Lyndon Baines Johnson. The truth is I lost whatever small chance I ever had to be President in San Francisco at the Republican National Convention.

"Lyndon Johnson grabbed the big brass ring in November, but it was my fellow Republicans, Nelson Rockefeller, Henry Cabot Lodge, William Scranton, George Romney, and the other members of the "Stop Goldwater" cabal, who made Lyndon Johnson's victory such a runaway. The press played a strong supporting role, but for the most part if functioned as a carrier of the destructive statements, devastating personal criticism, and outright falsehoods of my fellow Republicans." (page 179, ISBN 0-688-03547-7).

Following Nixon's election, Romney was named to the cabinet as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). He served in that office until the beginning of Nixon's second term in January 1973. During his four years at HUD, Romney slightly increased the amount of federally subsidized housing, but was prevented from expanding the concept to suburban areas.

Public service

Romney was known as an advocate of public service. At the first meeting of the National Center for Voluntary Action (NCVA), February 20 1970, he said:

Americans have four basic ways of solving problems that are too big for individuals to handle by themselves. One is through the federal government. A second is through state governments and the local governments that the states create. The third is through the private sector - the economic sector that includes business, agriculture, and labor. The fourth method is the independent sector - the voluntary, cooperative action of free individuals and independent association. Voluntary action is the most powerful of these, because it is uniquely capable of stirring the people themselves and involving their enthusiastic energies, because it is their own - voluntary action is the people's action. As Woodrow Wilson said, "The most powerful force on earth is the spontaneous cooperation of a free people." Individualism makes cooperation worthwhile - but cooperation makes freedom possible.

The George W. Romney Institute of Public Management at Brigham Young University honors the legacy left by Romney.

Retirement

For much of the next two decades, he was out of the public eye. He was however prominent within The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints holding the office of Regional representative of the Twelve.

He re-emerged to the general public in 1994 when he helped campaign for his son, Mitt Romney, during the younger Romney's unsuccessful bid to unseat Senator Edward M. Kennedy in Massachusetts. That same year, Ronna Romney, Romney's ex-daughter-in-law (formerly married to G. Scott Romney), decided to seek the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate from Michigan while continuing to use her married name. The former governor showed his displeasure by endorsing her opponent, Spencer Abraham, who went on to win the primary and the general election.

The following year, Romney died of a heart attack at the age of 88, while exercising on his treadmill in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and was buried at the Fairview Cemetery, Brighton, Michigan.

Romney served as a patriarch for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints until his death.

The building housing the Michigan governor's main office in Lansing, Michigan is known as the George W. Romney Building.

Controversy

Romney was born in the Mormon colonies in Mexico, which raised the question of whether he was eligible to be President, which is constitutionally limited to a "natural born citizen" of the United States; he also had Mexican citizenship by virtue of birth on Mexican soil. Both his parents were American citizens, and he returned to the U.S. before he turned 21. That was sufficient for him to be a U.S. citizen, but arguably not to meet the "natural born" requirement for Presidential eligibilty. The issue was never tested in court and contrasts with the cases of Barry Goldwater, who was born in the Arizona Territory (Arizona was not yet a state), and John McCain, who was born to American parents in the Panama Canal Zone at a time when it was part of the U.S. and his father (a naval officer) was assigned to duty there.

See also

• Pratt-Romney family
• George Romney presidential campaign, 1968
• Mitt Romney

References

• D. Duane Angel, Romney: A Political Biography (1967)
• Hess, Stephen and David S. Broder. The Republican Establishment: The Present and Future of the G.O.P. New York : Harper & Row, 1967.
• T. George Harris, Romney's Way: A Man and an Idea (1967)
• Clark R. Mollenhoff, George Romney: Mormon in Politics (1968)
• George W. Romney, Shirtsleeve Public Servant

External links

• George W. Romney Institute of Public Management
• Boston Globe Magazine, Lessons of the Father