George W. Romney
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| George Wilcken Romney | |
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| In office January 22, 1969 – January 20, 1973 |
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| President | Richard Nixon |
| Preceded by | Robert Coldwell Wood |
| Succeeded by | James Thomas Lynn |
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43rd Governor of Michigan
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| In office January 1, 1963 – January 22, 1969 |
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| Preceded by | John Swainson |
| Succeeded by | William Milliken |
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| Born | July 8, 1907 Galeana, Chihuahua, Mexico |
| Died | July 26, 1995 (aged 88) Bloomfield Hills, Michigan |
| Political party | Republican |
| Spouse | Lenore Romney |
| Children | Jane Romney, Lynn Keenan, G. Scott Romney, W. Mitt Romney |
| Profession | Automobile industrialist Politician |
| Religion | The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon) |
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, and the husband of former Michigan Senate candidate Lenore Romney. George W. Romney was a kinsman of George Romney (1734-1802),[1][2] a noted portrait painter in Britain during the last quarter of the 18th century.
Romney was born to American parents in a Mormon colony in Mexico. His family moved back to the United States when he was a child.
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[edit] Background
Romney was born in Colonia Dublán, Galeana, in the Mexican state of Chihuahua to Gaskell Romney (1871-1955), an American of English ancestry, and wife Anna Amelia Pratt (1876-1926), born to a New England and Scottish father and a German mother. Romney's grandparents were polygamous Mormons who fled the United States because of the federal government's opposition to polygamy.[3] 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 ended up in Salt Lake City, Utah. Some would later ask questions about Romney's eligibility to run for President due to his birth in Mexico, as the circumstance of his birth and ambiguity in the constitution over the phrase "natural-born citizen." Romney's parents married in 1895; they had three older sons, Maurice, Douglas, and Miles, and a younger son, Lawrence.
Romney started working in sugar beet fields at the age of eleven[4]. He also learned the carpenters trade from his father. From 1926-1928, Romney served as a Mormon missionary in England and Scotland.
In the late 1920s, Romney followed his high school sweetheart, Lenore LaFount, to Washington, D.C., after her father had accepted a government position. Romney became a speechwriter for Massachusetts Democratic U.S. 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 to the western U.S. When LaFount had the opportunity to sign a three-year contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios, Romney convinced her to return to Washington, and the couple married on July 2, 1931, in Salt Lake City, Utah. They had four children: Lynn, Jane, G. Scott (divorced from Ronna Romney), and Mitt.
[edit] Automobile industry
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. Romney also served as president of the Detroit Trade Association in 1941. From 1946-1949 he served as a U.S. employer delegate to metal trades industry conferences.[5]
He rose to managing director of the AAMA, becoming good friends with then-president George W. Mason. When Mason became chairman of the manufacturing firm Nash-Kelvinator in 1948, he invited Romney along "to learn the business from the ground up" as his roving assistant.[6] As Mason's protégé, Romney assumed executive assignment for 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), and Romney became Vice-President of the firm. A short time later, Mason suddenly died of acute pancreatitis and pneumonia—Romney was named AMC's Chairman and CEO.
Together with chief engineer Meade Moore, Romney elected to phase out the Nash and Hudson brands whose sales had been lagging. The Rambler brand was selected for development and promotion, as AMC pursued an innovative strategy: manufacturing compact cars exclusively. This approach led to unexpected financial success for AMC. In contrast with the racing success of the Hudson in the early 1950s, the Ramblers were frequent winners in the coast-to-coast Mobil Economy Run, an annual event on U.S. highways. As the other "Big Three" automakers (General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler) introduced ever-larger models, AMC undertook a "dinosaur fighter" strategy, using its CEO as its spokesperson in advertisements and public appearances. Romney thus became one of the first high-profile media-savvy business executives. His focus on small cars as a challenge to AMC's domestic competitors, as well as the foreign-car invasion, was documented on the cover of Time magazine. In the earliest years of Rambler, 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, and the Toledo area of Ohio but also the western edge of Ontario along the Michigan border. Due to the stake covering part of Canada, he often interacted with Canadian Mission President Thomas S. Monson.[7]
[edit] Political career
He led the Constitutional Convention that revised Michigan's Constitution from 1961-1962, then led a successful 1962 campaign for Governor of Michigan. However, his running mate was defeated by the Democratic incumbent, Thaddeus Lesinski.
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.[8]
In fact during his brief run for the White House, Romney was lent all of Nelson Rockefeller's top political aids from his 1964 Presidential campaign. These people included; Hugh Morrow for speech writing, George Gilder founder of the Ripon Society, along with Henry Kissinger who tutored Romney on foreign policy in an attempt to bring his views closer to his and Nelson Rockefeller's.
On August 31, 1967, Governor Romney made a statement that ruined his chances for getting the nomination.[9] 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 (later U.S. Senator) Robert T. 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."[9]
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).
It is notable that while Romney was born in Mexico, he was still considered to be a viable and legal candidate to run for office. His Mormon grandfather and his three wives fled to Mexico in 1886 but none of them ever relinquished their citizenship. While the Constitution does provide that a president must be a natural born citizen, the first Congress of the United States in 1790 passed legislation stating that "The children of citizens of the United States that may be born beyond the sea, or outside the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural-born citizens of the United States." Romney and his family fled Mexico in 1912 prior to the Mexican revolution.
[edit] Secretary of HUD
After 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.
One of Romney's initiatives was "Operation Breakthrough" which was intended to increase the amount of housing available to the poor.[10]
[edit] 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.
[edit] 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 eighty-eight while he was exercising on his treadmill, he was discovered by his wife Lenore but it was too late to save him. He died in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and was buried at the Fairview Cemetery in Brighton.
Romney was a patriarch for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The building housing the main office of the Michigan governor in Lansing is known as the George W. Romney Building.
[edit] See also
[edit] Notes
- ^ AF Pedigree View Page
- ^ Individual Record
- ^ [1] Associated Press, February 24, 2007
- ^ Sobel, Robert. Biographical Dictionary of the United States Executive Branch, 1774-1977 (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1977) p. 290
- ^ Sobel. Biographical Directory. p. 290
- ^ Changes of the Week", Time Magazine, October 25, 1954. Accessed on January 3, 2008.
- ^ Statements by Monson in Stake Conference Broadcast, May 2006
- ^ "For Romney, a Course Set Long Ago". New York Times (2007-12-18). Retrieved on 2007-12-19.
- ^ a b Andrew L. Johns; "Achilles' Heel: The Vietnam War and George Romney's Bid for the Presidency, 1967 to 1968" Michigan Historical Review, Vol. 26, 2000 pp 1+
- ^ Sobel. Biographical Directory. p. 290-291
[edit] 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
[edit] External links
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| Preceded by John Swainson |
Governor of Michigan 1963–1969 |
Succeeded by William G. Milliken |
| Preceded by Robert Coldwell Wood |
United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development 1969–1973 |
Succeeded by James T. Lynn |
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