MICHIGAN: Cleanup for Soapy

The U.S. had few more colorful politicians than Michigan’s white-maned Republican Governor Kim Sigler. His piped vests, beribboned spectacles, and neon-colored ties made him the most splendiferous dude since Illinois’ pink-bearded Senator J. Hamilton (“Ham”) Lewis. But 54-year-old ex-Cowboy Kim Sigler burned a little too brightly. During two years in office, he tramped on legislative toes, ignored party wheel horses, dictatorially alienated members of his own cabinet.

Last week, as Michigan loyally gave Tom Dewey a majority and elected a G.O.P. legislature, the voters quietly scuttled Kim Sigler in favor of a Democrat, and a virtually unknown Democrat at that. He was a tall (6 ft. 3½ in.) young (37) Detroit attorney named G. (for Gerhardt) Mennen Williams.

Williams, an ex-Princeton oarsman (class of ’33), whose intimates call him “Soapy,” had entered the gubernatorial race almost without assets—political or financial. He had served in appointive political jobs—lately as a state liquor-control commissioner—but had never run for elective office. Though he is an heir to the Mennen shaving-cream fortune, he will not get his share until he is 40. His Republican family refused to back his campaign.

He mortgaged his house in Detroit s fashionable Grosse Pointe suburb to raise funds, and did his campaigning by driving around the state with his wife Nancy, in a beat-up old De Soto convertible. He benefited by Michigan labor’s determined espousal of the Democratic cause, but never managed to draw a crowd bigger than 350 people. Last week as the votes came in, Soapy Williams seemed fully as surprised as Kim Sigler.