Michigan: What Is a Romney?

Michigan’s Democratic Gubernatorial Candidate Zolton Ferency allows gamely that he is fighting a losing race.

All the same, he says, “People used to ask ‘What is a Ferency?’ Now they’re asking ‘Who is Ferency? ” Republican Governor George Romney, who thus could have safely sat out his campaign for a third term, nonetheless has been running harder than ever. In order to enhance his presidential prospects for 1968, Romney hopes not only to exceed his 380,000-vote plurality of 1964 but also to pull Republican Senator Robert Griffin to victory.

He might succeed on both counts. Griffin, 42, a five-term Congressman who was hardly better known than Ferency before Romney appointed him to the Senate seat vacated by the death last April of Democrat Pat McNamara, began as the decided underdog in the race against former six-term (1949-60) Governor “G. Mennen (“Soapy”) Williams, 55. After a costly primary vic tory, however, Old Pro Williams found his campaign coffers somewhat depleted, was further slowed by a kidney-stone operation in August. For his part, Griffin manages to sound every bit as liberal as Soapy, and has proved particularly effective in defending his sponsor ship of the Landrum-Griffin Act, whose regulation of union elections and finances is anathema to Detroit’s labor leaders. Griffin makes much of the fact that John F. Kennedy was floor manager for the measure in the Senate, adroitly wrung from Williams in a face-to-face debate an acknowledgment that labor can live with the act. Whatever the outcome, George Romney’s hard work on Griffin’s behalf seems sure to improve the Michigan Governor’s standing with many Republican leaders who have distrusted him as a party renegade.