McNamara's Whistle

For six months, Michigan's Democratic Governor Gerhard Mennen Williams kept the state's Democratic and Republican leaders on tenterhooks. Because the vote-getting governor would not say whether he planned to run for re-election or for a seat in the U.S. Senate, Democrats did not know where to aim, and Republicans could not decide which way to shoot. Last week "Soapy" Williams' politically profitable (for Williams) game came to an end.

The whistle was blown when a Detroit salesman and school-board member named Patrick Vincent McNamara (who in 1948 shook Detroit by calling fellow members of the city council "a lot of jerks") announced that he would run for the Democratic nomination for Senator. McNamara would never have taken that step if he thought his opponent would be Soapy Williams. Within a few hours, the word began to filter through political channels: Williams, who hopes to see his name on the Democratic national ticket in 1956, had decided to seek an unprecedented fourth term as governor. The Williams-blessed candidate for Senator will be former Senator Blair Moody, the newspaper correspondent (Detroit News) who was appointed to Arthur Vandenberg's seat by Williams in 1951, then lost to Republican Charles Potter in 1952.

After a careful inspection of the Michigan political scene, politicos saw no one who could beat Soapy Williams. In the senatorial primary, Blair Moody seems a good bet to beat McNamara. But even Michigan Democrats doubt that Moody will be able to unseat Republican Senator Homer Ferguson in November.

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