Lightning Strikes Thrice

Some say that Michigan's Republican Governor George Romney is still biding his time while waiting for presidential lightning to strike. Recently, lightning struck three times--but in each case, Romney was the political victim, not the benefactor.

First, in a blistering attack on Romney, veteran G.O.P. State Senator Clyde Geerlings publicly resigned from the Republican Party. Geerlings, chairman of the senate tax committee, accused Romney of supporting the biggest budget in state history ($633 million), and "getting it by twisting the arms of Republican legislators." Romney, he raged, had "kicked farmers in the teeth," "thrown small business into a tailspin," and had taken credit for measures passed by the legislature. "I am tired of the front office taking credit for going from payless paydays to a $60 million surplus. The payless payday, as everybody knows, was a hoax. And the surplus is due to legislation passed in 1962 by a previous Republican legislature and by an expanding Michigan economy." Said Romney when he heard of the diatribe: "This is not the sort of thing to expect from someone loyal to the Republican Party."

Second, former State Senator George Higgins, another Old Guard Republican, announced that he will run against Romney in this year's G.O.P. gubernatorial primary because "the man who sits in the executive office at Lansing and now calls himself a Republican is an impostor. He used the Republican Party to get himself elected and has abused the Republican Party ever since." Legislators, he said, "know that when I say something, they can depend on it. And that's one of the problems up there in Lansing--they can't depend on anything Romney says."

Third, while Romney was preparing to submit a new U.S. congressional district reapportionment plan that would keep intact the present split of eleven Republicans and eight Democrats, his Democratic Lieut. Governor T. John Lesinski sandbagged him. Lesinski came up with a plan of his own--which would probably give Democrats at least one additional seat in Congress--and slipped the scheme through the state senate with the cooperation of ten conservative Republicans who had fallen out with Romney. This, complained Senate Majority Leader Stanley Thayer, a Romney loyalist, was a "secret diabolical move." Fuming with anger, Romney accused the dissident Republicans of a sellout, but ironically, he may have to sign the bill into law if it passes the lower house. If he does not sign it, Michigan in all likelihood will have to elect its congressional representatives at large. And if that should happen, there is the possibility that Democrats would take even more seats than in a district-by-district vote.

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