Faceless Favorite

"People," he says plaintively, "don't recognize my face." True enough. When Michigan's Republican Senator Robert Griffin alighted from a plane at Detroit's Metropolitan Airport last week, the crowds ignored him. By contrast, Griffin's Democratic opponent for the Senate, wealthy G. Mennen ("Soapy") Williams, a longtime (1949-60) former Governor of Michigan, has made his name, face and green bow tie familiar fixtures from Aetna to Zeeland. Despite the recognition gap, the Detroit News last week published a poll showing that Griffin has established a splinter-slim, 51% -to-48% lead over Williams.

Only months ago, Griffin, 42, was hardly known outside his rural, upstate (405,000) congressional district. During his five terms in the House, his name has appeared on only one major law, the embattled Landrum-Griffin Act, which sternly regulates the intra-union powers of labor leaders. That is scarcely a boost to any statewide campaigner in the labor-powerful state of Michigan. Last May, when George Romney appointed Griffin to the U.S. Senate seat vacated by the death of Democrat Pat McNamara, the Governor pointedly refrained from any enthusiastic commitment to campaign for his fellow Republican this fall.

The Uninvited. In view of Romney's past record of running as a loner, Griffin had scant hope for help. But things are different this year. Romney now has realistic hopes of winning the Republican presidential nomination. His prospects were advanced last week by a national poll that gave the Governor only 2% less support than Lyndon Johnson. In another survey, top Republican "citizens" (as opposed to party professionals) rated Romney a heavy, 40%-to-29% favorite over Richard Nixon for the 1968 G.O.P. presidential nomination. As Romney well knows, the national Republican powers would consider him a leading candidate for the nomination if he could carry Bob Griffin to victory.

Thus, for the first time in his political career, Romney, who has only nominal competition in his own re-election campaign, has laid his reputation and enormous vote-getting powers on the line for another candidate. He has made speech after speech for Griffin, filling the autumn air with praise ("He is frank; he is direct; you can trust Bob Griffin!"). Romney has set a punishing schedule (25 downstate appearances in one day last week), made countless curbstone handshaking forays, appeared on TV spots and shows for Griffin. The Governor even took the Senator in tow and crashed the Democrats' Labor Day festivities. The two Republicans marched --uninvited--in a Democratic parade, went to the airport--uninvited--to meet President Johnson, and sat--uninvited--in an A.F.L.-C.I.O. audience during Johnson's speech at Detroit's Cobo Hall. Then Romney and Griffin helicoptered to Flint and clambered over a wire fence to appear--uninvited--at a U.A.W.-sponsored picnic.

Let George Talk. Griffin, of course, is still a long way from winning. Williams, 55, who is one of the most effusive, effective factory-gate-and-street-corner glad-handers in memory, has been out of commission since mid-August, when he underwent a painful operation for kidney stones; he has been even more pained by his doctor's continuing insistence that he spend most of each day in bed. All the same, Williams says he is not worried about last week's poll: "The only thing that counts is the poll on Nov. 8. When the people compare our records, they will understand what a retrogressive character Griffin is." Williams intends to accentuate the negative in Griffin's congressional record--votes against poverty bills, aid to lower education, rent subsidies, the "demonstration cities" program.

Griffin, for his part, charges that sending Soapy to the Senate would only add another vote in favor of the "inflationary programs" advanced by the Johnson Administration. But as a member of Romney's hyperactive Action Team, the faceless favorite lets George do most of the talking.

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