George Romney (politician)

George Wilcken Romney (July 8, 1907 – July 26, 1995) was an American businessman and politician. A member of the Republican Party, he served as chairman and president of American Motors Corporation from 1954 to 1962, the 43rd governor of Michigan from 1963 to 1969, and 3rd secretary of Housing and Urban Development from 1969 to 1973. He was the father of Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts and 2012 Republican presidential nominee who currently serves as United States senator from Utah; the husband of 1970 U.S. Senate candidate Lenore Romney; and the paternal grandfather of current Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel.

Romney was born to American parents living in the Mormon colonies in Mexico; events during the Mexican Revolution forced his family to flee back to the United States when he was a child. The family lived in several states and ended up in Salt Lake City, Utah, where they struggled during the Great Depression. Romney worked in a number of jobs, served as a Mormon missionary in the United Kingdom, and attended several colleges in the U.S. but did not graduate from any of them. In 1939, he moved to Detroit and joined the American Automobile Manufacturers Association, where he served as the chief spokesman for the automobile industry during World War II and headed a cooperative arrangement in which companies could share production improvements. He joined Nash-Kelvinator in 1948, and became the chief executive of its successor, American Motors Corporation, in 1954. There he turned around the struggling firm by focusing all efforts on the compact Rambler car. Romney mocked the products of the " Big Three" automakers as "gas-guzzling dinosaurs" and became one of the first high-profile, media-savvy business executives. Devoutly religious, he presided over the Detroit Stake of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Having entered politics in 1961 by participating in a state constitutional convention to rewrite the Michigan Constitution, Romney was elected Governor of Michigan in 1962. Re-elected by increasingly large margins in 1964 and 1966, he worked to overhaul the state's financial and revenue structure, greatly expanding the size of state government and introducing Michigan's first state income tax. Romney was a strong supporter of the American Civil Rights Movement. He briefly represented moderate Republicans against conservative Republican Barry Goldwater during the 1964 U.S. presidential election. He requested the intervention of federal troops during the 1967 Detroit riot.

Initially a front runner for the Republican nomination for president of the United States in the 1968 election cycle, he proved an ineffective campaigner and fell behind Richard Nixon in polls. After a mid-1967 remark that his earlier support for the Vietnam War had been due to a "brainwashing" by U.S. military and diplomatic officials in Vietnam, his campaign faltered even more and he withdrew from the contest in early 1968. After being elected president, Nixon appointed Romney as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Romney's ambitious plans, which included housing production increases for the poor and open housing to desegregate suburbs, were modestly successful but often thwarted by Nixon. Romney left the administration at the start of Nixon's second term in 1973. Returning to private life, he advocated volunteerism and public service and headed the National Center for Voluntary Action and its successor organizations from 1973 through 1991. He also served as a regional representative of the Twelve within his church.

Early life and background

Romney's grandparents were polygamous Mormons who fled the United States with their children owing to the federal government's prosecution of polygamy. His maternal grandfather was Helaman Pratt (1846–1909), who presided over the Mormon mission in Mexico City before moving to the Mexican state of Chihuahua and who was the son of original Mormon apostle Parley P. Pratt (1807–1857). In the 1920s, Romney's uncle Rey L. Pratt (1878–1931) played a major role in the preservation and expansion of the Mormon presence in Mexico and in its introduction to South America. A more distant kinsman was George Romney (1734–1802), a noted portrait painter in Britain during the last quarter of the 18th century.

Romney's parents, Gaskell Romney (1871–1955) and Anna Amelia Pratt (1876–1926), were United States citizens and natives of the Territory of Utah. They married in 1895 in Mexico and lived in Colonia Dublán in Nuevo Casas Grandes in the state of Chihuahua (one of the Mormon colonies in Mexico), where George was born on July 8, 1907. They practiced monogamy (polygamy having been abolished by the 1890 Manifesto, although it persisted in places, especially Mexico). George had three older brothers, two younger brothers, and a younger sister. Gaskell Romney was a successful carpenter, house builder, and farmer who headed the most prosperous family in the colony,Mahoney, ''The Story of George Romney'', pp. 52–54. which was situated in an agricultural valley below the Sierra Madre Occidental. The family chose U.S. citizenship for their children, including George.

The Mexican Revolution broke out in 1910 and the Mormon colonies were endangered in 1911–1912 by raids from marauders, including "Red Flaggers" Pascual Orozco and José Inés Salazar.Harris, ''Romney's Way'', pp. 42–43. Young George heard the sound of distant gunfire and saw rebels walking through the village streets. The Romney family fled and returned to the United States in July 1912, leaving their home and almost all of their property behind.Mahoney, ''The Story of George Romney'', pp. 59–62. Romney later said, "We were the first displaced persons of the 20th century."

In the United States, Romney grew up in humble circumstances.White, ''The Making of the President, 1968'', p. 36. The family subsisted with other Mormon refugees on government relief in El Paso, Texas, benefiting from a $100,000 fund for refugees that the U.S. Congress had set up. After a few months they moved to Los Angeles, California, where Gaskell Romney worked as a carpenter.''Current Biography Yearbook 1958'', p. 366. In kindergarten, other children mocked Romney's national origin by calling him "Mex".Kotlowski, ''Nixon's Civil Rights'', p. 50.

In 1913, the family moved to Oakley, Idaho, and bought a farm, where they grew and subsisted largely on Idaho potatoes.Mahoney, ''The Story of George Romney'', pp. 63–65. The farm was not on good land and failed when potato prices fell. The family moved to Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1916, where Gaskell Romney resumed construction work, but the family remained generally poor. In 1917, they moved to Rexburg, Idaho, where Gaskell became a successful home and commercial builder in a growing area due to high World War I commodities prices.Mahoney, ''The Story of George Romney'', pp. 65–67.

George started working in wheat and sugar beet fields at the age of eleven and was the valedictorian at his grammar school graduation in 1921 (by the sixth grade he had attended six schools). The Depression of 1920–21 brought a collapse in prices, and local building was abandoned. His family returned to Salt Lake City in 1921, and while his father resumed construction work, George became skilled at lath-and-plaster work.Mahoney, ''The Story of George Romney'', pp. 68–69.''Current Biography Yearbook 1958'', p. 367. The family was again prospering when the Great Depression hit in 1929 and ruined them. George watched his parents fail financially in Idaho and Utah and having to take a dozen years to pay off their debts. Seeing their struggles influenced his life and business career.

In Salt Lake City, Romney worked while attending Roosevelt Junior High School and, beginning in 1922, Latter-day Saints High School. There he played halfback on the football team, guard on the basketball team, and right field on the baseball team, all with more persistence than talent, but in an effort to uphold the family tradition of athleticism, he earned varsity letters in all three sports. In his senior year, he and junior Lenore LaFount became high school sweethearts; she was from a more well-assimilated Mormon family. Academically, Romney was steady but undistinguished. He graduated from high school in 1925; his yearbook picture caption was "Serious, high minded, of noble nature – a real fellow".

Partly to stay near Lenore, Romney spent the next year as a junior college student at the co-located Latter-day Saints University, where he was elected student body president.Mahoney, ''The Story of George Romney'', pp. 71–72. He was also president of the booster club and played on the basketball team that won the Utah–Idaho Junior College Tournament.

Missionary work

After becoming an elder, Romney earned enough money working to fund himself as a Mormon missionary. In October 1926, he sailed to Great Britain and was first assigned to preach in a slum in Glasgow, Scotland.Mahoney, ''The Story of George Romney'', pp. 73–76. The abject poverty and hopelessness he saw there affected him greatly, but he was ineffective in gaining converts and temporarily suffered a crisis of faith.

In February 1927, he was shifted to Edinburgh and in February 1928 to London,Mahoney, ''The Story of George Romney'', pp. 77–81. where he kept track of mission finances.Harris, ''Romney's Way'', pp. 78, 81. He worked under renowned Quorum of the Twelve Apostles intellectuals James E. Talmage and John A. Widtsoe; the latter's admonitions to "Live mightily today, the greatest day of all time is today" made a lasting impression on him. Romney experienced British sights and culture and was introduced to members of the peerage and the Oxford Group.Mahoney, ''The Story of George Romney'', pp. 83–87.

In August 1928, Romney became president of the Scottish missionary district. Operating in a whisky-centric region was difficult, and he developed a new "task force" approach of sending more missionaries to a single location at a time; this successfully drew local press attention and several hundred new recruits. Romney's frequent public proselytizing – from Edinburgh's Mound and in London from soap boxes at Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park and from a platform at Trafalgar Square – developed his gifts for debate and sales, which he would use the rest of his career. Three decades later, Romney said that his missionary time had meant more to him in developing his career than any other experience.

Early career, marriage and children

Romney returned to the U.S. in late 1928 and studied briefly at the University of Utah and LDS Business College.Mahoney, ''The Story of George Romney'', pp. 89–94. He followed LaFount to Washington, D.C., in fall 1929, after her father, Harold A. Lafount, had accepted an appointment by President Calvin Coolidge to serve on the Federal Radio Commission. He worked for Massachusetts Democratic U.S. Senator David I. Walsh during 1929 and 1930, first as a stenographer using speedwriting, then, when his abilities at that proved limited, as a staff aide working on tariffs and other legislative matters. Romney researched aspects of the proposed Smoot-Hawley tariff legislation and sat in on committee meetings; the job was a turning point in his career and gave him lifelong confidence in dealing with Congress.

With one of his brothers, Romney opened a dairy bar in nearby Rosslyn, Virginia, during this time. The business soon failed, in the midst of the Great Depression.Harris, ''Romney's Way'', pp. 91–92. He also attended George Washington University at night. Based upon a connection he made working for Walsh, Romney was hired as an apprentice for Alcoa in Pittsburgh in June 1930.

When LaFount, an aspiring actress, began earning bit roles in Hollywood movies, Romney arranged to be transferred to Alcoa's Los Angeles office for training as a salesman. There he took night classes at the University of Southern California. (Romney did not attend for long, or graduate from, any of the colleges in which he was enrolled, accumulating only 2½ years of credits; instead he has been described as an autodidact.) LaFount had the opportunity to sign a $50,000, three-year contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios, but Romney convinced her to return to Washington with him as he was assigned a position there with Alcoa as a lobbyist. She later said she had never had a choice of both marriage and an acting career, because the latter would have upstaged him, but expressed no regrets about having chosen the former. Romney would later consider wooing her his greatest sales achievement.

The couple married on July 2, 1931, at Salt Lake City Temple. They would have four children: Margo Lynn (born 1935), Jane LaFount (born 1938), George Scott (born 1941), and Willard Mitt (born 1947). The couple's marriage reflected aspects of their personalities and courtship. George was devoted to Lenore, and tried to bring her a flower every day, often a single rose with a love note.Kranish; Helman, ''The Real Romney'', pp. 18–19. George was also a strong, blunt personality used to winning arguments by force of will, but the more self-controlled Lenore was unintimidated and willing to push back against him. The couple quarreled so much as a result that their grandchildren would later nickname them "the Bickersons", but in the end, their closeness would allow them to settle arguments amicably.

As a lobbyist, Romney frequently competed on behalf of the aluminum industry against the copper industry, and defended Alcoa against charges of being a monopoly. He also represented the Aluminum Wares Association. In the early 1930s, he helped get aluminum windows installed in the U.S. Department of Commerce Building, at the time the largest office building in the world.

Romney joined the National Press Club and the Burning Tree and Congressional Country Clubs; one reporter watching Romney hurriedly play golf at the last said, "There is a young man who knows where he is going." Lenore's cultural refinement and hosting skills, along with her father's social and political connections, helped George in business, and the couple met the Hoovers, the Roosevelts, and other prominent Washington figures.Mahoney, ''The Story of George Romney'', pp. 102–105. He was chosen by Pyke Johnson, a Denver newspaperman and automotive industry trade representative he met at the Press Club, to join the newly formed Trade Association Advisory Committee to the National Recovery Administration. The committee's work continued even after the agency was declared unconstitutional in 1935. During 1937 and 1938, Romney was also president of the Washington Trade Association Executives.

Automotive industry representative

After nine years with Alcoa, Romney's career had stagnated; there were many layers of executives to climb through and a key promotion he had wanted was given to someone with more seniority. Pyke Johnson was vice president of the Automobile Manufacturers Association, which needed a manager for its new Detroit office.Mahoney, ''The Story of George Romney'', pp. 108–109. Romney got the job and moved there with his wife and two daughters in 1939. An association study found Americans using their cars more for short trips and convinced Romney that the trend was towards more functional, basic transportation. In 1942, he was promoted to general manager of the association, a position he held until 1948. Romney also served as president of the Detroit Trade Association in 1941.

In 1940, as World War II raged overseas, Romney helped start the Automotive Committee for Air Defense, which coordinated planning between the automobile and aircraft industries.Mollenhoff, ''George Romney'', pp. 58–59. Immediately following the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor that drew the U.S. into the war, Romney helped turn that committee into, and became managing director of, the Automotive Council for War Production. This organization established a cooperative arrangement in which companies could share machine tools and production improvements, thus maximizing the industry's contribution to the war production effort. It embodied Romney's notion of "competitive cooperative capitalism".Harris, ''Romney's Way'', pp. 109–111.

With labor leader Victor Reuther, Romney led the Detroit Victory Council, which sought to improve conditions for Detroit workers under wartime stress and deal with the causes of the Detroit race riot of 1943. Romney successfully appealed to the Federal Housing Administration to make housing available to black workers near the Ford Willow Run plant. He also served on the labor-management committee of the Detroit section of the War Manpower Commission.

Romney's influence grew while he positioned himself as chief spokesman of the automobile industry, often testifying before Congressional hearings about production, labor, and management issues; he was mentioned or quoted in over 80 stories in ''The New York Times'' during this time. By war's end, 654 manufacturing companies had joined the Automotive Council for War Production, and produced nearly $29 billion in output for the Allied military forces. This included over 3 million motorized vehicles, 80 percent of all tanks and tank parts, 75 percent of all aircraft engines, half of all diesel engines, and a third of all machine guns.Mahoney, ''The Story of George Romney'', pp. 110–114, 120. Between a fifth and a quarter of all U.S. wartime production was accounted for by the automotive industry.

As peacetime production began, Romney persuaded government officials to forgo complex contract-termination procedures, thus freeing auto plants to quickly produce cars for domestic consumption and avoid large layoffs. Romney was director of the American Trade Association Executives in 1944 and 1947, and managing director of the National Automobile Golden Jubilee Committee in 1946. From 1946 to 1949, he represented U.S. employers as a delegate to the Metal Trades Industry conference of the International Labor Office. By 1950, Romney was a member of the Citizens Housing and Planning Council, and criticized racial segregation in Detroit's housing program when speaking before the Detroit City Council.Fine, ''Expanding the Frontiers of Civil Rights'', p. 216. Romney's personality was blunt and intense, giving the impression of a "man in a hurry", and he was considered a rising star in the industry.

American Motors Corporation chief executive

As managing director of the Automobile Manufacturers Association, Romney became good friends with then-president George W. Mason. When Mason became chairman of the manufacturing firm Nash-Kelvinator in 1948, he invited Romney along "to learn the business from the ground up" as his roving assistant, and the new executive spent a year working in different parts of the company. At a Detroit refrigerator plant of the Kelvinator appliance division, Romney battled the Mechanics Educational Society of America union to institute a new industrial–labor relations program that forestalled the whole facility being shut down.Harris, ''Romney's Way'', pp. 140–143. He appealed to the workers by saying, "I am no college man. I've laid floors, I've done lathing. I've thinned beets and shocked wheat." As Mason's protégé, Romney assumed executive assignment for the development of the Rambler.

Mason had long sought a merger of Nash-Kelvinator with one or more other companies, and on May 1, 1954, it merged with Hudson Motor Car to become the American Motors Corporation (AMC).Mahoney, ''The Story of George Romney'', pp. 168–171. It was the largest merger in the history of the industry, and Romney became an executive vice president of the new firm. In October 1954, Mason suddenly died of acute pancreatitis and pneumonia. Romney was named AMC's president and chairman of the board the same month.

When Romney took over, he cancelled Mason's plan to merge AMC with Studebaker-Packard Corporation (or any other automaker). He reorganized upper management, brought in younger executives, and pruned and rebuilt AMC's dealer network. Romney believed that the only way to compete with the " Big Three" ( General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler) was to stake the future of AMC on a new smaller-sized car line. Together with chief engineer Meade Moore, by the end of 1957 Romney had completely phased out the Nash and Hudson brands, whose sales had been lagging. The Rambler brand was selected for development and promotion, as AMC pursued an innovative strategy: manufacturing only compact cars. The company struggled badly at first, losing money in 1956, more in 1957, and experiencing defections from its dealer network. Romney instituted company-wide savings and efficiency measures, and he and other executives reduced their salaries by up to 35 percent.

Though AMC was on the verge of being taken over by corporate raider Louis Wolfson

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