MICHIGAN: Prodigy's Progress

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As the farmers and townsmen of Ottawa County streamed out of the fairgrounds at Marne, Mich, one day last fortnight, they came upon a handsome, square-shouldered man wearing a big, green, polka dot bow tie and a wide, bright, boyish grin. He stood astride the main exit, reaching out to shake hands with all who would come within his grasp. The smile and the green bow tie identified him as Gerhard Mennen Williams, governer of Michigan. "Look," murmured one woman to another as they pressed by, "he's getting grey hair already."

To Michigan, the discovery that "Soapy" Williams was showing his age came as a shock. It was a little like comprehending that Shirley Temple is a mother and Yehudi Menuhin has three kids of his own. For Soapy Williams is Michigan's political prodigy.

Four years ago, he and his tireless wife Nancy came out of political nowhere to tour the state in their battered De Soto convertible. Soapy called square dances at every crossroad, and he and Nancy out-polkaed the Polish-Americans in Hamtramck. In six months of hard campaigning they got Soapy elected as one of the rare Democratic governors in a traditionally Republican state. In 1950 they did it again, to make him the second Democratic governor in Michigan's history ever elected in a nonpresidential year. Last week, at an undaunted 41 years. Soapy plunged into the campaign for his third term, with a good chance of breaking the alltime record and becoming the only Democrat to win three consecutive gubernatorial terms.

Big Mistake. This time Soapy is running against Republican Fred Alger Jr., 45, Michigan's secretary of state and the grandson of a former governor, Russell A. Alger, who was McKinley's Secretary of War (1897-99). In Fred Alger the Republicans have put their best foot forward. He has proved himself a good vote getter in four previous statewide campaigns for political offices, and he can make a better, more forceful speech than Soapy.

Alger and Soapy have known each other off & on for years: they both grew up in Detroit's crusty, oldtime high society, which still considers itself one notch better than the new rich of the automobile industry. Soapy insists, however, on making a distinction when he and Alger are referred to as a couple of millionaires. "Alger traveled in the polo-pony class," says the Democratic candidate, "while I was in the tennis-racket crowd."

Fred Alger made his biggest political mistake four years ago. During the Republican administration of Governor Kim Sigler, Alger got Soapy appointed to a Democratic vacancy on the bipartisan state liquor control commission. He misjudged Soapy's ebullient New Dealism, his youthful enthusiasm and his common touch as the signs of a willing political amateur. But genial, hard-plugging Soapy traveled the state like no liquor commissioner in history, soon turned a host of liquor dealers into personal friends, and turned his job into a first step on the Michigan political ladder. Kim Sigler's successor as governor: Soapy Williams.