MICHIGAN: Wash Up & Check Out

Michigan Governor G. (for Gerhard) Mennen Williams is almost as durable a fixture on the state landscape as the Ford River Rouge plant. Elected by a landslide in 1948, he shrewdly built a Democratic machine on grass-roots upstate organization and the downstate power of Walter Reuther's United Automobile Workers, was re-elected for five successive terms, a national record. Last week crewcut, ruggedly handsome "Soapy" Williams, 49, wearing his original 1948 green polka-dot bow tie, got on a statewide TV network to announce that he would not run for a seventh term.

Politicos around the state gave the Governor a high grade for good sense; he is getting out in time. There is plenty of evidence to show that his popularity has been ebbing regularly since his last election, when Soapy himself was the Democratic ticket's fifth-ranking vote getter. To this attrition was added the glaring fact of Michigan's slowly crumbling fiscal status (TIME, March 23, 1959 et seq.). Soapy got clobbered by Republicans in the state senate when he fought with months-long stubbornness for a state tax on personal incomes. After things went from bad to worse, he accepted a makeshift nuisance tax on such items as beer, cigarettes and medicines, which will help the state get through 1960. Michigan's voters will have to tackle the problem anew this fall.

In such an atmosphere, Millionaire Williams (Mennen shaving cream, etc.) is well out of a jam by washing up and checking out. He has realistically written off his hopes of getting on the national ticket this year, told his TV audience that he would like "to work for the cause of peace in some public office" or, barring that, "as a private citizen."