A Radical's Greening

When Paul Soglin, then only 27, upset a conservative Republican to become mayor of Madison, Wis., a year ago last April, the students who supported him hailed his victory as a sign that their day had finally come. But the erstwhile University of Wisconsin radical lost little time in setting his supporters straight. Climbing onto a stage during a ball celebrating his inaugural, the long-haired, mustachioed Soglin stripped off his dress shirt to reveal a T shirt bearing the legend MELLOW MAN. Said Soglin: "It's going to take those mellow men and mellow women to put this city together in the next two years."

Now, halfway through his term in office, Soglin seems to have succeeded in doing just that. He has not moved fast or far enough to satisfy his more radical backers, nor has he gone too far for many of the middle-class merchants who formerly controlled the pleasant, lake-bordered city of 176,000. But he has managed to get both groups talking with each other and, in the process, given the city a year of good, if unconventional government.

The greening of Soglin, a native of Chicago, from protest to power was gradual. A hard-core member of the antiwar movement, Soglin graduated from the university in 1966, stayed on in Madison for graduate work, law school and eventually politics. In 1968 his fellow students took advantage of their control of the city's Eighth District to elect him to the Madison city council.

Even as an alderman, however, Soglin remained an outsider. He continued to take part in student demonstrations, was twice arrested and, on one occasion, bailed out by a sympathetic fireman. He clashed with Mayor William Dyke over such issues as police brutality and budgets. But he also learned about municipal government, studying substantive subjects such as housing and transportation and getting a feel for such arcane matters as sewer maintenance and zoning regulations.

His political education proved to be valuable. In early 1973, when Senator George McGovern's campaign organization was still a political force in Madison, Soglin leaped into the mayoral race as an independent. The campaign, which took an ugly turn when Dyke appealed to Madison's "decent people" to keep him in office, was bitter. Soglin's more statesmanlike approach gave him 52% of the vote.

In Stocking Feet. Mayor Soglin's style contrasts sharply with that of the clean-cut, well-dressed and almost militarily inaccessible Dyke. Soglin, who has a habit of arguing far into the night, often shows up bleary-eyed at his office. Cartoons, antiwar slogans and newspaper clippings dot the walls around his desk; a plaque that reads HIZZONER DA MARE is on the door. Soglin often pads around his office in his stocking feet, presides over city-council meetings with a half-hidden smile that betrays his amusement at the proceedings.

Despite his casual approach, Soglin has accomplished much in his first year in office. As alderman, Soglin supported a proposal to turn the city's State Street into a pedestrian mall. Last week construction began on the $15 million project, which had been vetoed by his predecessor, who feared it would turn the street into a hippie haven.