Righting the Balance

Every time Michigan's hard-pressed Republican State Chairman John Feikens hears the Republicans called the rich man's party, he wonders, forlornly, what country and what planet the Democrats are talking about. Feikens' job is to defeat a Democratic ticket next month that is: 1) headed by Michigan's popular four-term Governor G. Mennen Williams, millionaire heir to a soap fortune; 2) seconded by Lieut. Governor Phil Hart, who married an automobile fortune; and 3) backed to the hilt by Walter Reuther's United Automobile Workers of America, whose 700,000 Michigan members are regularly assessed for some $2,600,000 for educational work that has never been known to hurt the Democratic cause in populous Wayne County (Detroit). "Look what we're up against," says Feikens, an ardent youngish (38) lawyer with the lean and hungry mien of a Packard dealer. "This is the best-heeled, toughest political gang in the country."

But John Feikens, though hard-pressed, has high hopes. The Republicans not only believe that Eisenhower can carry Michigan's 20 electoral votes again; they have a candidate for governor who already has "Soapy" Williams running scared. The candidate: Detroit's able Mayor Albert Cobo, 63, who, in his quiet, undramatic way, has beaten every effort of the U.A.W. to dislodge him from municipal office. He should be able to cut significantly into Williams' all-important Wayne County margin. But between the cup and the lip, only hard G.O.P. organization work, says Feikens, can prevent a slip like the fiasco of 1954, when Williams won by 253,000 votes over Republican Donald Leonard. "If we're going to get down on the mat with these guys," says John Feikens, "we can no longer afford part-time politics."

Feikens, a New Jersey-born corporation lawyer, began dabbling in Detroit G.O.P. precinct work in 1947, frankly believing that "politics could do a lot for a young man." Soon he found out, "to my amazement," that although 60% of his district wanted Eisenhower for President, the Old Guard state G.O.P. was about to deliver up Michigan to Robert A. Taft. Thereafter Feikens helped spark the revolt that swung the Michigan delegation to Eisenhower. He won election to the $10,000-a-year job of state chairman after the Eisenhower landslide, was re-elected in February 1955 notwithstanding the Democratic clean sweep of 1954. He has since worked himself ragged trying to rebuild the G.O.P. organization. "In 1954 it was like playing the New York Yankees with a sand-lot ball club," he says. "Now we've got the bare beginnings of a start."

Specifically, since 1954 Feikens & Co. have:

P:Persuaded most G.O.P. county chairmen to take on full-time paid staffs. "Nothing's worse than when a volunteer calls up a county headquarters and gets another volunteer and asks 'What can I do?' and the volunteer says, 'I don't know; I'm just a volunteer.' " P:Set up G.O.P. campaign schools in every congressional district and started the first of a statewide network of citizens' committees designed to attract the independent and stay-at-home voter--"the voter who would vote for us." P:Tripled his own central-office staff and hired specialists to work with speakers, women's organizations, Young Republicans, state and national candidates' schedules, and on relations with the plodding Old-Guard-dominated state legislature at Lansing.

P:Worked on upstate Republican counties to improve their comfortable majorities to help balance and overcome the Democratic majorities of Detroit.

Collaborating with Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield, long a power in the Michigan Republican hierarchy, Feikens has managed to repair most of the damage caused by the bitter Taft-Eisenhower fight in 1952, which alienated some of the G.O.P.'s best-heeled backers. Today Feikens is constantly prodding businessmen to get into the campaign more deeply. "Corporate lawyers won't let companies stick their necks out," he complains bitterly. "Most opinion leaders in Michigan communities are Republicans, and when they say that the C.I.O. still controls the state, somebody's falling down on the job pretty badly. Why can't these Republicans be leaders in politics like they are in their businesses and professions?"

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.