Suddenly It's 1960

As Michigan's spring election approached, neither Democrats nor Republicans were confident. Democratic leaders pointed out that the G.O.P. traditionally wins most offices in spring elections, while Republican chiefs frankly admitted that their party was hard up and torn by factions. Last week, after 1,120,000 votes swept a Democrat into every available job for the first time in almost a quarter of a century, the leaders of both parties agreed on the main cause: the iron-spun coattails of Michigan's maturing (46) boy wonder, Governor G. (for Gerhard) Mennen Williams.

Although his governorship was not at stake, "Soapy" Williams had campaigned on a 4:30 a.m.-to-midnight schedule, had shrewdly hit hardest in heavily Democratic Wayne County (including Detroit), where the United Auto Workers Union had cranked up a get-out-the-vote drive. In Wayne County a record 470,000 voters turned out, helped pick Democrats for superintendent of public instruction and three seats on the Supreme Court. So powerful was the governor's imprimatur that it even engineered a victory for 36-year-old Genesee County Surveyor John C. Mackie, whose qualifications to become state highway commissioner had been questioned by the Michigan Society of Professional Engineers.

Scanning the returns. Michiganders soon realized that nobody had won bigger than Soapy Williams himself. By rounding out his organization and demonstrating his vote-pulling possibilities in 1957, the governor had shown that he is a safe bet to win a sixth term in 1958 and to get national attention in 1960. Some Williams fans even had their 1960 Democratic slate all ready to go: liberal Midwestern Governor G. Mennen Williams for President, and Eastern (Massachusetts), more conservative U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy for Vice President. .

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