George Wilcken Romney (July 8, 1907 – July 26, 1995) was an American businessman and politician. A member of the Republican Party, he served as chairman and president of American Motors Corporation from 1954 to 1962, the 43rd governor of Michigan from 1963 to 1969, and 3rd secretary of housing and urban development from 1969 to 1973. He was the father of Mitt Romney, who served as United States senator from Utah and as governor of Massachusetts and was the 2012 Republican presidential nominee; the husband of 1970 U.S. Senate candidate Lenore Romney; and the paternal grandfather of former Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel.
Romney was born to American parents living in the polygamist Mormon colonies in Mexico; events during the Mexican Revolution forced his family to flee back to the United States when he was a child. The family lived in several states and ended up in Salt Lake City, Utah, where they struggled during the Great Depression. Romney worked in a number of jobs, served as a missionary of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the United Kingdom, and attended four colleges in the U.S. but did not graduate from any. In 1939, he moved to Detroit and joined the American Automobile Manufacturers Association, where he served as the chief spokesman for the automobile industry during World War II and headed a cooperative arrangement in which companies could share production improvements. He joined Nash-Kelvinator Corporation in 1948, and became the chief executive of its successor, American Motors, in 1954. There he turned around the struggling firm by focusing all efforts on the compact Rambler car. Romney mocked the products of the "Big Three" automakers as "gas-guzzling dinosaurs" and became one of the first high-profile, media-savvy business executives. Devoutly religious as a Latter-day Saint, he was president of the Detroit stake.
Having entered politics in 1961 by participating in a state constitutional convention to rewrite the Michigan Constitution, Romney was elected Governor of Michigan in 1962. Re-elected by increasingly large margins in 1964 and 1966, he worked to overhaul the state's financial and revenue structure, greatly expanding the size of state government and introducing Michigan's first state income tax. Romney was a strong supporter of the American Civil Rights Movement. He briefly represented moderate Republicans against conservative Republican Barry Goldwater during the 1964 U.S. presidential election. He requested the intervention of federal troops during the 1967 Detroit riot.
Initially a front runner for the Republican nomination for president of the United States in the 1968 election cycle, he proved an ineffective campaigner and fell behind Richard Nixon in polls. After a mid-1967 remark that his earlier support for the Vietnam War had been due to a "brainwashing" by U.S. military and diplomatic officials in Vietnam, his campaign faltered even more and he withdrew from the contest in early 1968. After being elected president, Nixon appointed Romney as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Romney's ambitious plans, which included housing production increases for the poor and open housing to desegregate suburbs, were modestly successful but often thwarted by Nixon. Romney left the administration at the start of Nixon's second term in 1973. Returning to private life, he advocated volunteerism and public service and headed the National Center for Voluntary Action and its successor organizations from 1973 through 1991. He also served as a regional representative within his church.
Early life and background
Romney's grandparents were polygamous Latter-day Saints, married in 1897 (polygamy having been abolished by the 1890 Manifesto, although it persisted in places, especially Mexico), who fled the United States to Mexico with their children due to the federal government's prosecution of polygamy. His maternal grandfather was Helaman Pratt, who presided over a mission in Mexico City before moving to the Mexican state of Chihuahua. In the 1920s, Romney's uncle Rey L. Pratt played a major role in the preservation and expansion of the Latter-day Saint presence in Mexico and in its introduction to South America.Beecher, "Rey L. Pratt and the Mexican Mission", pp. 9–11.
Romney's parents, Gaskell Romney and Anna Amelia Pratt, were monogamous, and United States citizens and natives of the Territory of Utah.Kranish; Helman, The Real Romney, p. 40. They married in 1895 in Mexico and lived in Colonia Dublán in Nuevo Casas Grandes in the state of Chihuahua (one of the church colonies in Mexico), where George was born on July 8, 1907. George had three older brothers, two younger brothers, and a younger sister.Mahoney, The Story of George Romney, pp. 53, 65. Gaskell Romney was a successful carpenter, house builder, and farmer who headed the most prosperous family in the colony,Mahoney, The Story of George Romney, pp. 52–54.Harris, Romney's Way, pp. 39–40. which was situated in an agricultural valley below the Sierra Madre Occidental. The family chose U.S. citizenship for their children, including George.
The Mexican Revolution broke out in 1910 and the church's colonies were endangered in 1911–1912 by raids from marauders, including "Red Flaggers" Pascual Orozco and José Inés Salazar.Harris, Romney's Way, pp. 42–43. Young George heard the sound of distant gunfire and saw rebels walking through the village streets.Mollenhoff, George Romney, p. 24. The Romney family fled and returned to the United States in July 1912, leaving their home and almost all of their property behind.Mahoney, The Story of George Romney, pp. 59–62. Romney later said, "We were the first displaced persons of the 20th century."Harris, Romney's Way, p. 44.
In the United States, Romney grew up in humble circumstances.White, The Making of the President, 1968, p. 36. The family subsisted with other Latter-day Saint refugees on government relief in El Paso, Texas, benefiting from a $100,000 fund for refugees that the U.S. Congress had set up. After a few months they moved to Los Angeles, California, where Gaskell Romney worked as a carpenter.Current Biography Yearbook 1958, p. 366. In kindergarten, other children mocked Romney's national origin by calling him "Mex".Kotlowski, Nixon's Civil Rights, p. 50.
In 1913, the family moved to Oakley, Idaho, and bought a farm, where they grew and subsisted largely on Idaho potatoes.Mahoney, The Story of George Romney, pp. 63–65.Harris, Romney's Way, p. 46. The farm was not sustainable and failed when potato prices fell. The family moved to Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1916, where Gaskell Romney resumed construction work, but the family remained generally poor. In 1917, they moved to Rexburg, Idaho, where Gaskell became a successful home and commercial builder in a growing area due to high World War I commodities prices.Mahoney, The Story of George Romney, pp. 65–67.
George started working in wheat and sugar beet fields at the age of eleven; by the sixth grade he had attended six schools. He was the valedictorian at his grammar school graduation in 1921. The Depression of 1920–1921 brought a collapse in prices, and local building was abandoned. His family returned to Salt Lake City in 1921, and while his father resumed construction work, George became skilled at lath-and-plaster work.Mahoney, The Story of George Romney, pp. 68–69.Current Biography Yearbook 1958, p. 367. The family was again prospering when the Great Depression hit in 1929 and ruined them. George watched his parents fail financially in Idaho and Utah and having to take a dozen years to pay off their debts.Mollenhoff, George Romney, p. 30. Seeing their struggles influenced his life and business career.
In Salt Lake City, Romney worked while attending Roosevelt Junior High School and, beginning in 1922, Latter-day Saints High School.Fuller, George Romney and Michigan, p. 15. There he played halfback on the football team, guard on the basketball team, and right field on the baseball team, all with more persistence than talent, but in an effort to uphold the family tradition of athleticism, he earned varsity letters in all three sports.Harris, Romney's Way, pp. 59–60. In his senior year, he and junior Lenore LaFount became high school sweethearts;Harris, Romney's Way, p. 53. she was from a more well-assimilated Latter-day Saint family.Harris, Romney's Way, pp. 53–55. Academically, Romney was steady but undistinguished.Harris, Romney's Way, p. 61. He graduated from high school in 1925; his yearbook picture caption was "Serious, high minded, of noble nature – a real fellow".
Partly to stay near Lenore, Romney spent the next year as a junior college student at the co-located Latter-day Saints University, where he was elected student body president.Mahoney, The Story of George Romney, pp. 71–72. He was also president of the booster club and played on the basketball team that won the Utah–Idaho Junior College Tournament.
Missionary work After becoming an elder, Romney earned enough money working to fund himself as a missionary. In October 1926, he sailed to Great Britain and was first assigned to preach in a slum in Glasgow, Scotland.Mahoney, The Story of George Romney, pp. 73–76. The abject poverty and hopelessness he saw there affected him greatly, but he was ineffective in gaining converts and temporarily suffered a crisis of faith.Harris, Romney's Way, pp. 76–77.
In February 1927, he was shifted to Edinburgh and in February 1928 to London,Mahoney, The Story of George Romney, pp. 77–81. where he kept track of mission finances.Harris, Romney's Way, pp. 78, 81. He worked under renowned Quorum of the Twelve Apostles intellectuals James E. Talmage and John A. Widtsoe; the latter's admonitions to "Live mightily today, the greatest day of all time is today" made a lasting impression on him. Romney experienced British sights and culture and was introduced to members of the peerage and the Oxford Group.Mahoney, The Story of George Romney, pp. 83–87.
In August 1928, Romney became president of the Scottish missionary district. Operating in a whisky-centric region was difficult, and he developed a new "task force" approach of sending more missionaries to a single location at a time; this successfully drew local press attention and several hundred new recruits. Romney's frequent public proselytizing – from Edinburgh's Mound and in London from soap boxes at Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park and from a platform at Trafalgar Square – developed his gifts for debate and sales, which he would use the rest of his career. Three decades later, Romney said that his missionary time had meant more to him in developing his career than any other experience.
Early career, marriage and children Romney returned to the U.S. in late 1928 and studied briefly at the University of Utah and Ensign College.Mahoney, The Story of George Romney, pp. 89–94. He followed LaFount to Washington, D.C., in fall 1929, after her father, Harold A. Lafount, had accepted an appointment by President Calvin Coolidge to serve on the Federal Radio Commission. He worked for Massachusetts Democratic U.S. Senator David I. Walsh during 1929 and 1930, first as a stenographer using speedwriting, then, when his abilities at that proved limited, as a staff aide working on tariffs and other legislative matters. Romney researched aspects of the proposed Smoot-Hawley tariff legislation and sat in on committee meetings; the job was a turning point in his career and gave him lifelong confidence in dealing with Congress.
With one of his brothers, Romney opened a dairy bar in nearby Rosslyn, Virginia, during this time. The business soon failed, in the midst of the Great Depression.Harris, Romney's Way, pp. 91–92. He also attended George Washington University at night. Based upon a connection he made working for Walsh, Romney was hired as an apprentice for Alcoa in Pittsburgh in June 1930.