William Milliken: A Light that Still Shines

This historical retrospect recalls legacy of the late former Michigan governor

Note: I wrote this historical retrospect in August of 2016, in the midst of the Presidential campaign between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hilliary Clinton. Milliken, who served as Michigan’s governor from 1969 to 1983, had endorsed Clinton, further distancing himself from the state party he had once headed. In fact, he’d eventually be drummed out of the Grand Traverse County Republican Party—his hometown—for deviating too often from the prevailing ideology of the new version of the GOP. He would pass away on Oct. 18, 2019 at his Traverse City home, having reached the age of 97.

Back then (in 2016) the future direction of the party still seemed to be up for grabs. True, Milliken’s positions had, for the most part, become anathema to the party faithful and their brand of conservative ideology. But being a “passionate moderate”— as his biographer Dave Dempsey described him and used as the title of his book—still seemed to have a voice in the party’s halls of counsel. The campaign, Trump’s win in the election, and what’s transpired since then, have (in retrospect) made such conjecture a bit delusional.

But legacies, built on the practice of principle and compassion, have a way of enduring. Hence my wish to share this piece of writing from eight years ago.

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August 13, 2016

   Among the news stories of this past week was one about former Gov. William Milliken, a moderate Republican from Traverse City, endorsing Hillary Clinton for president rather than the GOP nominee Donald Trump. In a written statement, Milliken said:

    “This nation has long prided itself on its abiding commitments to tolerance, civility and equality. We face a critically important choice in this year's presidential election that will define whether we maintain our commitment to those ideals or embark on a path that has doomed other governments and nations throughout history. I am saddened and dismayed that the Republican Party this year has nominated a candidate who has repeatedly demonstrated that he does not embrace those ideals.

  "Because I feel so strongly about our nation's future, I will be joining the growing list of former and present government officials in casting my vote for Hillary Clinton for president in 2016,” he added.

   In journalistic terms, you could characterize this as a “man bites dog” type of story, being that the public is accustomed to Republicans endorsing Republicans and Democrats supporting Democrats. So, when a prominent person, such as a former governor of Michigan, announces his intention to break ranks, then that decision would indeed be unusual. Except that this election cycle a host of prominent GOP officials and conservatives have already expressed their distaste for Trump, stating that they’ll either vote for Clinton, the third-party Libertarian Party candidate, or skip this part of the ballot.

   Two of Trump’s rivals for the nomination—former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz—head that list of detractors, along with the party’s 2012 presidential candidate, Mitt Romney.

   Also, this is not the first time that Milliken has publicly supported a Democratic candidate over the Republican nominee.  He endorsed Jennifer Granholm in her 2006 race for governor and Gary Peters in his bid for the U.S. Senate two years ago. In these choices, as with the current one, he felt the Democratic candidate better represented his views than the Republican standard bearer.

   One of the things journalists are instructed to do with this sort of story is get a reaction from the other side. Hence, the Michigan Republican Party was dutifully contacted. The story quoted the party spokeswoman Sarah Anderson as saying that “Milliken’s endorsement of Clinton was irrelevant,” and then twisting the knife a bit, she added, “It’s news when Milliken endorses Republicans these days.”

    At the age of 94 and with many years having passed since his days in power, perhaps “irrelevant” is an accurate description of Milliken’s influence (or mine for that matter) . . . just not too diplomatic.

     As for his endorsing Democrats on occasion in recent years, Milliken once stood with many other like-minded party officials and supporters in the mainstream of the Republican Party. But that stream has steadily veered more and more rightward. Gradually over the years, Republican officials and their partisan supporters have embraced a more hardline definition of conservatism and taken a different stance on many issues than was true during Milliken’s tenure in office.

    The litmus test for whether or not a person is considered “a true conservative” includes being against abortion, opposing any restriction on weapon purchases and the types of weapons sold, taking a pledge to never raise taxes, being against most government regulation, and (in theory if not always in practice) supporting decisions by state government over federal initiatives.

    Republicans in bygone days supported some of these positions, although abortion was not an issue until a few years after Roe v. Wade legalized the procedure in 1973. Still, many of them back then held more moderate, even liberal views as judged by current standards. The party had a bigger tent and tolerated more diverse opinions. That’s particularly true of the Michigan Republicans during the 1960s thru the 1980s—that period of time when Milliken was elected to the state Senate, became lieutenant governor, and then served as governor.

   The man who made it possible for Milliken to assume Michigan’s highest office by selecting him as his lieutenant governor was George Romney. The irony is that the current head of the Michigan Republican Party, for whom Sarah Anderson served as a spokeswoman, is Ronna Romney McDaniel—George’s granddaughter.

   George Romney was a force of nature. Dynamic. Energetic. He commanded the stage. I remember watching him in the televised debates he had with Gov. John Swainson in the 1962 election. His personality and energy were overwhelming. Characteristic of his take-command style was when the moderator signaled that time was up on an answer. Swainson would obediently halt, even in mid-sentence. But not Romney; he continued on until he had finished his point. In doing so, he showed the viewers what kind of governor he’d be.

   A hallmark from his time as our governor was his support for civil rights.

     During his first State of the State address in January 1963, he declared that “Michigan’s most urgent human rights problem is racial discrimination—in housing, public accommodations, education, administration of justice, and employment.” He went on to help create the state’s first civil rights commission.

   When Martin Luther King, Jr. led the ‘Great March on Detroit later that year, Romney designated the occasion as Freedom March Day in Detroit. A couple of years later he joined Detroit Mayor Jerome Cavanaugh and African-American leaders of that city to take part in a sympathy march after Martin Luther King and his supporters were beaten in Selma, Alabama on ‘Bloody Sunday’ (March 7, 1965) in their effort to secure the right-to-vote. On March 25, after a follow-up voting-rights march from Selma to Montgomery had concluded, a Detroit housewife, Viola Gregg Liuzzo, was murdered by the Klu Klux Klan while transporting a civil rights marcher to his home. Romney quickly met with her grieving family in Detroit to express his support.

   Another hallmark was his cooperative effort with Cavanaugh to support and improve Detroit with urban renewal initiatives. Among those efforts (recently spotlighted in a Detroit Free Press article) was the city’s bid to secure the Summer Olympics.

   Working with bipartisan coalitions, Romney obtained increased state spending on education, including money for the public colleges and universities, additional funding support for local governments, and improved benefits for the poor and unemployed.

   Milliken, during his administration, continued those same priorities in civil rights, educational funding, and assistance to the poor. He worked with Detroit Mayor Coleman Young and business leaders on economic development projects for that city. By necessity, but also by temperament, he formed working relationships with Democratic lawmakers as well as those of his own party.

   He supported a woman’s right of choice and endorsed the proposed Equal Rights Amendment that was designed to give women equal protection and rights under the Constitution. He favored environmental protection and safeguarding the state’s natural resources. A highlight of his time in office was the successful passage of a bottle-deposit law by voters.

   Romney, upon his election as governor, joined what was then called the Eastern Establishment of the Republican Party. Others who were either part of that wing or would be in the next few years included: New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, Pennsylvania Gov. William Scranton, Gov. James Rhodes of Ohio, Rhode Island Gov. John Chaffee, and Illinois Sen. Charles Percy.

   They were heirs to Gov. Thomas Dewey—the Republican presidential candidate in 1944 and 1948--and President Dwight Eisenhower who held the nation’s highest office from 1953-1960.

   Romney was among the possible presidential candidates mentioned during the lead-up to the 1964 campaign. He had promised Michigan voters, though, that he would not seek this high office so soon after winning the governorship. So he threw his support behind Gov. Rockefeller.

    Members from the other wing of the party—heirs to Ohio Senator Robert Taft and other conservative officials from the Midwest and Far West—had other ideas and were centering their electoral hopes at that time around the candidacy of Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater.

  After Rockefeller lost to Goldwater in the California primary, the majority of GOP governors (including Romney) put their support behind Gov. Scranton. Romney, in a press conference, said “If (Goldwater’s) views deviate as indicated from the heritage of our party, I will do everything within my power to keep him from becoming the party’s presidential nominee.”

    During the convention, which was held in San Francisco, the Michigan governor failed in his effort. Goldwater easily won the nomination over Scranton.

     Romney’s attempt to put a stronger civil rights plank in the party platform “that would pledge action to eliminate discrimination at the state, local, and private levels” also met with failure, being defeated by the delegates on a voice vote. And his effort to include a statement condemning both left-and right-wing extremism was defeated by a two-to-one margin. Among those supporting both of these positions was former President Eisenhower.

     The conservative wing of the party, having met with defeat at earlier conventions, took their revenge on the Eastern Establishment.

   During the ensuing general election, Romney--who was running for re-election to another two-year term--took a neutral position on the Goldwater candidacy, neither opposing it nor giving his endorsement. He cited Goldwater’s lack of support for civil rights and his concerns about the extremism being expressed in the Arizona senator’s campaign as reasons for this hands-off approach. During the campaign, Romney continued to keep his distance from the GOP nominee. 

   That election, as we know, proved a disaster for Goldwater and the right wing of the party. Lyndon Johnson won on a landslide, with Michigan voters joining that bandwagon. However, they also split their ticket and re-elected Romney. But, as it turned out, the setback would be only in the short term.  A key factor in the vote was that Goldwater captured the Deep South states that had once been a bedrock for the Democratic Party in large part due his opposition to the civil rights legislation that President Lyndon Johnson had pushed through Congress earlier that year.

    In 1966, when Romney won a resounding victory in his second re-election bid (this time to a four-year term with the state's new constitution going into effect), he became a favorite among the GOP presidential candidates--at least in the eyes of the media and the political class headquartered in Washington, D.C. What was happening in the hinterlands, less publicized, was the re-emergence of Richard Nixon, offering himself as a middle way between the Goldwater conservatives and the Eastern Establishment.

    Romney’s prospects were tarnished by the Detroit Riot in 1967 when 45 people were killed, several blocks of buildings were destroyed due to arson, stores were looted, and the Michigan National Guard and then federal troops were called in to patrol the streets. Long-simmering tensions between the largely white Detroit Police Force and the black community erupted into violence in the aftermath of a raid of a blind pig that was operating in a black neighborhood. These tensions, though, were only part of the black community's list of grievances in how they were treated in their day-to-day lives.

    This and other civil disturbances in large cities, the protests against the War in Vietnam with many of them occurring on college campuses, and the whole specter of the counter-culture lifestyle created a backlash in the months leading up to the ’68 campaign. Romney’s support began to wane while Nixon’s rose.

  Romney’s prospects were further damaged when he expressed opposition to further escalation of the War in Vietnam and used the term “brainwash” to describe the briefing he had received about the war from the military and administration officials during an earlier visit to Vietnam.

  By February of 1968 he had withdrawn from the race. The path was clear for Nixon. While the Eastern Establishment scrambled to find a substitute and Ronald Reagan--elected in 1966 as governor of California and the new champion of the conservative point-of-view--complicated matters at the last minute, Nixon’s middle way proved successful.

     He quickly embraced a ‘Southern Strategy’—a dog whistle sent to Southern voters who had always supported Democratic candidates (until Goldwater) and were then being courted by the third-party candidacy of former Alabama governor and segregationist George Wallace. The campaign theme of ‘law and order’ served as a code word; a not-so-subtle hint on where he stood on expanded civil rights, sit-ins at college campuses, and protests against the War in Vietnam.

   It worked enough to secure his election by a slight margin over Vice President Hubert Humphrey in the three-way race. 

   In making appointments to his cabinet, Nixon named Romney as the Secretary for Housing and Urban Affairs. Milliken subsequently took over as Michigan’s governor in mid-term and then was elected to three more four-year terms.

     As we know, a few years later, Nixon’s vice president, Spiro Agnew, would resign amid corruption charges, and Michigan Congressman Gerald Ford was named as vice president. Nixon then departed and Ford became president. When the 1976 campaign arrived, Reagan challenged Ford for the nomination and nearly won.

   Ford had always thought of himself as a conservative, but the definition had been changing. He and Republicans of similar mind were now considered by many in the party as moderate, even liberal in their social and economic positions and their approach towards governance.

    A different version of the term had emerged. The southern ranks of the party (thanks to Nixon’s strategy), along those from the western states had grown in numbers and influence. They found allies in eastern and Midwestern states among younger conservatives who were chomping at the bit to take the party from the old guard. Reagan now carried their torch. When Ford lost to Democratic candidate Jimmy Carter, the stage was set for the 1980 GOP nomination battle.

   Reagan’s chief rival—the candidate of the Eastern Establishment or what was left of it, the preferred choice of moderate Republicans—was George H. Bush. One of the primaries that year was held in Michigan. Gov. Milliken and supporters pulled out all of the stops and secured a win for Bush; one of his few bright spots. The other came when Reagan offered him the vice-presidential spot of the ticket. In retrospect, that was Milliken’s last hurrah as a power broker.    

   What helped erode Milliken’s influence, what caused the mainstream in Michigan to veer in a similar rightward direction as it was doing in those western and southern state parties, was the issue of taxes, namely property taxes.

    Michigan schools were being financed for the most part by property taxes. Local boards of education were constantly going to the voters for renewals, coupled with requests for increases.

    Property taxes, however, are a two-part equation. There is the millage rate, but also the valuation of the property. During the 1970s, inflation had pushed the value of homes and land ever upward. Thus, while voters might turn down a millage increase, the taxes went up due to the assessor increasing the value of the property.

   The issue of ever-increasing property taxes was not just a sore point for many Michigan citizens. Other states had a similar situation. In California (that leader in so many things), Proposition 13 was passed in 1978. Among its provisions was a drastic cut in property taxes, a limit on assessment increases until the property was sold, and requirements of two-thirds majorities for local taxes to be raised by voters or for taxes to be increased by the California Assembly.

   A drain commissioner in Shiawassee County, Robert Tisch, was watching and launched a similar effort in Michigan. He gained enough citizen support to have his tax cut plan appear on the ballot as a proposed constitutional amendment for the 1978 election. Considering the plan as too draconian, the legislature and many movers and shakers in the state supported the more modest proposal that was being presented by insurance executive Robert Headlee.

   That second proposal also appeared on the ballot and was approved by voters over Tisch’s plan. Nearly 38 years later, the Headlee Amendment is still with us.

    In addition to the voter rebellion against taxes that was occurring in Michigan and elsewhere--and was altering the shape of the Republican Party and helping propel Reagan’s candidacy—was the growing influence of Right to Life and the issue of abortion within the party.

     Thrown into the mix here in Michigan was the severe recession that started in 1980 and lasted until 1982. The cause was due, in part, to a strategy by Paul Volcker, the then chairman of the Federal Reserve, to break the back of inflation by instituting a drastic increase in interest rates. The idea was that these high rates would tighten up the supply of money and curtail spending.

    The Federal Reserve’s plan worked, but not without a lot of short-term pain and suffering. Auto sales slumped due to the interest rate being around 18 and 19 percent. The runny nose suffered by the rest of the nation was, as usual, a severe head cold for Michigan.

    The economic slump was exasperated by cuts in domestic spending instituted by Reagan after he took office and a spike in oil prices, both factors further resulting in a rise in unemployment and less consumer spending.

    With the 1982 election looming, Milliken decided not to seek a fourth term. He would end his tenure at 14 years. His lieutenant governor and heir apparent was James Brickley. Opposing him for the nomination was that champion of cutting property taxes, Richard Headlee.

     And Headlee won. The era of George Romney and William Milliken, as we can now see in hindsight, had ended with that vote by the party faithful. The moderate Republican wing of the party did not disappear, but its influence has slowly dissipated and, more importantly, its ability to get candidates nominated in a party primary has become virtually impossible. No one, if he or she wants to be selected by their fellow Republicans for any office, would proclaim themselves to be a moderate.

   Other influences that have changed the definition of conservatism and re-shaped the GOP in the process include the formation of the Moral Majority and the importance placed on certain social and cultural issues, the influence of radio talk show hosts and Fox News on party opinion, the impact of ideological thinks tanks, special-interest groups and wealthy benefactors with specific agendas, and, more recently, the rise of the Tea Party and the no-compromise, anti-government beliefs of its militant supporters.

   Milliken, as the years have passed, remained true to his core beliefs; those that he had taken into office in 1960, that he shared with his mentor George Romney, and that he still held when he left office nearly 34 years ago.

   The world changes, the winds of prevailing opinion shift, and many people--in politics and other aspects of life—judge where that change is leading to, put their finger to the breeze to see which direction its blowing, and adjust their sails to keep up with the rest of the flotilla. Their principles, their core beliefs, seem to change accordingly.

   William Milliken stands where he has pretty much always stood—a champion of tolerance and civility and equality, a man of decency and compassion and fair play; an example of public service that is worthy of emulation.

   From his northern outpost he remains a beacon to guide us if we choose to set our sail in that direction—a light that still shines—a man still relevant.

Steve Horton is a mid-Michigan journalist and editor-publisher of the Fowlerville News & Views—a weekly newspaper.