Judy Daubenmier
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Wednes, July 26, 1995
LANSING, Mich. - George Romney, a former American Motors Corp. chairman who served seven years as Michigan's governor but saw his presidential bid collapse after he said he had been "brainwashed" over Vietnam, died Wednesday. He was 88.
Mr. Romney died at his home of natural causes, said the Oakland County medical examiner.
The dean of Republican politics in Michigan, Mr. Romney ran for the 1968 Republican presidential nomination but dropped out two weeks before the New Hampshire primary.
His campaign was dogged by his comment in a September 1967 television interview that he originally had supported the Vietnam War because he was brainwashed by the military during a tour of the country.
President Nixon later named Mr. Romney to be secretary of Housing and Urban Development, a post he held from 1969 to 1972, when he resigned to return to the private sector.
Mr. Romney's son, Mitt, a Massachusetts businessman, waged a tough but unsuccessful challenge to Sen. Ted Kennedy's 1994 bid for re-election.
Mr. Romney's political rise began in 1962 when he defeated incumbent John Swainson to break a 14-year Democratic hold on Michigan's governorship. He was re-elected in 1964 and then elected in 1966 to a four-year term and served until resigning to join the Nixon cabinet.
After leaving politics, Mr. Romney devoted his time to promoting volunteerism. He continued to endorse Republican candidates, but often complained that candidates no longer discussed issues for fear of offending voters.
"We no longer have a republic. We have a special interest pork-barrel democracy and we haven't adjusted our institutions to that fact," he said in 1989.
Mr. Romney, a college dropout, combined a successful business career with his political record.
In 1948 he joined Nash-Kelvinator Corp., the forerunner of American Motors Corp., and oversaw the marketing of the first successful compact economy car on the U.S. market - the Rambler.
He became chairman and president of AMC in 1954, but resigned in 1962 to run for governor.
George Wilken Romney was born July 8, 1907, in Chihuahua, Mexico, where his parents and other Mormons had moved to avoid U.S. laws against polygamy.
He grew up in Idaho and Salt Lake City, where he met his future wife, Lenore, while in high school. They were married seven years later, in 1931.
Mr. Romney attended four colleges, but never graduated. He spent two years as a Mormon missionary in England and Scotland.
Mr. Romney and his wife had four children.
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