Word: swainson
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...Came Back. Bagwell's opponent, John Swainson, is something of a lucky political accident. "I've been in the right place at the right time, and that's the story of my life," says he, although he has also been in some wrong places. Born in Canada, son of a low commission cooky-and-tobacco salesman, he grew up in Port Huron, Mich., got his U.S. citizenship after he joined the Army fresh out of high school in 1943. In the assault upon Metz, Private First Class Swainson volunteered for a night patrol...
Back home, Swainson enrolled in Michigan's Olivet College, met and married blonde Alice Nielsen: "She was the cutest girl in the school, and she didn't try to baby me." He took a law degree at the University of North Carolina, moved back to Detroit, started attending political meetings because "it was a good way to build up a law practice." One day in 1954, Democratic leaders casually invited him to run for the state senate. "They came around looking for someone with an impeccable background, preferably a war hero. I decided I had nothing to lose...
...check out, the odds-on favorite of pollsters and pundits to succeed him was popular Secretary of State Jim Hare, who had led the Democratic ticket in 1958. But Hare was known as an independent-thinking cuss. The unions, in a spectacular exercise of political muscle, swung behind Swainson. On primary day, 70,000 Wayne County Democrats cast "bullet" votes for Swainson; i.e., they did not even bother to vote for the other 16 contested offices on the ballot. Swainson's statewide margin of victory: just under...
...Take It Easy, Fellas." The U.A.W. and its parent Michigan A.F.L.-C.I.O. (membership: 800,000) decline to say how much money they are devoting to the cause of John Swainson and John Kennedy. There are no legal limits to their spending for the virtuous civic activity of getting out the vote. In big Macomb County, for example, the union voter-recruiting army bulges into hundreds, and the A.F.L.-C.I.O. pays a bounty of 40? for every new voter. The goal is 40,000 voters, which would cost the union $16,000. On Election Day the A.F.L.-C.I.O. will pay thousands...
Three times a day, Monday through Friday, the confident tones of U.A.W. Commentator Guy Nunn roll over the radio or TV airwaves from station CKLW in Windsor, Ont. to Greater Detroit, extolling the virtues of Swainson, Kennedy & Co. His sign-off on every show suggests a provocative philosophy of labor's role: "Take it easy, fellas-but take it." While John Swainson is the darling of the union-hall speakers' circuit, Paul Bagwell's many requests to address union locals have been turned down cold-except twice. One time, Bagwell was permitted to speak for 15 minutes...