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Vol. LXXXIX, No. 146 Ann Arbor, Michigan-Tuesday, April 3, 1979 Ten Cents Ten Pages plus Supplement
Belcher re-elected over Kenworthy;
GOP hangs on to council maj
By ELISA ISAACSON
Republican Mayor Louis
will hold his seat for another tw
edging out his opponent, D
Jamie Kenworthy, 49 per c
per cent, according to u
results.
Belcher, had confident
predicting victory ever since'
a,':a paign began,
... KENWORTHY TOOK the le
as the first results trinkled
stayed ahead of Belcher throw
Sof the evening. But late lastr
the final results from Rer
dominated Fifth Ward precinc
in, Kenworthy's lead
. .:diminished.
w The vote count was prolo
. . . . . ,unexpected complications with
f -- punchcard voting system.I
. workers were forced to count
the computer cards by han
magnifying glasses in some cas
Belcher had touted his ow
during the campaign, citing his
patching program and city/I
T boundary agreements as tw
\ ,major achievements. The ma
orit
served only one year at his post, since
he won in a special election that was
Belcher held after Belcher challenged the
wo years, results of the 1977 race in which he lost
emocrat by a single vote.
'ent to 48 AFTER A RECOUNT of those votes,
nofficial it was discovered that 20 Ann Arbor
Township members had voted illegally
ly been in the city election. When a new election
the cam- was held, Belcher beat then-Mayor
Democrat Albert Wheeler by 179 votes.
ad early At the Democratic watering hole,
in, and Bacchus Gardens, Kenworthy was ad-
ugh most dressed by three inquisitive youngsters
night, as who asked him the meaning of the
)ublican- "Kenworthy For Mayor" button on his
cts came lapel. "The tag means I'm running for
slowly mayor," the former Councilman ex-
plained ruefully. "It doesn't
necessarily mean I'm going to be
nrged by mao.
h the new
Election "I have no bitterness," Kenworthy
some of said while the results were still far from
d, using tallied. "I'm glad I did this. I under-
ses. stand the people who voted against me
more than those who didn't vote. I won-
n record der how they connect themselves with
s pothole the rest of the world."
township "I like the students and I think I un-
o of his derstand them. I argue with their
ayor has mood."
Hood, Senunas,
Daily photos by Andy Freeberg and Dan Oberdorfer
MAYOR LOUIS BELCHER calculates election returns last night at a party defeated Democrat Jamie Kenworthy'(inset) by a slim margin.
celebrating his return to office for a second term. The Republican mayor
GOP WIN INDICATES CONSERVATION TREND:
Be.iche r
By ELISA ISAACSON
A Daily News Analysis
Carrying the conservative trend of
.the late seventies into the next decade,
Ann Arbor last night re-installed its
Republican mayor, Louis Belcher.
The GOP victory came as no real
surprise; among other reasons,
Belcher is the incumbent, Ann Arbor is
traditionally a Republican town, and
yesterday's drizzles were bound to keep
at least a few Democrats away from the
polls. But those basic premises do not
tell half the story.
BELCHER DISPLAYS both strong
leadership abilities and a bowling-
buddy image that are comforting and
attractive to a good many voters.
focus{
Belcher has proven his effic
guiding City Council meeting
evidenced by the fact that he
adjourns the meetings befor
unlike his predecessor, Albert M
who allowed audience parti
sessions to go on far beyond mid
Belcher has been visibly un
table at times when extensive
stalled decisions at Council
many voters respond positivel
mayor's policy of getting a j
quickly.
Kenworthy, on the other
always manages to make issu
complex than his opponent
Belcher began patching potho
mediately upon his election la
Kenworthy told voters that th
onquick s
iency in cannot be fixed right away, due to lack
s - as of adequate funds, and proposed a more
usually comprehensive and time:consuming
e 11:30, road renovation program.
Wheeler, Belcher responds to questions with
cipation snappy, streamlined, and easy-to-
night. understand answers. By contrast,
olutions
comfor-
debate
- and
y to the
ob done
r hand,
es more
. While
oles im-
ist year,
e streets
city elections '79
Kenworthy's responses are often more
belabored and detailed than those of his
counterpart.
The Ann Arbor that Kenworthy
described to the voters was in some
ways not as nice a place to live as the
Ann Arbor Belcher presented,
Belcher's instant answers imply that
the city's problems can be solved with
the signing of a paper or the raising of a
hand in vote. And indeed, with his "do-
it-today" style of operating, he can of-
ten push those decisions through com-
mittees and Council and give the
citizens the results they voted to see,
whether or not those results are merely
short-term solutions to long-range
problems.
Ann Arborites like to think their city
is fiscally stable and healthy, and may
have felt uncomfortable listening to
Kenworthy telling them that the city's
problems cannot be solved painlessly,
but will require careful consideration
and monetary investment.
Even Belcher has said that Kenwor-
thy is not in tune with many of the Ann
Arbor voters in this sense. In a conser-
vative city - which is what Ann Arbor
is apparently becoming, with the dwin-
dling of the student vote and the in-
creasingly right-of-center character of
See CITY, Page 10
Latta. Bell
Republicans will continue their over-
whelm ing 7-4 domination of city council
for at least another year, with the vic-
tory of incumbent E. Edward Hood in
the Fourth ,Ward, and the expected
strong showings by GOP incumbents
Louis Senunas in the Third and Gerald
Bell in the Fifth Ward.-
Democratic incumbent Ken Latta
won handily in the student-dominated
First Ward, and Councilwoman Leslie
Morris was unopposed in her reelection
bid.
THE TOP-HEAVY Republican 7-4
majority is significant, since it takes
seven council votes to alter the city's
budget.
And once again, the unpredictable
Fourth Ward proved to be a predictor of
the citywide voting patterns for mayor.
Hood narrowly beat challenger LeRoy
Cappaert in that ward, while Mayor
Louis Belcher was beating Democrat
Jamie Kenworthy in late night unof-
ficial results.
The Republican incumbents, Louis
Senunas and Gerald Bell, captured the
traditionally Republican provinces in
the Third and Fifth Ward, respectively.
Senunas resisted a vigorous campaign
by 27-year-old Democrat Halley Faust,
2,838-1,831. Senunas' 1,000-vote margin
was narrower than expected for this
staunchly Republican ward. Never-
victorious
theless, the Third Ward maintains its
distinction of never having elected a
Democrat since the ward system was
revised in 1973. Two years ago, Senunas
defeated his Democrat opponent by a
solid 2-1 count.
sGerald Bell's Fifth Ward victory over
31-year-old Democrat Carol Wallace by
1,312-1,249, signals the start of his third
consecutive council term, making Bell
City Council's senior representative..
Wallace, however, had attacked Bell'
for initiating few measures of his own
during his terms and for merely
mimicking Republican Mayor Louis
Belcher's positions. Bell, joined other
Republican candidates in emphasizing
the centrality of the citizen agner over
rising taxes, recently inspired by
greatly increased property tax
assessments for many Ann Arbor
homeowners. Bell stressed the tax bur-
den for senior citizens particularly:
"They have worked all their lives and
(now) have been taxed out of their
See CITY, Page 10
This story was written by Jeffrev
Wolff from files from Judy
Rako wsky and A lison Hirschel at
Democratic headquarters and from
Adrienne Lyons and Tom Mirga at
Republican headquarters.
Crisis eases at nuclear plant;
engineers shrink gas bubble
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) -
Engineers achieved a "dramatic
decrease" yesterday in a gas bubble
that has held a stranglehold on efforts
to cool down the disabled Three Mile
Island nuclear reactor.
Plant and federal officials said the
hydrogen bubble had shrunk to a much
safer size and the reactor's tem-
perature had dropped significantly.
"I AM CERTAIN it is cause for op-
timism," said Harold Denton, Nuclear
Regulatory Commission (NRC)
operations chief. He said the bubble
was showing "a dramatic decrease in
size."
"I didn't expect such a rapid
change," Denton said of the bubble. "I
think it is safer than yesterday."
Local Civil Defense officials, hopeful
that the changes meant that the five-
day crisis here had passed, never-
theless maintained efforts to prepare
for a precautionary evacuation of 25,000
residents still within a five-mile radius
of the plant.
BUT THE signals were clear. The
situation had improved substantially.
Yesterday, technicians continued ef-
fort to eliminate the bubble com-
pletely, chiefly by the method they have
been using all along - letting the gas
dissolve in the constantly circulating
cooling water and then allowing it to
escape from the water outside the reac-
tor. Technicians also studied options on
exactly how to achieve the "cold shut-
down" which would go a long way to
ending the crisis.
George Troffer, an official with
Metropolitan Edison, which operates-
the facility, said radioactive releases
had been halted at the site.
AND NRC'S Denton said that
radiation beaming from the plant was a
low levels in a confined area.
The latest developments gave of-
ficials more time to cool down the reac-
tor. The critical time for a possible ex-
plosion from a chemical reaction within
the reactor "has moved considerably
out" from the five days Denton had
predicted on Sunday, he said.
It was the most encouraging
statement to date from the NRC since
Wednesday's accident, which had led
the governor to urge pre-school
children and pregnant women to stay
See CRISIS, Page 5
Tuesd1ay
" The nation faces the
possibility of severe economic
disruptions as a lockout of over
300,000 Teamsters spread across
the country. See story, page 2.
" Noted economist John Ken-
neth Galbraith is calling on the
Carter administration to institute
mandatory wage and price con-
trols. And in a speech Sunday in
Ann Arbor, Galbraith told a
crowd ut it 1Auditoriuum that the
2,000 party
Although most University students
boycotted the event, over two thousand
people. celebrated the eighth annual
Hash Bash on the Diag Sunday after-
noon.
Despite cold winds and a steady driz-
zle, the crowd swelled throughout the
afternoon. Roads were jammed around
campus, and local food and liquor
stores were unusually busy for a Sun-
day afternoon.
LIEUTENANT William Hoover of the
Ann Arbor Police Department reported
over a hundred "code violation"
citations issued by the more than 40 of-
ficers at the scene. These included
marijuana possession and drinking-
related offenses. In addition, Hoover
said that more than 80 illegally parked
cars were towed.
"It was a crowd of people, many of
whom were breaking laws," Hoover
said yesterday. "And we were there to
see what we could do to enforce (the ra)"
In contrast to the more relaxed at-
mospheres of past years, tension and
hostility prevailed throughout the Bash.
The crowd, packed tightly on the Diag
and Graduate Library steps, chanted
occasional pro-marijuana slogans, and
cheered when signs were displayed
supporting the cause of legalized pot.
Between these-times, they cheered for
at Hash Bash
LSA faculty abolis hes
its quorum rule.
By LEONARD BERNSTEIN
and JOHN SINKEVICS
After recessing to "corral" ad-
ditional professors into coming to its
meeting, the Literary College (LSA)
faculty narrowly passed a resolution
esterday defining "quorum" as the
mber of members present at any
meeting. However, some student ob-
taking action on various issues," said
Willis in introducing his proposal. "It
has wasted our time intolerably."
When the meeting was first brought
to order by Speech Professor William
Colburn - presiding in place of Dean
Billy Frye - the faculty had not
reached a quorum. They reviewed non-
voting items and rejected by one vote a
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