Chrysler CEO LaSorda Wows the Island Conference, We Make Nice with the Gov
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Tom LaSorda, Chrysler chief, holds court in the Governor's Suite at the Grand Hotel. (Photo by Dolores Barron-Rogers)
When you ask most people who Tom LaSorda is, they answer: "Sure, the baseball manager."
There's a new LaSorda in town and baseball is not his game. He's the President and CEO of the Chrysler Group of Daimler-Chrysler AG and he's hitting home runs of a different sort.
Mr. LaSorda was on "the island" this week for the Mackinac Policy Conference of the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce.
Along with about 1,700 business bigwigs and little wannabes. And every politician in the state worth a pinch of fudge.
It was a $2,000 per head event that grows every year; pretty soon they may have to put a new porch on the Grand Hotel to handle the crowd.
This was the kind of conference where you're sitting having lunch with your wife and the governor walks by trailing an entourage.
She seemed to acknowledge Dolores with a slight nod, but we figured it wasn't recognition but just the guv trying to get a better look at Dolores' colorful new jacket we picked up in Mackinaw City.
After 15 or 20 times campaigning in Bay City the gov should know everyone in town on a first-name basis. But she was in a hurry and had a mission: a short happy talk with a guy named DeVos. PS-We heard she came out a winner.
Paul W. Smith, WJR Radio gab artist, whizzed by, too, microphone in hand. Rumor has it he's coming back to Bay City to broadcast another John Lore Coffee Hour at the DoubleTree Show during the Tall Ships Festival in July.
Afterall of our intimate contact with the governor came a cozy news conference, in the governor's suite no less, conducted by Mr. LaSorda with a handful of newspaper, wire service and radio-tv reporters. With all those reporters milling around, we don't thinkGov. Granholm was actually staying in the Governor's Suite.
We were lucky to get invited as a freelance representative of an international news service, Reuters, that just happened to get caught with only three reporters and half a dozen breaking news stories that day.
I had been a "stringer" with Reuters before, in the early 1960s when Defoe Shipbuilding Co. had several destroyers on the ways here for the Royal Australian Navy. Those days I had to phone London, or New Zealand or Brisbane or someplace with the story.
On the trip this week I just had to elbow my way into a pressroom run by AT&T, fight off several dozen other reporters to get to a laptop in a room full of laptops, battle the Internet, which kept crashing, and pound out my notes to send to the bureau chief in Detroit.
A half-hour news conference and five or nerve-wracking six hours trying to get the stuff on the Internet and I was done. Nothing to it.
Then, it's time to enjoy the island. Whoops, the boat is leaving. We grabbed a quick dinner at the Chippewa Hotel and caved in for a batch of fudge and ice cream dockside and before you could say "Tom LaSorda" were headed back down I-75.
What did we learn in all this?
1-Buy Chrysler stock; this guy LaSorda really seems to know what he is talking about, be it international currency manipulation, auto company finances, technology, productivity, labor relations -- you name it.
2-If you see a story by Reuters out of Detroit it will be thoroughly researched and well written; they've got a Harvard honors grad named Kevin Krolicki at the helm who has spent tours in Tokyo and Los Angeles.
3-Go to Mackinac Island if you get a chance. It is the greatest place on earth to vacation once you get past the fourth graders from the UP elementary school who jammed our ferry.
4-Buy stuff in Mackinaw City; the prices are great but the Post Office is hard to find even though it's on the main drag.
5-If you want to be a reporter, buy a tape recorder. It's the only way to get the quotes absolutely straight and saves your life when the Internet goes down.
By the way, a few Chrysler facts. Mr. LaSorda was appointed president and CEO for the Chrysler Group in September 2005 and board of management member, DaimlerChrysler AG in July 2005.
He is responsible for the worldwide operations of Chrysler, Jeep and Dodge. Prior to joining DaimlerChrysler in 2000, LaSorda was employed by General Motors, which he joined in 1977. There he served as president of Opel Eisenach GMBH in Germany 1991.
The big story was that the Big Three are going to press Washington to raise heck with the Japanese and Chinese about currency manipulation that gives them a 30 percent edge in exports.
Mr. LaSorda had an especially telling prediction about the nation's need for alternative energy: "I would bet on the next generation having energy independence and security where people are staying at home instead of going abroad to fight."
Another angle is that Chrysler will soon be making a diesel Jeep Grand Cherokee with a Mercedes diesel engine at the Jefferson North Assembly Plant in Detroit.
Who said Michigan is all washed up?###
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