With politicians angling to succeed Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in 2026, let’s ponder the question: Who is the coolest governor in Michigan history?
It’s certainly not Big Gretch. She gave up any claim to the title in the weeks leading up to this year’s election when she tried to be cool by bizarrely feeding someone a Dorito in the creepiest and most offensive way possible.
Jennifer Granholm might have a case based not on her tenure as governor, but because she once appeared on “The Dating Game” in 1978 wearing bib overalls and sporting a giant Farrah Fawcett hairdo. It was interesting, but it wasn’t cool.
The coolest governor in Michigan history is a guy you’ve never heard of.
Fred W. Green served as Michigan’s chief executive almost a century ago, from 1927 to 1931. He was a Republican who was born in Manistee, grew up in Cadillac, went to college in Ypsilanti, and compiled by far the coolest resume of any governor we’ve had.
He was a college football head coach, a war hero, a newspaper reporter, and the owner of a furniture company. Once he got into politics, he was fiscally responsible, he modernized Michigan’s highways, set the wheels in motion to build the Mackinac Bridge, and, with great character and compassion, led our state through one of its darkest moments.
After Green graduated from Michigan State Normal School in Ypsilanti (now Eastern Michigan University) in 1893, he started working as a reporter in Ypsilanti, and when the football team at Normal needed a head football coach in 1895, they recruited him for the job. He led his alma mater to a 4-1 record and league championship in his sole season at the helm. To this day, his .800 winning percentage ranks him as the most successful football coach in EMU history.
When the Spanish-American War broke out three years later, First Lt. Green helped lead the 31st Michigan Volunteer Infantry into battle in Cuba. A college football head coach, newspaper reporter, and war hero, all before he turned 28.
After returning from war, Green graduated from the University of Michigan Law School, served as the city attorney in Ypsilanti, and then bought a furniture company, which he moved to Ionia, where he got involved in Republican politics and was soon elected mayor. He was such a good mayor that the Republicans talked him into running for governor in 1926. He cruised to victory with 63% of the vote.
As governor, he was everything a chief executive should be: competent, visionary, compassionate.
Less than five months after taking office, Michigan endured one of the greatest tragedies in its history—the Bath school bombing. A lunatic named Andrew Kehoe bombed a school in Bath Township on May 18, 1927, killing 38 children and six adults. Green was shaken to the core but displayed incredible compassion and leadership, personally overseeing rescue operations at the scene and even digging through the rubble himself.
Green also made it a mission to modernize the state’s infrastructure (he actually did fix the damn roads), and in 1928, he commissioned a feasibility study to see if a bridge could be built connecting our two peninsulas. “Michigan needs a bridge across the Straits of Mackinac,” he said. “The project is absolutely necessary to bring the Upper Peninsula into a closer relation with the rest of the state.”
Thanks to Green getting the ball rolling, the Mackinac Bridge opened 29 years later.
He did more in his four years in office than most governors do in eight, but he was also cool. Part of being cool is that you don’t suffer fools, you don’t take crap, and you don’t let idiots get away with being idiots. That’s what Gov. Fred W. Green did in 1930.
A cop and a judge were running an absolutely ridiculous traffic scam in Brighton that year. The first automobiles came to Michigan in about 1903, and by 1930 they were everywhere. When the first roads started popping up, one of Michigan’s busiest thoroughfares was U.S. Route 16—now called Grand River Avenue—which ran from Detroit through Brighton to Grand Rapids.
In 1930, all the traffic laws in Brighton were enforced by a 21-year-old cop named Robert Cord and a 70-year-old justice of the peace named Caleb K. Collett. Back in those days, every Michigan town had a police officer and a justice of the peace. The cop wrote the tickets and made the arrests, and the justice acted as judge, jury, and sentencer.
So Cord and Collett were the law in Brighton in 1930, and they had absolutely no training, education, or experience in law enforcement.
Starting in May 1930, Cord and Collett had quite a racket going. As cars drove down Route 16, Cord started pulling over as many of them as he could, and every time, he’d write the driver a ticket for speeding.
Then when they got to court, Collett found them guilty—every single time. He didn’t listen to explanations or evidence or anything else. He would just find them guilty and fine them $5 or $10. Quite a racket.
Well, the brilliant scheme first started to go awry when Cord pulled over some test drivers from the Ford Motor Co. who were testing vehicles on Route 16. These drivers complained to the boss himself, Henry Ford, and, on one occasion, Ford was actually riding in one of the cars when Cord pulled them over.
Ford sent word to Gov. Green that there was a rogue cop in Brighton who needed to be brought under control.
Gov. Green didn’t need to be convinced by Henry Ford. He had seen it all for himself.
The governor spent a lot of time riding back and forth from Lansing to Detroit down Route 16 through Brighton.
On four separate occasions in the summer and fall of 1930, Cord pulled over the governor’s car and gave his driver a ticket. The first three times, his chauffeur said, “Do you know who I have in the backseat?” And Officer Cord replied, “Do you know I don’t care? Here’s your ticket.”
The fourth time it happened, the chauffeur lost it. When Cord pulled him over, he jumped out of the car and started going at the officer. Newspaper accounts at the time are sketchy as to whether they actually came to blows, but whatever happened, it’s clear that Gov. Green didn’t do much to intervene. It certainly sounds like somebody’s butt got kicked.
Gov. Green only had a few weeks left in office, and he decided to use the time to make things right in Brighton. He had no authority over the cop (who was appointed by the mayor), but he did have authority over the justice of the peace.
So on December 19, less than two weeks before his term ended, Gov. Green threw Caleb K. Collett out of office. “He is not conversant with the laws or procedure,” Green said. “He has had no legal training. The procedure in his court was offensive and insulting to motorists.”
Green also made it clear that he’d like to be doing the same thing to Officer Cord.
“It is regrettable that I have not the power to relegate him to the rank of a private citizen, because I am convinced that it is he, more than the justice, who is responsible for the present state of affairs,” he said.
It played out like the final scene of a movie, where the good guy slams the cuffs on the bad guys. Two weeks later, the mayor of Brighton agreed and fired Cord. The streets of Brighton were safe once again.
Fred W. Green was a badass: a college football coach who won almost every game, a war hero, a guy who envisioned the symbol of our state, someone who stood up for the little guy.
Green’s life came to an end just a few years later, on Nov. 30, 1936. He was an avid outdoorsman and suffered a heart attack while hunting. His friends all noted that it was poetic that Fred died on the final day of deer season.
With Michigan set to elect a new governor in less than two years, is there anyone on the horizon who can possibly match Fred W. Green’s coolness?
Among the Democrats, there’s Garlin Gilchrist, Mallory McMorrow, Jocelyn Benson, Pete Buttigieg (who’s not even from here, so that ain’t cool), and Mike Duggan (running as an independent currently), among others.
Duggan looks the most like Fred Green, but there’s nothing in his background to suggest anything remotely cool, so the similarity stops there.
On the Republican side, there’s Aric Nesbitt (who went to Hillsdale College, a very cool place), Tudor Dixon, Pete Hoekstra, John James (former Apache helicopter pilot), and Mike Rogers (former mob-busting FBI agent).
But Fred W. Green set a really high bar. Let’s see if anyone can top it.
Buddy Moorehouse teaches documentary filmmaking at Hillsdale College.
