Christie Whitman, Relic of the Eastern GOP
Carlson, Tucker
Christie Whitman, Relic of the Eastern GOP By Tucker Carlson One Saturday afternoon this fall, New Jersey governor Christine Todd Whitman took the podium in the ballroom of the Cherry Hill...
...Sabrin, who now teaches finance at Ramapo College, is articulate, sane, and very opposed to abortion...
...I've appointed more African-Americans to the bench than any governor before me," Whitman said, launching into a statistical breakdown of her commitment to affirmative action...
...Like all incumbents, she has been forced to argue simultaneously that things on her watch have been great, and that they desperately need to get better...
...Whitman has become a kind of Republican Daniel Ortega—her fame and popularity outside her constituency have masked the rumblings of dissatisfaction within it...
...Although she is self-assured and verbally quick, Whitman on the stump can still come off as icy...
...The governor's opponent, on the other hand, is neither tired nor unfocused...
...Christie Whitman might even be elected again...
...The only way to get conservative change is to show that you can't run Republicans like Christie Whitman...
...Under criticism from Florio in 1993, in fact, Whitman broke new ground in victi-mology by comparing the plight of those born rich to that of oppressed minority groups...
...Whitman can point to the dramatic tax cuts she delivered early (ahead of schedule, actually) in her first term...
...One issue McGreevey has not been able to use against Whitman is abortion...
...Four years ago, Whitman won about a quarter of the black vote in New Jersey— 50,000 votes in an election that was decided by 26,000—so it wasn't an unimportant question...
...so are its property taxes...
...Whitman looked on imperiously, visibly bored and impatient...
...What happened...
...Just like in partial-birth abortion...
...Enter Murray Sabrin, a former real-estate salesman and radio-talk-show host who is running for governor on the Libertarian ticket...
...Going door-to-door to introduce himself to voters (many of whom still have never heard of him), McGreevey thinks nothing of throwing his arm around the neck of a homeowner and asking what's for dinner, or checking up on the latest football scores...
...Corny...
...Governor WhitTucker Carlson is a staff writer for The Weekly Standard...
...Impressive as those cuts were, however, they're now part of history, not the foundation of a new political program...
...Whitman herself won't speculate on what has gone wrong—her weak poll numbers are meaningless, she claims, since "voters aren't going to give away who they're going to vote for before the election"—but chances are, she doesn't know...
...So she is left with something of a tepid message...
...Certainly," she replied, her head down...
...Moreover, unlike pro-choice Republicans such as George Pataki and Steve Forbes, Whitman has gone out of her way to alienate religious conservatives...
...An elderly woman seated near the stage played with her soup and fiddled with her nose, while throughout the room knots of people engaged in less-than-hushed conversation...
...After a speech at the opening of a pharmaceutical plant a couple of weeks ago, a reporter asked Whitman why, despite her enthusiasm for affirmative action, fewer than 10 percent of blacks polled said they planned to vote for her...
...McGreevey, a 40-year-old state senator who is also mayor of the town of Woodbridge, has not deviated from three simple themes: New Jersey's car-insurance rates are the highest in the nation...
...According to his consultant, Rick Shaf-tan, that's okay by Sabrin...
...There's a good deal of falsehood in the last claim—Whitman cannot directly control insurance rates, and she has almost nothing to do with property taxes, which are collected at the local level— but McGreevey has sold it well nonetheless...
...The commercial, Shaftan says, will show voters that, in this race, Sabrin is the conservative, Whitman, the liberal...
...Whitman's speech should have been a big hit at the NAACP luncheon...
...Whitman seems particularly naive about black voters...
...The old man, clearly nervous, stumbled over his words several times...
...Over the course of the last four years, the governor said proudly, "10 percent of all my appointments were African American...
...If she loses, people will know you have to be conservative to win...
...Whitman went on to remind the crowd of her "Many Faces, One Family" racial-diversity initiative, her opposition to bills that would outlaw affirmative action, and her efforts to set aside more state contracts for black-owned businesses...
...She skipped the opening jokes and got directly to the point...
...We're going to have footage of this baby sitting in a crib...
...The woman who just three years ago made People magazine's list of the 25 "most intriguing" figures in America is now fighting hard to fend off a challenge from Democrat Jim McGreevey, an until-recently-anony-mous state senator no one will ever accuse of being intriguing...
...Indeed, her struggle to keep her job caught most opinion merchants unprepared...
...Yet the audience did not seem particularly interested...
...Instead, Whitman has, with all the moral conviction of a socially conscious Junior Leaguer, spent a lot of her time keeping the state current with every possible trend in the fields of addiction, recovery, and tolerance...
...Perhaps, but few of them have taken place in New Jersey's largely black cities, which remain among the most depressing urban areas in the country...
...The governor, for her part, has never responded well to attacks on her wealth and background...
...We don't want Whitman to win," Shaftan says...
...Without those proposals—specifically the promise to reduce taxes by 30 per-cent—her opponent Jim Florio would still be governor of New Jersey...
...For a moment, Whitman looked confused, then sheepish...
...In a state with a long tradition of government nannyism—it is illegal for motorists in New Jersey to pump their own gas—Whitman's kindergarten-teacher approach to politics may win her some support...
...Now she may lose over an issue as prosaic and local as car-insurance rates...
...At a well-publicized event in October, staged outside an abortion clinic in Englewood, Sabrin was endorsed by the state's largest anti-abortion groups, including New Jersey Right to Life...
...We've done some extraordinary things...
...Shaftan gets excited as he visualizes the spot...
...Whitman pressed on bravely...
...A glass case outside Whitman's office in the capitol building in Trenton, for example, is crammed with materials promoting the state's Domestic Violence Workplace Education Day...
...One pamphlet lists the "male and female responsibilities in a dating relationship...
...Start condemning people for their money," warned Whitman, "and it's not too far before you allow them to start condemning people for their color and their race...
...Included on the check list: "I will recognize and accept my own needs and honor them...
...And it serves to highlight the class differences between him, the son of a union worker, and Whitman, who not long ago reported an investment income of $4 million in one year...
...By almost any calculation, his presence in the race hurts Whitman...
...It's not a bad analysis, but it does make predicting the outcome of the governor's race tricky...
...It was only six months ago that Whitman was being hailed as the Future of the Republican Party...
...Under other circumstances, behavior like this might not matter (candidates less gracious than Christie Whitman have been elected governor of bigger states than New Jersey), but in this race it does, mostly because Whitman doesn't have much to run on...
...Then, all of a sudden, it gets vaporized...
...Our progress so far has been good, but I know we can do more," Whitman says, sounding a little like a tired Bob Dole...
...Not surprisingly, Rep...
...Christie Whitman may end up winning the governor's race in November, but she has lost a great deal of her appeal, at least with voters in New Jersey...
...But only some...
...It wasn't until six weeks before the last election, in 1993, that her economic advisers convinced her to announce her now-famous tax-cut proposals...
...Shaftan says that the Sabrin campaign, which has qualified for state matching funds, will soon go up with ads attacking Whitman's stance on abortion...
...She recently vetoed a bill in the legislature that would have banned partial-birth abortion in New Jersey...
...Whitman dismissed it with a smile...
...Although he has degrees from Columbia, Georgetown, and Harvard, McGreevey does an unusually good imitation of a blue-collar worker...
...And she seemed to be making some headway, her voice growing impassioned as she explained the need to save inner-city children, when an NAACP official cut her off in mid-thought...
...and both of these sad facts are the fault of Gov...
...Whitman's descent has been steep and quick...
...Whitman has long been strident in her pro-choice views, once telling a reporter that the only Republicans she would refuse to campaign for are those running on anti-abortion platforms...
...At a recent ceremony at which she received the endorsement of a New Jersey veterans group, Whitman (who arrived 35 minutes late and never apologized) stood with her hands clasped as a former prisoner of war in an American Legion hat read a lengthy introduction...
...Can a Republican who acts like a Democrat beat a Democrat in a state that voted overwhelmingly for a Democratic president who acts like Republican...
...Fortunately for Whitman, McGreevey voted against the bill, too...
...Sure...
...Who knows what could happen in a political climate like that...
...Murray's like every Republican I know," Shaftan says, "except for Christie Whitman, who's like every Democrat I know...
...Whitman can hardly promise to lop another 30 percent off state taxes over the next four years...
...Dick Gephardt was one of the first nationally known Democrats to stump for him in New Jersey...
...Christie Whitman, Relic of the Eastern GOP By Tucker Carlson One Saturday afternoon this fall, New Jersey governor Christine Todd Whitman took the podium in the ballroom of the Cherry Hill Sheraton to deliver a speech to the state chapter of the NAACP Locked in a dead heat a month before Election Day, with much of the state's black vote still undecided, Whitman was eager to make a good impression...
...But it works in New Jersey...
...When I was walking in Newark the other day, a woman came up and gave me a big hug to say 'thank you,'" she replied enthusiastically, as if this explained everything...
...Of my 75 judicial appointments to the superior, tax, and supreme-court benches, 15 percent have been minorities," including, she said, "a very special first," a black justice on the state supreme court...
...Sabrin is now polling at almost 10 percent...
...Whitman has never been a skilled reader of the voting public...
...man," barked an impatient voice from offstage, "could you please wrap up your opening statement...
...He has a thick regional accent, brags about being "born on the sacred soil of Jersey City," and has the same class-based politics as the labor bosses he often hugs at speaking events...
...In a state with such a large Catholic population, her veto could have damaged her politically...
...McGreevey is also skilled in retail politics in a way that Whitman could never be...
Vol. 3 • November 1997 • No. 8
