Christie Whitman

LIVINGSTON -- Republican gubernatorial candidate Chris Christie returned to the town he grew up in to rally the Republican faithful one last time before polls open tomorrow morning.

Addressing a crowd of about 200 in an ornate catering hall four doors down from his childhood home, Christie gave a variation of the stump speech he’s given countless  times across the state.  But he peppered it with references to his home town and the fact that he had known some in the audience for decades.”

“Thee foundation was laid here. Everything that has happened up ‘til now, everything that will happen tomorrow night and everything that will happen the years after – all of that was laid right here in Livingston, this wonderful place where I grew up,” said Christie.  “…I don’t know whether any of us could have possibly imagined that a day like today could actually come for one of us.  But here it is, and like it or not, it’s me,” said Christie.  

Christie also explicitly hit Gov. Jon Corzine on the outsider status that his campaign has hinted at for months.

“Is there any way in hell we’re going to let a guy from Illinois beat a guy from Livingston tonight?” he said.

Read More >

I received a number of responses to my PolitickerNJ.com column last week.  In that column, I asserted that in order to win the gubernatorial election, Chris Christie must offer a property tax reduction platform.  One responder contended that if Christie followed my advice, he would lose the election in similar fashion to GOP gubernatorial candidate Ray Bateman in 1977.

In that campaign, Bateman propounded the Bateman-Simon plan to eliminate the New Jersey income tax, which had been enacted by the legislature and signed by Governor Brendan Byrne during 1976.  The 1977 Bateman-Simon proposal, however, does not in any way resemble the two-principle property tax platform I advocated last week.  

My contention is that if Chris Christie advocates a credible and coherent property tax platform, he will be elected as Governor on November 3, in similar fashion to Christie Whitman’s 1993 triumph over the then-incumbent Governor Jim Florio.  If the current GOP Gubernatorial nominee fails to do so, he may lose, in almost the exact same manner that 1948 GOP Presidential nominee Tom Dewey lost his lead and ultimately the election to the then incumbent, President Harry S. Truman.

Read More >

SOMERSET - The First Baptist Church of Lincoln Gardens dominates the streetscape in this gritty stretch of Franklin that laps at the edges of New Brunswick, and at the pulpit on a Monday night, where summer Bible study has packed the outsized parking lot and filled the rows with congregants, the Rev. Pastor DeForest "Buster" Soaries Jr. opens the Good Book and urges scrutiny of a certain passage.  
 
Simultaneously, in the enclosures of political power, Gov. Jon Corzine and his allies are squinting extra hard at one of Soaries' church members: Dr. Randal Pinkett, a technology consultant, Rhodes scholar, family man, nice guy, cunning victor of Donald Trump's reality TV show "The Apprentice," and celebrity, who lives here in Franklin on the other side of town.

Pinkett's also studying Corzine - and the political situation around Corzine - to determine if he wants to run and potentially serve as the state's first lieutenant governor.

"I recommended Randal," Soaries tells PolitickerNJ.com when the pastor repairs to his chambers after delivering his sermon. "If he can afford to do it, I thought he'd be a great, fresh face. I gave Randal his first contract here. He's thoroughly honest. The fact that he doesn't have any government experience when it comes to New Jersey politics, I think is a blessing. Of course, our trouble is that pay-to-play is built into the fabric of New Jersey politics. The fact that Randal is pure - from a political perspective - is refreshing."

Soaries knows this game.

Read More >

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson has been granted cabinet level status in Barack Obama’s administration – as Christie Whitman when George W. Bush was President.  But the EPA is not a cabinet level department and Jackson will lack some of the legal duties of a cabinet member.  Jackson is not in the line of presidential succession and would not have a vote if the cabinet discussed invoking the 25th amendment.

The last New Jerseyan in the line of succession was Michael Chertoff, who was 18th during his tenure as U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security. 

Click here to view a list of New Jerseyans who have served in the President’s cabinet. Read More >

The NJ Voices interview with John Farmer, the new Editorial Page editor of the Star-Ledger, is a must-read for the New Jersey political community.  Farmer says he’s an Independent (a political “agnostic”) who voted for George W. Bush in 2000 “because I don't believe in giving any one party more than eight years in office.”

On the Star-Ledger’s political leanings:

“The editorials over the past eight years have been largely liberal.  But that's as much a function of events as it is of any internal inclination of the paper.  Largely, it's been a reaction to the record of the Bush administration. He hasn't given us much to cheer. We supported him quite enthusiastically after 9/11. But as the record of the Bush administration has unfolded, we've been pretty critical.”

On newspapers competing with the Internet:

Read More >

BLOOMINGTON, Minn. – Former Gov. Christie Whitman said that it’s a sad state of affairs that she was the last New Jersey Republican elected statewide.

“This is kind of sad. I’m the last Republican to carry New Jersey. That’s not where we want to be as a state, and we have an opportunity to change that,” she said at the state’s delegation breakfast this morning.

Whitman is far from the most popular Republican in New Jersey, but she received a standing ovation after her remarks, in which she said that she’d never experienced so much enthusiasm at a Republican convention and that John McCain could potentially lead Republicans back to statewide control.

Read More >

BLOOMINGTON, Minn. -- Former Gov. Christie Whitman, who left office during her second term after she was appointed to head the Environmental Protection Agency, said this morning that she thinks John McCain is right on the offshore drilling question.

Whitman said that offshore drilling is worth looking into, as long as it’s up to the states themselves. 

“(McCain) did put a provision in his bill to allow states to have the final word, and that to me is the important thing,” said Whitman as she was leaving the New Jersey delegation’s breakfast.  “We’re the only industrialized nation in the world that is not using all of its resources.  We can not keep saying we care about the price of oil, we’re worried about our energy, where it’s going to come from, and we want to continue to grow.  But we can’t drill, we don’t want to have any coal, we can’t have nuclear, we really don’t like wind power off the coast of Nantucket.  We can’t keep saying no to everything.”

Read More >

Three Somerset County Democrats hope to succeed outgoing Chairman Elia Pelios tomorrow.

Peg Schaffer, Mike Ceponis and Rebecca Perkins all hope to reinvigorate the party, which has struggled over the last couple decades to overcome complete Republican domination.

Schaffer, who’s backed by Pelios, appears to be the favorite, with state Democratic sources saying they expect her to be the next chairwoman.  But her opponents have used that against her, saying that electing her to the top position will essentially be a continuation of the last 10 years under Pelios.

Read More >

Congressional candidate Kate Whitman is joined by her mother, former Gov. Christie Whitman, at a dinner in Scotch Plains
SCOTCH PLAINS - A familiar face joined 7th District Congressional candidate Kate Whitman as she trailed through diners along US-22 today, her mother former Gov. Christie Whitman.

"I thought I was done with this," the former governor said jokingly. Her public presence, only the second time in this campaign, lent a familiar face to voters who seemed to be caught off guard that today was Primary Day.

"I didn't even know she was running for anything," Cindy Soloway of Scotch Plains told PolitickerNJ.com, "What is she running for?"

When one diner asked Whitman who else was running, Whitman raised her right hand and swiftly rattled off the names of her 6 opponents, "Its me, Leonard Lance, Kelly Hatfield…" she continued, counting her finger tips.

Read More >

This one is interesting: former Governor Christine Todd Whitman and the Republican Leadership Council (RLC) is taking sides in the Republican primary for Burlington County Clerk and Freeholder.  Whitman is backing Lauri Sheppard for County Clerk,  and Jon Shevelew and Debbie Sarcone for Freeholder.  The three are challenging the candidates backed by the powerful Burlington County Republican organization, which is run by two onetime Whitman allies, County Chairman Bill Layton and the de facto party leader, Glenn Paulsen.

Read More >