Christie Whitman

State Sen. Leonard Lance is the front-runner in his bid for the GOP nomination for Congress in the 7th district
Leonard Lance doesn’t like to use the F-word, but some pundits say it applies to him in his bid for the Republican nomination for Congress in New Jersey’s 7th district.

“I never use the word ‘frontrunner’,” said Lance, a veteran State Senator from Hunterdon County. “I think it’s a dangerous word, and I campaign as vigorously as I can.”

While Kate Whitman, the daughter of former Gov.Christine Todd Whitman, has raised the most money in the race to succeed retiring Rep. Mike Ferguson, Lance appears to have raised enough to assuage doubts about his fundraising prowess. And he has secured the organization lines in two counties where 67% of Republican primary voters live.

As of the end of last month, Lance had raised $294,130 – which includes a $100,000 personal loan -- and has $255,654 on hand for the primary. Whitman has taken in $444,433 and has $307,260 on hand, although about $50,000 of that is from maxed out donations and must be set aside for the general election.

New Jersey has become accustomed to statewide candidates dropping out of the race. Bob Torricelli dropped out twice in two years: he announced a bid for Governor in 2000 and then pulled out twelve days later, and he ended his own Senate re-election bid in 2002, five weeks before Election Day.

GOP congressional candidate Kate Whitman will formally enter the race for Mike Ferguson’s House seat tomorrow.  Her campaign says she will layout her six-point plan to “get America moving.”  Whitman, the daughter of former Governor (and PolitickerNJ.com unpaid columnist) Christine Todd Whitman, faces State Senator Leonard Lance and others in the seventh district Republican primary.

For those of you who don’t know, my daughter Kate is running for the open seat for Congress in the 7th District. I couldn’t be more proud of her, and of course I will vote for her. Unfortunately, some have been quick to judge her ­ both positively and negatively ­ on the single fact that she is my daughter. That’s why I want to share with you why Kate is more than just my daughter, and why she will make an excellent member of Congress.

PolitickerNJ.com, since February 1, 2000

Kate Whitman and Leonard Lance sought to affirm their conservative credentials at a forum for seventh district Republican congressional candidates in Clark last night. 

About eighty Republicans showed up to hear five of the contenders for the seat of four-term incumbent Mike Ferguson, who announced last year that he would not seek re-election.

Positioning himself as the social conservative in a field of pro-choice Republicans, Scotch Plains Mayor Martin Marks made it clear he is pro-life.

If she wins the June 2008 Republican primary, Anne Evans Estabrook would become the fifth woman to win a major party nomination for United States Senator. The first was Thelma Parkinson, who was just 32-years-old when Democrats nominated her to run in a Special Election for an unexpired term in 1930. She lost to Republican Dwight Morrow, the former United States Ambassador to Mexico and the father-in-law of aviator Charles Lindbergh. Parkinson, who later married State Senator Howard Sharp of Cumberland County, is the only woman to ever win a statewide Democratic primary.

New Jersey's United States Senators typically get mixed reviews in independent public opinion polls taken the year before they run for re-election.  Frank Lautenberg, with a 41%-32% approval rating in a Quinnipiac University poll earlier this week, was at 42%-42% in 1993 (Eagleton/Rutgers) and at 48%-26% in 1987 (Eagleton-Rutgers).  Bob Torricelli was at 42%-26% in 2001.

Actually, the Senator with the best approval rating was Bill Bradley in 1989: an Eagleton-Rutgers poll had him at 64%-17%.  One year later, he nearly lost his bid for re-electon, winning just 50.4% against Christine Todd Whitman in the worst showing for an incumbent U.S. Senator from New Jersey since William Smathers lost his bid for a second term in 1942.

The following appeared June 28th in The Record

GUSCIORA:  WHITMAN LACKED POLITICAL COURAGE NECESSARY TO PROTECT GROUND ZERO WORKERS

House Judiciary Subcommittee Hearing Showed Whitman More Concerned With Pleasing Bush White House than Protecting First Responders

(TRENTON) - Assemblyman Reed Gusciora today said testimony given by former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Christie Whitman about air quality in Lower Manhattan following the 9/11 terror attacks shows that she and her agency were more concerned about complying with Bush White House "spin edicts" than protecting Ground Zero workers and New York City residents.