Word: whitmans
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...Jersey Governor Christie Whitman's campaign is in trouble, but you wouldn't know it from the breezy air and Ralph Lauren setting of her latest television commercial. The Governor strolls through rolling hills and lush gardens, tossing a football with her family. Taylor Whitman, 18, sporting a blue button-down shirt and crisp chinos, praises his mother's integrity while posing in front of a well-landscaped flower bed. Kate Whitman, 20, talks about the candidate's ability to "forget all the political stuff and be a mom" while ambling past a hunt-country-style wooden fence in tennis...
...wasn't supposed to be this way. Since she was elected Governor four years ago, Whitman has become a pillar of moderate Republicanism, the first woman to deliver a State of the Union response and a frequently mentioned candidate for Vice President. Her state is flying high, with unemployment at a seven-year low and welfare rolls cut 31%. And she is good on the stump: parents constantly push squirming children into her arms and whip out Instamatics to record the moment for posterity. But despite it all, Whitman's bid for re-election is fast shaping...
...Whitman's Democratic opponent is James McGreevey, a state senator and mayor of Woodbridge (pop. 93,000), the state's fifth largest city. McGreevey has made up for a lack of statewide name recognition with an energetic campaign focused on the weakest parts of Whitman's record: property taxes and auto insurance. New Jersey's electorate has a habit of choosing its politicians on pocketbook issues. "It's an expensive state to live in, and people are concerned about money being taken out of their wallets for any reason," explains pollster Mark Mellman. New Jersey leads the nation in average...
McGreevey contends that Whitman had four years to find a way to brake the runaway insurance premiums, without results. Whitman responds that she has a good plan now, which would lower rates for drivers who agree in most cases not to sue for pain-and-suffering damages. She condemns McGreevey's proposal, in which he would simply order insurance companies to roll back rates, as unconstitutional. On the property-tax battlefront, McGreevey charges that Whitman's much celebrated cuts in state taxes have forced property taxes up by shifting the revenue-raising burden to school districts and other local authorities...
...Whitman loses and Weld and Wilson no longer take active roles in national politics, the damage will manifest itself in two areas. Their absence from the national scene will deny moderate Republicans the proof they need to believe that their brand of candidate can win and govern effectively. And the fate of the 2000 nomination will remain even more firmly in the hands of the conservative Religious Right...