Question about New Jersey Republicans

[JSojourner]

Hey all -- maybe this belongs in a history thread or individual politics.  But since we're talking about two governors, I planted it here.

Christine Todd Whitman and Tom Kean, Senior have both -- at various times -- impressed me as intelligent, capable and reasonably in control of the facts at hand.  I haven't always agreed with them, but they struck me as fair.

Were they popular New Jersey governors?  Were their governorships rocked by any sort of ethical scandals?  (There are none that I can remember.)  Were/Are they popular within their own state party?  Did they work well with the opposition?

I realize a lot of eastern seaboard states that are now quite blue (or Red on Planet Leip! LOL) were once strongly Republican -- back in the fiscal conservative, socially moderate days of the GOP.  But Kean and Whitman are hardly from the Rockefeller era.

Thoughts about either or both?  Especially looking to my New Jersey friends here...but all of you have at it...

[Keystone Phil]

Kean was very popular and worked well with the Dems. In fact, he became the first minority party Speaker of a state legislature in American history (my boss was the second ). Whitman really wasn't and she definitely isn't popular within the NJ GOP anymore. The Kean's (both Senior or Junior) remain popular though.

The only scandal I remember form the Whitman days was her infamous photo of her patting down a black suspect which led to a big racial profiling debate.

[DownWithTheLeft]

I disagree with your point of Whitman and Kean not being Rockefeller Republicans.  They certainly were not strong conservatives (both pro-choice if I am correct).  None were really plagued by scandals, but Christie Whitman did name a Parkway stop after Howard Stern

One thing that always intrigued me was the razor sharp margins Whitman won by:

1997: Whitman v. McGreevey was seperated by less than a % (L Sabrin drew 4%)
1993: Whitman v. Florio was seperated by just over a % despite Florio's incredibly unpopularity.

Kean ran close races too I believe, but he certainly is the more popular of the two.  His popularity has also increased greatly since he left office

[Verily]

Kean... too young to remember. But I imagine he's remembered fondly by those who remember him, for the most part.

Whitman is not remembered fondly and was never very popular. She always had a problem with appearing out of touch. There was a controversy in which, for example, she suggested that all properties over one acre be eligible for farming tax benefits because, "You can raise a horse on just an acre" (not an exact quotation). Previously the limit had been something like ten acres, and the move was widely seen as a tax break for the horse ranchers, all of whom were already multimillionaires and major Whitman donors. Whitman herself came from such a family.

And there was the Sherron Rolax incident that Phil mentioned. Racial profiling was definitely a part of the issue, but the main controversy was that the police had already searched him and found nothing--and then Whitman got out and had her picture taken frisking him. This is the photo.

[Keystone Phil]

1997: Whitman v. McGreevey was seperated by less than a % (L Sabrin drew 4%)
1993: Whitman v. Florio was seperated by just over a % despite Florio's incredibly unpopularity.

Yeah, those margins always surprised me even though I knew she wasn't very popular.

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

I'll bring in my two cents:

Kean was wildly popular, and part of that is owed to the New Jersey Democratic Party.  He owes a lot of his career to working with Democrats—he became House Speaker through the votes of Hudson County Democratic legislators.  He became Governor through an unusually strong performance in urban, Democratic Middlesex County: Major news outlets declared him the loser of the 1981 race against then Rep. Florio based on exit polls in swing districts and assumptions as to Florio's performance in strongly Democratic areas.

Once Governor, he was able to pass a major tax increase and shove all the blame onto the Democrats; during his 1985 re-election campaign, Democrats abandoned their nominee wholesale allowing Kean to win every county and all but three towns (none of which had any significant number of residents).

He retired intensely popular, and was very much in the hunt for the 1988 Vice Presidential nomination.  He has never sought office following his stint as Governor, not for lack of interest, but because of his family's wishes.

Whitman is a whole other story.  She was never really "popular," instead widely seen as a "rising star."  Her successes are more owed to the unpopularity of the NJ Democratic Party and disorganization post-Florio (there was a major North vs. South rift in the NJ Dems during the 1990s).  Her job approval ratings were pretty strong in the first part of her term leading to whispers about her being named as Dole's VP in 1996, but her popularity was shallow enough to completely erode once Jim McGreevey started running against her in 1997.  (The early political question was whether or not she'd run stronger or weaker than Kean's 1985 bid.  Seriously.)

Whitman gets a lot of the blame from Republicans for the runaway spending of the late 1990s, and blame from the Democrats for pushing a tax cut at the beginning of her term.  Both led to a pretty rough financial situation that Jim McGreevey made worse and Jon Corzine hasn't done much to mend.

I think the key Whitman quote of the 1993 campaign was "Funny as it may seem, $500 is a lot of money to some people."  She was not a very good campaigner.