N.J. governor
to give Lingle
a boost

GOP strategists believe
similarities the two centrist
Republican women share
will be a plus

By Mike Yuen
Star-Bulletin

Last year, Republican gubernatorial candidate Linda Lingle was a guest at the Republican Governors Association meeting in Miami when she was introduced to New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman.

Her first impression, recalls the 5-foot-9 Lingle, was: "She's about my height."

But the height of the 5-foot-10 Whitman and Lingle is not the key parallel that

Republican strategists want the isle electorate to draw when Whitman is in Honolulu tomorrow to campaign for Lingle, the Maui mayor making her first bid for statewide office.

The point they want to burnish in voters' minds is that both women are centrist Republicans capable of winning gubernatorial races with national significance in traditionally Democratic states.

"It is an effort by Linda Lingle to continually present herself as a moderate Republican and not as Attila the Hun," said Ira Rohter, an associate professor of political science at the University of Hawaii who is also co-chairman of the Hawaii Green Party, which is not fielding a gubernatorial candidate this year.

"For Lingle to win, she's got to attract more than Orson Swindle conservatives. She's got to appeal to moderate Democrats. Whitman is an important symbolic representation of what kind of governor Lingle could be."

Just as Whitman became New Jersey's first female governor when she was elected in 1993, Lingle would become Hawaii's first female chief of state if she wins the GOP nomination and November's general election.

Lingle said Whitman, 51, is symbolic of her campaign because in Whitman's first term she successfully delivered on her campaign promise to cut taxes by 30 percent. Lingle, 45, was a leading GOP voice in the bipartisan chorus that successfully opposed the push by Democratic Gov. Ben Cayetano for an increase in the 4 percent general excise tax.

Lingle and Whitman are both pro-choice, but they also are opposed to partial-birth, or late-term, abortions.

But last year Whitman vetoed a bill which she saw as unconstitutional that would have prohibited partial-birth abortions. Instead, she recommended that the measure "be amended to ban all abortions once a fetus has attained viability, except those performed to protect the life or health of the mother" and with such judgments made by the attending physicians. But New Jersey legislators overrode Whitman's veto.

Having a Republican with the philosophy and stature of Whitman -- considered a possible vice presidential candidate -- helps to offset the "demonizing" by Democrats that Lingle said she's endured.

When Hawaii Democratic Party Chairman Walter Heen was asked his reaction to Whitman's appearance tomorrow, he replied: "If Lingle really wanted to attract the crowd and the money she needs, she would have brought in Strom Thurmond or Jesse Helms." Thurmond of South Carolina and Helms of North Carolina are U.S. senators aligned with the GOP's conservative wing.

Whitman won her first term as New Jersey's governor by narrowly beating incumbent Democrat Jim Florio, 49 percent to 48 percent, and she saw her election as a tax-cut mandate. Florio's tax plan -- a $2.8 billion tax increase -- was similar to President Clinton's 1993 tax increase, and it was "presented as an attempt to soak the rich and as the only way to pay for necessary government services," according to "The Almanac of American Politics."

Clinton advisers ran Florio's campaign and the Democratic National Committee chairman touted the race as a referendum on the leadership provided by both Florio and Clinton, and were shocked by Whitman's win.

Hawaii Republicans see Lingle's candidacy as a way voters can repudiate what the GOP sees as Cayetano's inability to revive the state's anemic economy. A Lingle victory, they believe, would also do much to erode four decades of Democratic political dominance in Hawaii, where a Republican has not been governor since 1962.

"Republican governors have brought leadership and economic prosperity to states throughout the country, along with economic development, and cuts to welfare rolls and crime," said Whitman spokeswoman Julie Plocinik. "Gov. Whitman wants Hawaii to catch the wave of Republican leadership and prosperity."

But there are some parallels that Lingle's advisers won't want drawn with Whitman. The New Jersey governor, while identifying herself as an environmentalist, has been sharply criticized for her environmental policies.

And when Whitman made her first bid for statewide office -- a run in 1990 against then-U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley, a Democrat -- she lost. Bradley got 50 percent of the vote; Whitman, 47 percent.