Everything about Christine Todd Whitman totally explained
Christine Todd "Christie" Whitman (born
September 26,
1946) is an
American Republican politician and
author who served as the
50th Governor of
New Jersey from 1994 to 2001, and was the
Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency in the administration of
President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2003. She was New Jersey's first and to date only
female governor.
Whitman now has an energy lobbying group called the
Whitman Strategy Group
, "a governmental relations consulting firm specializing in environmental and energy issues." She is currently a director of
Texas Instruments and
United Technologies. Whitman is also co-chair of the
CASEnergy Coalition, and in 2007, voiced support for a stronger future role of
nuclear power in the United States.
Early life
Whitman was born in
New York City and raised in
Hunterdon County, New Jersey, the daughter of Eleanor Prentice Todd (
née Schley) and
Webster B. Todd, both active in New Jersey Republican politics. She attended
Far Hills Country Day School and the
Chapin School in
Manhattan. She graduated from
Wheaton College in 1968, earning a
Bachelor of Arts degree in government. After graduating, she worked on
Nelson Rockefeller's presidential campaign.
Whitman is a descendant of two New Jersey political families, the Todds and the Schleys, and related by marriage to New York's politically-active Whitmans. She is married to John R. Whitman, a prominent private equity investor, and they've two children. She is the granddaughter-in-law of former
Governor of New York Charles S. Whitman. Her maternal grandfather, Reeve Schley, was a member of
Wolf's Head Society at
Yale.
Whitman retains her maiden name of Todd in part to continue the connection with Republican voters. Whitman is related by marriage to the
Bush family; her brother, Webster B. Todd, married Sheila O'Keefe, the stepdaughter of James Wear Walker, whose sister
Dorothy Walker Bush was the mother of
George H.W. Bush and grandmother of
George W. Bush.
Whitman's daughter Kate is a candidate for the
7th district congressional seat, being vacated by
Mike Ferguson.
Career in politics
Nixon administration and early politics
During the
Nixon administration, Whitman worked in the
Office of Economic Opportunity under the leadership of
Donald Rumsfeld. She also conducted a national outreach tour for the
Republican National Committee, was Deputy Director of the New York State Office in Washington, and worked on aging issues for the Nixon campaign and administration.
She became involved in Somerset County politics in the 1980s and was appointed to the
Board of Trustees of Somerset County College (now
Raritan Valley Community College). Elected to two terms as a member of the Somerset County
Board of Chosen Freeholders, she served as Deputy Director and Director of the Board. Among her accomplishments as freeholder was working to complete construction of a new county courthouse.
From 1988 to 1990 she served as President of the
New Jersey Board of Public Utilities in the cabinet of Gov.
Thomas Kean.
In 1990, Whitman ran for the
U.S. Senate against incumbent
Bill Bradley, and lost a close election. She was considered a longshot candidate against the popular Bradley. During her campaign, Whitman criticized the
income tax hike proposed by then Gov.
James Florio, which Bradley didn't take a stance on.
Governor of New Jersey
Whitman ran against James Florio for governor in 1993, and defeated him by one percentage point
plurality to become the first
female governor in New Jersey history. Charges of suppression of minority votes were raised during this campaign. She was re-elected in 1997, and narrowly defeated
Jim McGreevey (again with a one percent plurality), the mayor of
Woodbridge Township.
As Governor, Whitman didn't fully fund the state
pension system and instead floated bonds to avoid raising taxes. Although Whitman's predecessors didn't take the same approach to state pensions, recent governors from both political parties have diverted billions of dollars from the New Jersey pension fund into other government purposes over the last 15 years.
In 1996, Whitman rejected her Advisory Council's recommendation to permit needle exchange, an effort to reduce the incidence of HIV infections. In 1997, she rolled back the 1 cent sales tax increase her predecessor Florio had imposed, instituted education reforms, and removed excise taxes on
professional wrestling, which led the
World Wrestling Federation to once again hold events in New Jersey. In 1999, Governor Whitman vetoed a bill that outlawed
partial birth abortion; the veto was later reversed, but also later declared unconstitutional by the courts.
In 2000, under Whitman's leadership, New Jersey's violations of the federal one-hour air quality standard for ground level
ozone dropped to 4 from 45 in 1988. Beach closings reached a record low, and the state earned recognition by the
Natural Resources Defense Council for instituting the most comprehensive beach monitoring system in the
nation. Additionally, New Jersey implemented a new watershed management program and became the United States leader in opening
shellfish beds for harvesting. Governor Whitman also won voter approval for the state's first stable funding source to preserve one million acres (4,000 km²) more of open space and farmland in New Jersey, the most densely populated
state in the
country.
In 1996, Whitman joined a police patrol in
Camden, New Jersey. During the patrol, the officers stopped a 16-year-old black male named
Sherron Rolax for "suspicious activity" and proceeded to frisk him. After finding nothing, Whitman also frisked the suspect while a
New Jersey State Police officer photographed her. In
2000, the image of the smiling governor frisking Rolax was published in newspapers statewide, which drew criticism from
civil rights leaders who saw the incident as a violation of Rolax's civil rights and an endorsement by Whitman of racial profiling -- especially since the suspect wasn't arrested nor found to be violating any law. Whitman told the press that she regretted the incident and pointed to her 1999 efforts against the New Jersey State Police force's racial profiling practices.
Environmental Protection Agency
Whitman was appointed by President
George W. Bush as Administrator of the
United States Environmental Protection Agency.
In January 2001 the
Clinton administration in its final weeks declared a new drinking water standard of 0.01 mg/L (10 parts per billion, or ppb) arsenic to take effect January 2006. The old drinking water standard of 0.05 mg/L (equal to 50 ppb) arsenic had been in effect since 1942, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had been studying the pros and cons of lowering the arsenic
Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) since the late 1980s. The incoming
Bush administration suspended the new regulation, but after some months of study, EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman approved the new 10 ppb arsenic standard and its original effective date of January 2006.
Climate change
Under her direction as the first director of the EPA under the Bush administration, in 2001 the EPA produced a report detailing the expected effects of global warming in each of the states in the United States. The report was dismissed by President Bush who called it the work of "the bureaucracy."
September 11 attacks
Whitman appeared twice in New York City after the
September 11 attacks to inform New Yorkers that the toxins released by the attacks posed no threat to their health. On September 18 the EPA released a report in which Whitman said, "Given the scope of the tragedy from last week, I'm glad to reassure the people of New York and Washington, D.C. that their air is safe to breathe and their water is safe to drink." She also said, "The concentrations are such that they don't pose a health hazard...We're going to make sure everybody is safe." Later, a 2003 report by the EPA's inspector general determined that such assurances were misleading, because the EPA "did not have sufficient data and analyses" to justify the assertions when they were made. A report in July 2003 from the EPA's Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response gave extensive documentation supporting many of the inspector general's conclusions, and carried some of them still further. Further, the report found that the White House had "convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones" by having the
National Security Council control EPA communications after the September 11 attacks.
On
February 2,
2006,
U.S. District Court Judge Deborah A. Batts issued a ruling that rejected Whitman's request for immunity in a 2004
class action lawsuit brought by a group who claimed exposure to hazardous debris from the collapse of the World Trade Center. The judge stated that "No reasonable person would have thought that telling thousands of people that it was safe to return to lower Manhattan, while knowing that such return could pose long-term health risks and other dire consequences, was conduct sanctioned by our laws," and called Whitman's actions "conscience-shocking."
On
June 25,
2007, Whitman testified in front of Congress about the Agency's culpability in telling rescue workers that the air was safe. She was repeatedly booed by rescue workers and activists who attended the hearing. She defended herself by saying her statements about the air being safe were to people living or working near the area, not to rescue workers. She also said terrorists, not the EPA, were responsible for the tragedies that befell people after September 11. On December 10, 2007 legal proceedings began in a case on the question of responsibility of government officials in the aftermath of the
September 11, 2001 attacks. Whitman is among the defendants in the suit; plaintiffs in the suit allege that Whitman is at fault for saying that the
downtown New York air was safe in the aftermath of the attacks.
On
April 22,
2008, the Second
U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that EPA head Whitman couldn't be held liable for saying to World Trade Center area residents that the air was safe for breathing after the buildings collapse. The appeals court said that Whitman had based her information on contradictory information and statements from President Bush. The
Department of Justice had argued that holding the agency liable would establish a risky
legal precedent because future public officials would be afraid to make public statements. Judge
Deborah Batts had previously declined to dismiss Whitman as a defendant, saying that her actions were "conscience-shocking."
Resignation
On
June 27,
2003, after having had several public conflicts with the Bush administration, Whitman resigned from her position to spend more time with her family. In a later interview, Whitman claimed that Vice President Dick Cheney's insistence on easing air pollution controls, not the personal reasons she cited at the time, led to her resignation.
Political philosophy
In early 2005, Whitman released a book entitled
It's My Party, Too: Taking Back the Republican Party... And Bringing the Country Together Again in which she criticizes the policies of the
George W. Bush administration and its electoral strategy, which she views as divisive. She has formed a political action committee called
It's My Party Too-PAC (IMP-PAC) that she intended to help elect moderate Republicans in 2006 and 2008 at all levels of government. She has allied her PAC with the
Republican Main Street Partnership,
The Wish List, the
Republican Majority for Choice,
Republicans for Choice,
Republicans for Environmental Protection and The
Log Cabin Republicans. Eventually, the IMP-PAC went (according to its website) under the auspices of the
Republican Leadership Council.
Electoral history
Quotes
"The defining feature of the conservative viewpoint is a faith in the ability, and a respect for the right, of individuals to make their own decisions - economic, social, and spiritual - about their lives. The true conservative understands that government's track record in respecting individual rights is poor when it dictates individual choices." Further Information
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