So far, it's Lance vs. Whitman

Right now, it’s looking like a two-candidate race for Mike Ferguson’s seventh district House seat between Senate Minority Leader Leonard Lance and Kate Whitman, the 30-year-old daughter of the former Governor. Somerset Republican insiders say that Assemblyman Peter Biondi and Freeholder Jack Ciattarelli will be the next to announce that they won’t run for Congress.

Union County has two candidates who are, at this point, second tier: Scotch Plains Mayor Martin Marks and former Summit Councilwoman Kelly Hatfield. Both will need to show considerable fundraising success by the end of this month – there won’t be another report due until April – and then one of them will have to dominate the local endorsement game, where Senate Minority Leader Thomas Kean, Jr. is the biggest catch. Kean could stay out of the race – a message to Union County Republicans that Lance and Whitman are stronger candidates – or endorse Lance outright.

But one pundit who has no horse in this race suggests that Whitman might be better suited to winning a grass roots contest at a Union County Convention -- especially if Union doesn't come up with a tier one candidate.  "Can you see Leonard going door-to-door in Roselle Park?," the pundit asked.  "No way."

And residency is not necessarily a requirement in Union. When the seat was last open, in 2000, Assemblyman Joel Weingarten of Essex County won the Union GOP convention.  Weingarten, out of office since 2002, is considering another run for the seat.

Lance has secured organizational support in Hunterdon County, which gave Ferguson 38% of his votes in the uncontested 2006 GOP primary. Freeholder Matthew Holt (the grandson of former U.S. Senator Clifford Case, who held this seat from 1945 to 1953) and Freeholder-elect William G. Mennen IV, the heir to the Mennen deodorant fortune, have both backed out and endorsed Lance. Lance also has the strong support of Assemblyman Michael Doherty, a Warren County conservative who represents Hunterdon in the Legislature; Doherty wants to move up to the Senate if Lance goes to Washington – and so do Holt and Assemblywoman Marcia Karrow. Despite the Whitman family ties in Hunterdon – former Governor Christine Todd Whitman lives in Tewskbury – most insiders say that Lance has the ability to win a huge plurality in the county where his family has held office on and off for the last century.

Whitman’s candidacy, at least early on, will be about fundraising (where she should out-perform Lance this year) and about securing organizational support in Somerset County. That makes the GOP County Chairman, Dale Florio, a key player in her fledgling campaign. Florio is close to the Whitman family, but he’s also a Trenton lobbyist – and he’s astute enough to realize that Lance will either be a Congressman or an influential member of the Senate Appropriations Committee. If Florio stays out of the congressional race – a tacit admission that he’s not willing to invest his own political capital in sending a Somerset County Republican to Congress – that could be good news for Lance.

Lance and Whitman both come from old political families, but are substantially different candidates for a seat that the Republicans have held since 1957. Lance’s greatest strength is perhaps his most significant weakness: he is viewed as a throw-back to the old days, when statesmanship and dignity was valued over street fights and partisanship. He finds fundraising and negative campaigning to be rather unpleasant. Whitman is already showing a willingness to work the phones in search of money and political support, and she went door-to-door seeking votes when she ran for Freeholder earlier this year. Some Republicans think they need a fresh, feisty face to beat Democratic Assemblywoman Linda Stender, who came within one percentage point of ousting Ferguson in 2006.