Kate Whitman

Following her loss to state Sen. Leonard Lance last week in the 7thKate Whitman Congressional District GOP primary, Kate Whitman reached out to the winner and offered her help.

Today, Lance spokesman Amanda Woloshen confirmed that his campaign has made Whitman a member of its finance committee.

"She'll be an important member of our team," Woloshen said of the daughter of former Gov. Christie Todd Whitman.

Whitman's congressional campaign raised more money than any of her primary opponents.

Seventh district Congressional candidate Kate Whitman touted a last minute endorsement from Hunterdon County Sheriff Deborah Trout today.

That’s Whitman’s first endorsement from Republican rival Leonard Lance’s native Hunterdon County. Lance supported Trout’s unsuccessful opponent, George Muller, in a close primary for sheriff last year.

Clockwise from lower left: Leonard Lance, AD Amar, Martin Marks, Darren Young, Kelly Hatfield, Thomas Roughneen, Kate Whitman. 

MOUNTAINSIDE - The seven Republican candidates for Congress in the 7th District debated at Town Hall here on Thursday night in a one-hour forum moderated by Fred Rossi of the Westfield Leader and Scotch Plains Fanwood Times.

As expected, most of the criticism flew in the direction of state Sen. Leonard Lance (R-Hunterdon), who in turn directed his ire at the $10 trillion national debt.

Iraq War veteran Thomas Roughneen of Watchung attacked Lance’s environmental advocacy, while Scotch Plains Mayor Martin Marks and businesswoman Kate Whitman of Peapack-Gladstone blasted him for not being a more effective fighter in state government for property tax relief.

MOUNTAINSIDE - Martin Marks, mayor of Scotch Plains for the past nine years and a candidate for Congress in the 7th Congressional District, spent mush of the evening targeting presumed front-runner state Sen. Leonard Lance (R-Hunterdon).

"I am unafraid to stand up to members of my own party when they don't act, when they should have," he said.

But when Iraq War veteran Thomas Roughneen and busineswoman Kate Whitman went after Marks on taxes, the mayor chastised both of them.

MOUNTAINSIDE - Kelly Hatfield gets the crowd in Town Hall here toFormer Summit Councilwoman Kelly Hatfield clap for the "great Republican farm team we have," while Martin Marks takes verbal slaps at Kate Whitman and Thomas Roughneen and praises Hatfield.

"You two are the probably the youngest people on this dais," Marks tells Whitman and Roughneen, seated to his right and left.

"Why don’t you walk a mile in our shoes?" he asks, referring them to local elected officials.

MOUTAINSIDE - With her mother sitting next to her husband in the front row, Kate Whitman notes that her opponents have attacked her for her last name, but insists that she has run the most substantive, issues-driven campaign.

And she throws a verbal punch at the elected officials in the race.

"I’m the only one to release a six-point plan," says Whitman, daughter of former Gov. Christie Todd Whitman. "Every person on this dais - given the chance - voted for tax increases."

Now they have signed a no-new-taxes pledge but "Who can believe them?" the 31-year old candidate wonders.

MOUTAINSIDE - Newspaper editor Fred Rossi asks Kate Whitman toKate Whitman grade George W. Bush as a commander-in-chief.

"The important thing is not how we got there but what we would do now that we’re there," she says.

Likening herself to the Speaker of the House, Whitman says, "I don’t think I or Nancy Pelosi" should second guess the decision by generals in the field.

Then Sen. Leonard Lance takes a question about whether we are winning the war on terror.

Scotch Plains Mayor Martin Marks"Yes," he says. "We have not had another attack since 9/11. But we have to be vigilant."

He blasts the president of Iran and urges alertness in the face of aggression by Iran. He gives a shout-out to Sen. John McCain and his "magnificent" service in the Vietnam War.

Now it’s Martin Marks’s turn to talk about the Middle East.

"This will continue to be an unstable region," he says. "I don’t think it’s been made more problematic by our presence there."

Democrat Linda Stender continues to outpace the field of seven Republicans in the seventh congressional district.
Stender raised $135,000 between April 1st and May 14th, and has approximately $900,000 on hand. 

The next best fundraiser in the district is Kate Whitman, who wasn’t too far behind Stender during the same period.  She raised $102,000, bringing her total raised to $547,989.  As of May 14th, Whitman had $205,384.81 on hand. 

State Sen. Leonard Lance (R-Hunterdon) in Flemington.

FLEMINGTON - Ask a Bush-era Republican to name an American statesman he admires and more times than not he will invoke Ronald Reagan. But State Sen. Leonard Lance (R-Hunterdon) invariably gives a different answer to the question.

"I have self-identified with Dwight Eisenhower as an ideal to which I will strive," says the 7th Congressional District candidate. "Dwight Eisenhower brought people together. He was a uniter not a divider, who strongly believed in balancing the federal budget and not robbing our children and our grandchildren of their future."

The Eisenhower model has particular relevance now, according to Lance, who calls fiscal responsibility the transcendent home-front issue as America stares at a $10 trillion debt. The state senator further praises Eisenhower for extracting American forces from Korea when he did, and for not involving the country in other foreign wars, unlike his successors.

Scotch Plains Mayor Martin Marks 

SCOTCH PLAINS - There sits Mayor Martin Marks at his desk in Town Hall and he doesn’t look as ruffled as he might.

It’s not that he isn’t in a fight, or unwilling to start a scrap in the lulls that are fewer and fewer now with 14 days to go in this 7th Congressional District Republican Primary. Indeed, the self-described "across the board conservative Republican" seizes every opportunity to bash the record of presumptive frontrunner state Sen. Leonard Lance.

"Nice guy, a gentleman," admits Marks. "But people like Leonard Lance play fast and loose with the term conservative. A moderate? All right. But not conservative. He’s pro choice. And he’s going around bragging that he’s gotten the endorsement of the Sierra Club. That’s not conservative."