Nixon Library Makes It Perfectly Clear to N.J.

The folks at the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace are in the middle of a tempest blowing through the State House in Trenton, N.J., over a videotaping of New Jersey Gov. Christie Todd Whitman.

The library issued a “clarification” to Whitman on Wednesday after failing to obtain her approval before selling a tape of a speech she made at a library event in April.

The battle originally began last week when a catalogue of the library’s merchandise, which is available nationwide, found its way to New Jersey. Some Democratic leaders there demanded that the tax-cutting Republican governor reimburse the state the $9,500 cost of the West Coast visit by Whitman and her entourage.

Democrats say the trip was made for partisan purposes, pointing to the tape and its marketing as proof. The Nixon catalogue proffers the tape as Whitman on “Victory in ‘96: The Republican Opportunity,” adding that “in this riveting address to the Library’s ’96 Issue Forum, Gov. Whitman reveals her road map for winning the White House in ’96.” The tape costs $15, plus $4 for shipping.

“Come on, governor,” New Jersey’s Assistant Senate Democratic leader, Richard Codey, told the Associated Press. “The time to fess up and pay up is at hand.”

But the governor’s spokesman said no reimbursement is coming, nor is any due, because the April 27 speech before 400 people was not partisan. Whitman made the trip to Southern California as governor of New Jersey, he said, to speak at both the Ronald Reagan and Nixon presidential libraries.

While Whitman was not upset that her remarks were videotaped, she was “upset that it was packaged and marketed without our knowledge,” said spokesman Carl Golden. He suggested that a less partisan title would have taken care of the problem.

To soothe the waters in Trenton, Kevin Cartwright, spokesman for the library, issued a formal statement admitting that the promotional language was written without the “knowledge of the governor or her staff.” He said the statement “was definitely not an apology.”

But in the statement, the Nixon library admitted to excessive hype, noting that the catalogue’s high-flown rhetoric “was designed to sell videos, and in hindsight, did not adequately describe the highly substantive tenor of her remarks or the strictly bipartisan nature of the forum she agreed to address.”

If that doesn’t settle the inter-party sniping in New Jersey, Golden said, he has some research on State Police records in the Garden State indicating that the previous governor, Democrat James J. Florio, spent $1.2 million flying around in a state helicopter during his four-year tenure in the State House.

New Jersey Democratic leaders could not be reached for comment.