As Two States Prepare to Vote, Future Candidates Take Notes

The off-year gubernatorial contests in New Jersey and Virginia that climax next Tuesday have done more than challenge conventional political wisdom. They have offered the following guideposts for campaign strategies in 1998 and 2000:

* For both parties, it is clear that a seemingly strong economy is not the guarantee of reelection that many incumbents thought it to be. “People say they are in good economic shape, but underneath there is an undercurrent of fear,” said Janice Ballou, director of the Eagleton Institute poll in New Jersey, where favorable economic winds once were expected to carry Republican Gov. Christine Todd Whitman to a reelection victory strong enough to boost her potential for the GOP’s national ticket in 2000. Instead, she is fighting for her political life.

* For Republicans, the chief lesson is that tax cuts--such as the 30% income tax reduction Whitman carried out early in her tenure--don’t build lasting gratitude. But finding an onerous tax to cut can still win support, as shown by the broad appeal of a plan by Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Jim Gilmore to cut the state’s much-despised annual levy on automobiles. That proposal appears to be the key to the lead that polls give Gilmore in the race for the open seat. “You can’t just come out for cutting taxes in general,” said University of Virginia government professor Larry Sabato. “You need to find [a tax] that’s especially hated and target it.”

* For Democrats, it appears that the centrist political themes that worked so well for President Clinton have their limits. The “New Democrat” approach was mimicked by Don Beyer, the party’s gubernatorial candidate in Virginia, but polls show it has not packed much of a punch. In New Jersey, by contrast, reliance on a bread-and-butter issue--cutting New Jersey’s astronomic auto insurance rates--transformed little-known Democrat James McGreevey into a threat to Whitman. “His agenda is focused on pocketbook issues and urban revitalization,” said Steve DeMicco, McGreevey’s campaign manager. “And we get our strongest support from cities and organized labor.”

These new potential keys to ballot-box success reflect the blurry outline of close-of-the-century U.S. politics, a period marked by divided government, stalemated legislation and tattered partisan loyalties across the board. “In this neutral environment, if you don’t have an exceptional reason to motivate the troops, you have to worry [that] they’ll stay home,” said John McLaughlin, Gilmore’s pollster.

Gilmore’s plan for cutting Virginia’s automobile tax emerged as the type of issue that galvanizes support. And what gives it and similar ideas for relieving the personal financial burdens of voters such salience is an uneasiness about the economy that seems to have taken many politicians by surprise.

“People feel like, ‘I’m fine today, but what’s going to happen tomorrow? One more increase in my taxes and auto insurance, and I’m down the tubes,’ ” said Ballou, the New Jersey-based pollster.

Some analysts also said voters are still having a hard time shaking off memories of the job-threatening cutbacks that stemmed from the recession earlier this decade. “Downsizing has shaken confidence,” MIT economics professor Paul Krugman wrote in a recent article in the New Republic. Countering the claims of some that cutting costs of production generated prosperity, Krugman asserted: “The secret of our success is not productivity but anxiety.”

Likely to reinforce this nervousness, of course, was Monday’s dramatic stock decline on Wall Street.

In this unsettled atmosphere, Whitman’s much-heralded cut in New Jersey’s income tax failed to deliver the long-term political rewards her advisors had counted on. “The tax cut was a one-shot deal,” said Ballou. “[Whitman] didn’t do much beyond that.”

Actually, the governor did offer her own proposal to reduce automobile insurance rates early in the year. But her failure to get the GOP-controlled Legislature to enact the plan made her vulnerable to attacks from McGreevey as he has pushed his own plan.

Meanwhile, whatever benefits Whitman gained from her tax cut have been at least partly offset by the criticism that it forced the state to cut back school aid, which in turn led to escalation of local property taxes.

“People are watching property taxes go up, and some think it’s all just a political shell game,” said Cliff Zukin, a Rutgers University professor of public policy.

This is the impression McGreevey has sought to reinforce with campaign commercials that declare: “As governor, Christie Whitman cut the state share to education. Now New Jersey has the highest property taxes in the nation.”

Complicating Whitman’s political situation is that she remains under attack from her party’s conservative wing, largely because of her support of the right to abortion. Also, gun owners complain that she failed to get the state’s assault weapon ban repealed. As a result, some normally Republican votes are expected to go to either of two independent conservative candidates on the ballot.

Despite all this, Whitman is still favored to win. “It’s a very competitive state,” said Michael Murphy, Whitman’s chief strategist. “And I’m not going to get into bragging up a landslide. But I think she’ll win. And I’ll take the win.”

Still, the 5 to 7 percentage point margin her advisors are privately predicting would leave her far short of the benchmark 70% of the vote garnered by Tom Kean, New Jersey’s last Republican governor, in his 1985 reelection bid. And this was the target Whitman’s admirers had hoped she could achieve as a step toward building her national prospects.

In contrast to Whitman’s defensive posture, Gilmore was quick to seize the initiative in the Virginia race with his targeted-tax-cut plan. What gave the issue extra weight was the response of Beyer, the state’s incumbent lieutenant governor. First, he denounced Gilmore’s idea as irresponsible, then offered his own more-complicated substitute. According to polls, voters have found it less appealing than Gilmore’s approach.

Beyer is an auto dealer from Northern Virginia who has sought to style himself as a business-oriented Democrat. But the apparent lack of focus in his campaign has soured some of his party’s leaders.

Former Democratic Gov. L. Douglas Wilder complained that voters ask him: “What does Beyer’s campaign stand for?” Wilder, the first elected black governor in the nation’s history, has pointedly declined to endorse Beyer.

For his part, Beyer has zeroed in on Gilmore’s opposition to abortion and his alleged support for school vouchers. But Gilmore, who resigned as the state’s attorney general to pursue his gubernatorial campaign, has sidestepped the attacks, pointing out that Supreme Court rulings protect the right to abortion and claiming that he would not support any voucher plan that would hurt the public school system.

Del Ali, an analyst for the Mason Dixon polling firm, contended that Beyer’s attacks may have boomeranged. “Gilmore has a record as attorney general for the past four years,” Ali said. “You can’t demonize someone who is a familiar figure.”