Profile: Christine Todd Whitman

— -- Any seat held by Christine Todd Whitman in the Bush administration would be a hot seat.

Considered the avatar of the Republican Party’s socially liberal wing, the pro-choice first woman governor of New Jersey has been used as a punching bag by Christian conservatives trying to score points with Southern and Western constituencies. But she’s a tough woman, both personally and politically.

She’ll need every bit of her famous iron will as George W. Bush’s administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Bush’s administration has already come under scrutiny as being full of Texas oilmen with a very laissez-faire attitude towards pollution and sprawl. Whitman will be charged with defending Bush’s policies, and perhaps giving them her own moderate twist.

Republicans’ ambivalence about Whitman is probably best shown by the attitude of fellow New Jerseyan Steve Forbes. He supported the political novice’s 1993 and 1997 gubernatorial campaigns as she slashed state taxes, streamlined government, cut welfare rolls and implemented a three-strikes anti-crime law. But Forbes turned on her for her pro-abortion rights, liberal stand on social issues when he was running for president in the 2000 Republican primaries.

Whitman vetoed a bill outlawing partial-birth abortions, is against school prayer and supports gay rights. Those stances have made her anathema to her own party’s right wing. By giving her the EPA job, Bush puts her somewhere she won’t have any influence over social policy at all — probably one of the few positions where the hard right is willing to see her.

A Diverse State

Whitman’s environmental policy in New Jersey has reflected her typical balance of fiscal conservatism, social moderation and attention to the unusual needs of her state.

New Jersey is the nation’s most densely-populated state. Eight million people live on only 5 million acres, many commuting to jobs in neighboring New York and Philadelphia. The view from the New Jersey Turnpike and Interstate 95, a major north-south artery that leads into New York City, alternates dense old-line suburbs with industrial plants.

The vistas, and New Jersey’s large number of Superfund environmental pollution sites, have sometimes made the state the butt of jokes about the environment and pollution. But defenders such as former Republican Gov. Thomas Kean say the state’s environmental problems have presented policy challenges that might make a New Jersey governor a good candidate to run the Environmental Protection Agency.

“You might tell [New Jersey bashers] New Jersey’s done more to clean up its environmental problems than any state in the country,” says Kean, a vigorous Whitman supporter. “If you want to swim, we’re the only beaches in the country that test its water once a week to make sure it’s clean. We’ve done more to clean up toxic waste than any other state in the country.”

And there are other aspects of New Jersey’s environment those passing through on the Turnpike do not always see. For instance, there’s the New Jersey where the patrician Whitman grew up, part of a wealthy Republican political family on an estate known as Pontefract. Huge estates span the hills of northwestern New Jersey, and farms take up much of the southern tier of the state.

In addition, there are more than 100 miles of beaches in the state, a section of the Appalachian Trail running through northwestern mountains, and the Pine Barrens, one of the mid-Atlantic region’s largest open-space preserves.

Low-Cost Regulation?

It’s a delicate balance of land uses in a small state. Whitman’s environmental policy tries to preserve that balance efficiently and for the least financial cost, she has said.

“I think Whitman has a mixed environmental record,” says Cliff Zukin of the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University, a state-funded institution. “She is not wildly pro-environment. She is not wildly pro-business.”

During her first term, Whitman slashed staff at the state Department of Environmental Protection, streamlined the process of getting building permits and reduced environmental fines imposed on polluters, raising the ire of environmentalists. She says the cuts were necessary to make New Jersey attractive to business.

Whitman is no blind opponent of regulation. She opposed letting New York use New Jersey for garbage dumps, and imposed environmental review regulations on new developments’ water and sewer facilities, although environmentalists say her regulations haven’t gone far enough.

Whitman’s Sustainable Development program — also called “smart growth” — tries to prevent suburbs from swallowing New Jersey entirely. Last year, she pushed through a referendum that provided more than $1 billion to preserve a million acres of land in New Jersey over the next decade.

Her smart growth plan has gained her predictable criticism from developers, who say restrictions on development unfairly raise real estate prices.

Up to the National Challenge?

How her ideas on growth in densely populated New Jersey will map onto questions about natural resources in the vast West are unknown.

But her friendly approach to environmental regulation runs her up against Bush’s history as a low-regulation, business-friendly conservative.

“There are people in the environmental community who might say she is not the right person for this [EPA director] job,” Zukin says. “She’s not really an environmental reformer. She’s not really a passionate advocate for the environment, but she may be the best we’re going to get” from a Bush environmental appointee.

Whitman, a Presbyterian, and her husband John have two children, both in college.

ABCNEWS.com’s Michael James contributed to this report.