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The seeds of Seattle
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But when it comes to hanging your fellow supporters out to dry, neither Powell nor Kerrey can hold a candle to Christie Todd Whitman.

In early September, the Republican governor of New Jersey announced that she would not seek the U.S. Senate seat of retiring Democrat Frank Lautenberg -- a seat the Democrats have held since the 1950s.

Whitman explained that mounting a campaign would be "a distraction from finishing the work New Jersey voters had asked me to complete" and that "this is all about whether I can run for the United States Senate and at the same time fulfill my duties as governor." In the end, Whitman decided that the answer was no.

Her supporters, meanwhile, were left speechless. Rumors soon spread through political and media circles about the true meaning of her decision to back out: Was she ill? Did her decision have anything to do with her husband, John Whitman? Was she making herself available to be a vice-presidential candidate, as in a Bush/Whitman ticket? There had to be an explanation for her withdrawal.

Well, it may be that she just didn't want to run. Dave Neese, the editorial page editor at the Trentonian, said that "even when ... it seemed very likely that Whitman would run, some of her closest advisors had already known for some time, just from the comments she'd make, that there was no way she would run for the Senate. But then she sets up that exploratory committee and everyone gets all excited, and suddenly she's exploring her way out of it."

Three months after Whitman's announcement, it is now clear the governor truly dreaded running in a highly contested Senate race. According to Alvin Felzenberg of the Heritage Foundation, a veteran of New Jersey politics, "she just knew it was going to be a rough race. She knew she'd be facing opponents on all sides. There's nothing to the other rumors of why she backed out."

GOP political consultant Larry Weitzner agrees: "Whitman's heart wasn't into it and the rigors of raising money and doing all that work just to run possibly against a candidate with unlimited resources" didn't seem too appealing.

True enough, New Jersey political races have never been pretty -- especially for her. Although Whitman is a two-term governor, she won both her elections by razor-thin margins -- roughly 25,000 votes each time. Editor Neese adds that "Whitman just did not look forward to a nasty bang-up Senate campaign, and after witnessing the Zimmer/Torricelli Senate race in 1996," she knew this wasn't something she wanted.

The winner of the 1996 race, Democratic Sen. Robert Torricelli, admitted to the Bergen County Record that if you want to run, "you have to really want to be in the U.S. Senate, because you are going to pay a heavy price."

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