Whitman: GOP candidates should be willing to reach across the aisle

Former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman said Thursday that Republicans do have an obstacle to overcome this election year resulting from negative views of the Bush administration.

To overcome this perception, she said, Republican candidates must focus on their messaging to prove to voters that they can work across the aisle and show they can reflect their constituents’ values.

Whitman visited Maine Wednesday and Thursday to fundraise and campaign for Charlie Summers, a Republican running for the First Congressional District against Democrat Chellie Pingree.

Whitman is the co-founder of the Republican Leadership Council, a Political Action Committee which supports certain GOP Congressional candidates.

Other candidates the RLC supports are Lynn Jenkins (R-Kansas), Sandy Treadwell (R-N.Y.) and Mark Gordon (R-Wyoming).

In deciding which candidates to support, Whitman said: “We’d rather say to candidates, are you willing to work with someone of the other party if it means getting something done for your constituents? Do you see someone as evil if they don’t agree with you on all the social issues, and will you be willing to work with someone who’s in a different place than you on those issues? If they say yes to those things, then they’re fine and we’ll support them. Charlie is one of those people.”

Summers said it was an honor to have Whitman campaign for him. He said she is someone with executive experience and someone who will work across the aisle for the betterment of the country.

Whitman and Summers toured two Westbrook businesses Thursday.

Au. Inc is a small Maine business that employs 18 people, who stitch and sell handbags and luggage. The facility was littered with rolls of fabric, workers stitched away at small work stations and bags were sold at the front of the store.

D&G Machine Products and employs 140 people and is a national defense contractor. At D&G, plastic safety goggles were handed out before taking the tour. The business started in a garage, said President Duane Gushee, and grew in the sector of precision machinery. After Sept. 11, the company got into defense contracting, providing parts for the U.S. Departments of Homeland Security and Defense.

Gushee’s wife, Wendy, runs the company’s accounting department. The company was preparing to make parts for the DDX 1000, a new, state-of-the-art destroyer that was supposed to have been built at Bath Iron Works. In the Navy budget passed by Congress, the project was cancelled, and instead BIW will build an older model.

This leaves D&G scrambling to find new projects, Wendy Gushee said, but they hope at least some of the parts they were preparing to build will adapt to the different model.

Improving Maine’s business climate is a cornerstone of Summers’ campaign. He wants to make President Bush’s tax cuts permanent, decrease regulation and to address the high energy costs by investing in alternative energy.

Right now he said Congress should be in Washington dealing with the energy crisis instead of taking their August recess.

Summers’ plan differs from his opponent’s. Pingree wants to get rid of the Bush tax cuts and give them to working familes. She wants to end the Iraq War and put the money that would have otherwise gone to that for programs at home, including health care, education and infrastructure initiatives.

Like Summers, Pingree wants to invest in alternative energy.