Christine Temple Whitman (née Todd; born September 26, 1946) is an American politician and author who served as the 50th governor of New Jersey from 1994 to 2001 and as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2003.

During her tenure at the EPA, Whitman was noted for having assured the public that the air in lower Manhattan was safe to breathe following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001; she apologized in 2016 for having made this statement.

[2] Webster B. Todd amassed a fortune as a building contractor on projects including Rockefeller Center and Radio City Music Hall.

[4] Eleanor Prentice Todd's political activity caused a newspaper to speculate that she could be a viable candidate for governor, although she never chose to run for office.

[2] After graduating from Wheaton College in 1968 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in government, Todd worked for Nelson Rockefeller's presidential campaign.

[13] In 1993, Whitman helped to found the Committee for Responsible Government, an advocacy group espousing moderate positions in the Republican Party.

[14] After winning a Republican primary,[15] Whitman ran against incumbent James Florio for governor of New Jersey in the 1993 general election.

Whitman won the election by a plurality, defeating Florio by one percentage point[16] to become the first female governor in New Jersey history.

[18] Two days after the election, Ed Rollins, Whitman's campaign manager, bragged about having spent $500,000 to suppress the black vote.

[24][25] In 1995, the Washington Post called Whitman "an East Coast blue blood, a woman who grew up in the horse country of New Jersey and attended some of the nation's most exclusive private schools".

The Post added, "At a time when the party's base has moved to the South, the West, the working class and the religious right, Whitman is a throwback with roots in the patrician Republican politics of three and four decades ago".

[27][better source needed] In 1995, Whitman was criticized for saying that young African-American males sometimes played a game known as jewels in the crown, which she claimed had as its intent having as many children as possible out of wedlock.

Whitman subsequently apologized and voiced her opposition to attempts by Congressional Republicans to bar unwed teenage mothers from receiving welfare payments.

[29] In 1996, Whitman rejected a recommendation from the Governor's Council on AIDS to spend tax money on a needle exchange to reduce incidence of HIV infections.

As a result, she was made honorary WWF Champion and awarded a replica belt by Gorilla Monsoon at that year's SummerSlam pay-per-view.

[33] In 1999, Whitman fired Colonel Carl A. Williams, head of the New Jersey State Police, after he was quoted as saying that cocaine and marijuana traffickers were often members of minority groups, while the methamphetamine trade was controlled primarily by white biker gangs.

[39][2] According to The New York Times, Whitman "seemed to be on a short list of vice presidential candidates in 2000, right up until July 8, 2000 – days before the opening of the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia – when a four-year-old photograph surfaced showing an oddly smiling Governor Whitman, surrounded by law enforcement agents, frisking a black drug suspect on a street in Camden".

Whitman later told the press that she regretted the incident, and pointed to her efforts in 1999 to oppose the New Jersey State Police force's racial profiling practices.

Whitman was appointed by President George W. Bush as Administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency, taking office on January 31, 2001.

[45] The incoming Bush administration suspended the midnight regulation, but after months of research, the EPA approved the new 10 ppb arsenic standard to take effect in January 2006 as initially planned.

[50] A July 2003 report from the EPA Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response provided extensive documentation supporting many of the inspector general's conclusions.

[56] In an interview in 2007, Whitman stated that Vice President Dick Cheney's insistence on easing air pollution controls, not the personal reasons she cited at the time, led to her resignation.

[57] At the time, Cheney pushed the EPA to institute a new rule allowing power plants to make major alterations without installing costly new pollution controls.

[58] In early 2005, Whitman released a book entitled It's My Party, Too: Taking Back the Republican Party... And Bringing the Country Together Again in which she criticized the policies of the George W. Bush administration and its electoral strategy: The defining feature of the conservative viewpoint is a faith in the ability, and a respect for the right, of individuals to make their own decisions – economic, social, and spiritual – about their lives.

[61] The same year as her book was released, Whitman formed a political action committee called It's My Party Too (IMP-PAC), to assist electoral campaigns of moderate Republicans at all levels of government.

[85][better source needed] At a 1973 inaugural ball for Richard Nixon, Christine had her first date with John R. Whitman (1944–2015), an old friend she had met while a student at Chapin.

[2] Kate Whitman has followed her mother into politics, including an unsuccessful run for the U.S. House of Representatives and having worked as a congressional aide.