Cementing Whitman's reputation as a Robin Hood in reverse is an extraordinary chain of giveaways to big business. The most widely publicized of these dips into the taxpayers' pockets benefited Steve Wynn, the Las Vegas-based casino czar. An equal-opportunity influence-buyer from both major parties through millions in political donations, Wynn demanded that the state build a road and tunnel linking his Atlantic City casino to the Atlantic City Expressway. The Whitman administration complied, allowing Wynn to control the design of the road, which led right to the door of his casino--taking business away from a competing casino owned by Donald Trump. Wynn got his custom-built road for only $55 million, while the taxpayers' tab was $275 million. Meanwhile, because the roadway was being built over a 150-acre former municipal dump--which Wynn, with the quiet help of the Whitman people, acquired for one dollar--a major cleanup was necessary. But Wynn didn't want to pay for the cleanup, so in 1996 Whitman shepherded through the Republican legislature a deal that allowed him to keep $30 million of sales taxes collected at his casino to finance it. The first fundraiser for Whitman's Senate campaign was a $1,000-a-head affair at the home of Joe Jingoli, one of the major business subcontractors on the road's construction.

The Wynn deal is only the tip of the iceberg. In 1996, after a ten-month investigation, the Record of Bergen County published a superb sixteen-part series, "Open for Business," that detailed dozens of cases in which Whitman's corporate-coddling policies had hurt New Jerseyans through giveaways and lax enforcement of laws designed to protect consumers and the environment. For example, the Beneficial Corporation, the nation's largest independent consumer-loan company, got more than $182 million in taxpayer subsidies in the form of road construction designed to ease traffic around Beneficial's lavish office complex in Peapack--improvements that also increased the value of an open 700-acre tract that Beneficial owned nearby. While all this was going on in 1994-95, Beneficial chairman Finn Casperson, his family and their political action committee gave state Republicans $143,250.

In a more recent sweetheart deal, against which the environmental movement, led by the Sierra Club and the Audubon Society, waged a desperate antisprawl fight, Whitman offered $291.3 million to Merrill Lynch to help it build a 3.5-million-square-foot office complex on 450 acres of open fields and woodlands in Hopewell Township in 1998. Whitman's Economic Development Authority proposed to buy the office furniture, computers and wiring for the project and lease them back to Merrill Lynch so the company would not have to pay the 6 percent sales tax, saving the company $13.5 million. All this was to be paid for by state-floated bonds totaling $225 million. Added to this gift were $30 million in road improvements and $11.3 million more in state aid for job creation and training.

Whitman this year unveiled a $1 billion "open space" program that she claims will purchase and safeguard a million acres, or roughly 50 percent of the state's undeveloped land. But the plan is a fraud. "Her numbers are inflated," says Sierra Club policy director Bill Wolfe. "Her plan will save 350,000 acres at most. You simply can't buy a million acres with a billion dollars. The math doesn't work." Moreover, the program is another example of Whitman's borrow-and-spend prestidigitation, paid for by floating up to $200 million a year in bonds--so for the next twenty years, the interest on the bonds will cost a lot of money that won't go to land. Meanwhile, the environmental movement is fighting tooth and nail against her giveaway of 300 acres of pristine wetlands to the cranberry industry (even though last year the industry had a 2-million-barrel surplus). Principal beneficiary: Ocean Spray Cranberries, which gave over $1.3 million in campaign contributions to both parties in the nineties. "Ocean Spray let loose a spray of political contributions, which appear to be overwhelming the opposition," says New Jersey Common Cause chairman Harry Pozycki.

Whitman's environmental record is in sharp contrast to Florio's. As a Congressman, Florio wrote and passed the toxic cleanup Superfund program, and as governor he passed two major state laws--the New Jersey Pollution Prevention Act and the Clean Water Enforcement Act--that were among the toughest in the nation. Whitman, however, downsized the state Department of Environmental Protection by one-third, and under her administration, enforcement fines and penalties are down a whopping 80 percent. Any state limits on pollution that exceed federal standards are now subject to a cost-benefit analysis, an antiregulatory approach. Whitman has favored a "voluntary compliance" program, under which polluters are allowed a "grace period" to negotiate with state agencies before fines and penalties are imposed. "I call it 'Let's Make a Deal,'" says the Sierra Club's Wolfe. "Whitman is no moderate on the environment. This administration has done nothing on environmental quality--air, water and waste issues--but starve the bureaucracy and put enforcement on a short leash."

Florio, eager to avenge his narrow loss to Whitman six years ago, announced his Senate candidacy as soon as Lautenberg said he was retiring, and a gaggle of other Democrats followed suit. But most of them were frightened out of the race by the unexpected arrival of a candidate whose huge personal fortune--estimated at more than $300 million--makes him the primary's 800-pound gorilla: Jon Corzine, the former co-chairman of Goldman, Sachs. A political neophyte who didn't even bother to vote in Democratic primaries for ten years, Corzine has bought himself pricey image-makers like political and media consultant Bob Shrum and Clinton pollster Doug Schoen. Corzine's wealth made him attractive to the big-county North Jersey Democratic bosses, who blame Florio for losing the legislature and see the Wall Streeter as a major source of funds for their local candidates. Most of these old-line organization bosses are supporting Corzine, including the county leaders in Union, Middlesex, Bergen and Hudson counties.

Florio's significant base in his native Camden and the seven southern counties provides about 30 percent of the primary vote. "He needs to take 40 percent of the vote in the northern counties to win," says a Democratic analyst. To that end, Florio is threatening to put up his own full slate of candidates for county offices, corralling anti-organization dissidents, according to the weekly Politifax New Jersey, a must-read newsletter for insiders edited by former political operative Nick Acocella.

Thus, the Democratic primary is shaping up as a vicious dogfight between the blunt and sometimes arrogant former boxer Florio--whose years in government allow him to sound off in detail on almost any issue--and the soft-spoken political tyro Corzine, whose positions on most issues are a mystery both to active Democrats and to the state's press corps. While Corzine has been making the handshaking rounds of party functions and black churches, he has so far failed to give a single speech and has ducked numerous multicandidate forums. "He's like Monica Lewinsky before the Barbara Walters interview: We haven't heard the sound of his voice," cracks one Democratic pol.

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