Unfortunately, Christie Whitman considers anyone who isn't a RINO to be hard right. In other words, she's right and 90% of the Republican party is wrong.
The only reason she ever became governor in the first place is a) she's an attractive and plausible woman; and b) her predecessor in the governor's office was a corrupt incompetent who went too far even for the New Jersey voters to stomach.
You may see her as attractive now, but before she was governor she coud eat corn on the cob through a chain link fence.
The b) part of your post was on the money though.
There's a third reason, she governed largely a blue state.