November 10, 1993

The Economy Producer prices declined two-tenths of 1 percent in October, surprisingly strong reassurance that a pickup in the economy is not reviving inflation. Except for a modest rise in September, wholesale prices have fallen or been unchanged since April. [ Page D1. ]

Christine Todd Whitman's campaign made payments to black ministers and Democratic Party workers in exchange for promises not to rally votes for Gov. Jim Florio in the final stages of the New Jersey gubernatorial race, her campaign manager said today. The manager, Edward J. Rollins, said the campaign funneled about $500,000 in such "walking around money" from the state Republican Party. Those efforts to depress the vote in urban, heavily Democratic areas, he said, were important in Mrs. Whitman's narrow upset victory.

As evidence of the steep hill President Clinton must climb if he is to win Congressional approval next week of the North American Free Trade Agreement, no Democrat in the New York, New Jersey and Connecticut delegations in the House of Representatives is committed to voting for it. Three Democratic Representatives -- Floyd H. Flake and Nita M. Lowey of New York and Robert G. Torricelli of New Jersey -- say they have still not decided which way they will go when the trade pact is put to a vote on Nov. 17. But the 25 other Democrats in the three states are firmly opposed to the agreement.

CHEESECAKES and chocolate cakes, ice creams and butter creams, goat cheese and sheep cheese. In hot pursuit of the best food available by mail, somewhere in the neighborhood of 8,000 samples (well, make it 16,000) have passed my lips over the last dozen years. Some of those flavors have remained in my taste memory, and I thought that this year, instead of searching for 20 new items, which are getting harder and harder to find, I would include the best of the old, along with the best of the new. In the early 1980's the original mail-order foods -- Day-Glo orange cheeses, unspeakable fruitcakes, frozen steaks and unripened pears -- began to meet delicious foreign and local competition. Unlike the fruitcake that makes its way around the world year after year, barbecue, champagne truffles, smoked salmon and lemon cake have made gifts by mail something to be anticipated, not dreaded.

ARMED with emphatic opinions, a talent for shaping trends, and a volatile temper, Pino Luongo has been cutting a swath of style and controversy through New York's restaurant scene. Even his detractors concede he has excellent taste. An outspoken Florentine who started as a busboy 13 years ago and popularized his interpretation of the fresh simple cuisine of his native Tuscany, he has been called the George Steinbrenner of the restaurant world, a man with a short fuse and little patience when things are not done his way.