Daggett to the rescue?

Daggett meets a receptive audience

Independent Gubernatorial candidate Chris Daggett says he’s got his mojo workin’, but after meeting the former DEP commissioner and erstwhile Republican, I’m not entirely sure it’s gonna work on me. Daggett was  at the Embankment on 10th Street for a “Meet and Greet” organized by Realtor Phil Rivo and drew a nice crowd, filling the back room. From the reactions I spied, he was making friends, too.

Daggett had a few minutes before he started to mingle and gave us a quick interview. After listening to him during the interview and watching as he answered questions from potential voters tonight, he feels to me like an independent candidate only in that he’s wedged himself into a niche created by the funky political circumstance. (I mean the guy has been a part of the establishment for 20 years.) It’s made it possible for him to stake out a middle ground between Corzine, who just looks like he’d rather be anywhere but on the campaign trail, and Chrsitie, who just may have finally been exposed as the gassy blowhard (brilliantly depicted in that Daggett TV ad.)

Listen to the Daggett interview.

He’s for a state sales tax and maybe for a gas tax and is promising a 25 % property tax cut, but you can read all that stuff here. If it’s possible to look into the soul of the man in a five-minute interview, in a dimly-lit back room of a bar/restaurant, with 100 people waiting for you to finish up, then I did. And I can’t say that I saw too much of anything there. He’s a smart dude, makes eye contact, has got his answers down and can make himself the anti-Corzine or anti-Chrisitie alternative at the drop of a hat, depending on which one he thinks you dislike the most. Among the many things he says he has going for him are a “horrible economy [and] an angry electorate.”

“I only need to get to 34 [percent], remember. 34, 35 wins it in a tight race,” said Daggeet, sounding like someone who’s been around a political backroom once or twice. “People are suddenly going to start to say ‘wow, my vote can really matter. We can do this,’ and I think you’re going to see a surge towards me as this goes forward.”

Come election night, though. Chris Daggett will have fought the good fight, will have raised his profile again, and probably helped elect Jon Corzine governor. The question for us, I guess, is: will we be thanking him in the morning?