Either Chris Christie or Jon Corzine will win the election for New Jersey’s governorship next month, which makes a vote for Chris Daggett one of the more unusual ones that will be cast in all of America in many years.
New Jersey is on the ropes, sliding toward the category of California and Michigan.
Unemployment in the Garden State is a shade under 10 percent. The budget deficit that looms over 2010 is about $8 billion, or roughly 25 percent of the entire state budget. Taxes are already sky-high, and corruption in and around state government isn’t just a big story, it is a way of life.
The hapless Democratic incumbent Corzine is an object of ridicule and contempt throughout the state, and in more than 50 polls taken throughout 2009 and compiled by RealClearPolitics.com, Corzine has been unable to break through a 42 percent ceiling, and the average of the last five polls put Corzine at under 40 percent.
Corzine could still eke out a win by the thinnest of margins, however, because of gadfly independent candidate Daggett, who could poll enough to leave Republican Christie, the former United States attorney for the state, at a few hundred votes below Corzine.
Daggett has no chance of winning, and when he protested this assessment when he appeared on my show, I asked him to cite me one pundit anywhere in America who thought he could win. Of course there are none.
I have as much chance of being governor of New Jersey as Daggett. So do you. Daggett is a spoiler, a ruse that allows disgusted New Jersey Democrats to vote for someone other than the deeply embarrassing and incompetent Corzine without having to pull the lever for a Republican.
Corzine is campaigning the only way he can — by throwing his vast fortune into negative ads against Christie, including one now famous for being the first television ad attacking a candidate for being overweight. Keep your television set on long enough, and you’ll see a kitchen sink sail across it, followed by a “Paid for by Jon Corzine” identifier.
To some, the Jersey race feels like a replay of last year’s contest for Minnesota’s U.S. Senate seat, when enough of the state’s dominant Democratic Party found someone other than Al Franken to vote for who wasn’t a Republican.
The independent Dean Barkley polled 15 percent, Franken edged out Republican Norm Coleman by slightly more than 200 votes, and now Democrats have 60 seats in the U.S. Senate. If Obamacare passes and American health care then begins its long decline to British standards, you can thank Barkley.
Barkley, like Daggett, was a wrecker, a selfish “look at me” poser who distorted the vote and in so doing denied Franken even the minimum credibility that accompanies a real win in a real race. Now Daggett wants to do the same for a state on the brink of economic collapse.
If New Jersey remains in the ditch with employers fleeing and con men fleecing the state, you can thank Daggett. It takes an outsized ego to look at poll after poll that puts you behind not one but two candidates by more than 20 points and still declare yourself in the hunt.
There is no discerning a motive for Daggett’s attachment to his spoiler role except perhaps a maniacal hatred of New Jersey, but even that is tough to swallow because many have been known to mutter that they wouldn’t wish Corzine on their own worst enemies.
If Daggett does siphon off just enough voters to keep Corzine in power, the real culprit won’t be Daggett, who can be forgiven and his delusions quickly forgotten, but the mainstream media, which have helped spread Daggett fever for the past few weeks.
Along with union bosses and a few other interests tied to Corzine so closely that they have to put aside all considerations except winning, the big guns among legacy media have refused to state the obvious — that Daggett can’t win if they run this election 20 times.
But the Corzine-Daggett team represents to the mainstream media a counter-story to the spreading revolt against President Obama’s big lurch left. With Republican Bob McDonnell running away with the governorship in Virginia, the New Jersey contest is the only other race that gets noticed this year.
If Daggett can be propped up just enough to deny the GOP a sweep of two statehouses, the Obama fable can be told a few more times before November of 2010. If New Jersey has to sink beneath the economic surface, well, that’s just a price that will have to be paid.
Examiner Columnist Hugh Hewitt is a law professor at Chapman University Law School and a nationally syndicated radio talk show host who blogs daily at HughHewitt.com.
