In a six-poll average appearing on the Real Clear Politics web site as of Friday afternoon, Chris Christie and Jon Corzine are in a statistical dead heat. One of those six polls, Quinnipiac, shows Christie trailing Corzine by five points, while the Rasmussen poll has him ahead of Corzine by three. This could be a stunning turnaround for New Jersey’s incumbent governor.
Should it become a last-minute trend that holds through to Election Day, it won’t be due only to the personal purchasing power that previously helped Corzine gain a U.S. Senate seat and his first term as NJ governor.
If Jon Corzine wins a second term, there will be another even more compelling reason for victory: It will be the impact of Chris Daggett’s insertion into this race that could be the favorable tipping point for Corzine.
Chris Daggett never stood a chance at the golden ring from the beginning of his candidacy, but he has apparently struck a chord with enough voters so that he became a major distraction to Christie and a significant boost for Corzine, the only two contenders with any realistic chance of success.
Daggett’s promise to reduce property taxes by increasing the sales tax base is a 1977-style, Byrne-like, smoke-and-mirrors proposal presented to gullible voters: It is identical to the old thinking that establishing a New Jersey income tax would reduce property taxes.
If those protest voters don’t wake up, their fantasy will be replaced with the reality of another four years of the same.
When Jon Corzine left Goldman Sachs after a fabulously successful career, he took with him the enormous purchasing power of a seemingly unlimited AMEX card. But his second term, if he makes it, will have come not solely from his financial resources: It will have resulted in large measure from something that he could never buy: the dilutive effect of a third-person spoiler, Chris Daggett.
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