Daggett loss accents two-party dominance

As Chris Daggett supporters washed away defeat with drinks and good cheer in the post-concession hours Tuesday night, two Rutgers student volunteers sat at a table inside the campaign's Dolce Hotel headquarters in Basking Ridge, N.J., pondering the big picture.

Rob Cacioppo, 21, who previously volunteered for Ralph Nader, said Daggett should work outside the electoral system to capitalize on his heightened profile and campaign experience.

"That's what I hope he continues - fighting for independent, third-party candidates," he said. "At whatever scale, two-party tyranny needs to be broken up."

Daggett's independent gubernatorial campaign was the strongest in decades in New Jersey. At its mid-October zenith, Daggett earned the endorsement of New Jersey's largest newspaper, the Star-Ledger of Newark, and was the choice of 20 percent of likely voters in a Rutgers-Eagleton poll.

But in the end, he finished with about 6 percent of the vote, raising questions about his political future - and whether any candidate can get to the governor's office from outside the two major parties.

After conceding Tuesday, Daggett said he would be open to working for the next governor, if asked, and speculated - tepidly - about other attempts at elected office.

"You never say never about anything. My inclination is not to, but I want to see how this is picked up. We had a national impact with some of the things we were doing," he said.

Ben Dworkin, director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University, said Daggett "has a lot of different options, and it'll be interesting how he decides to play it."

"He has indicated that he is not interested in creating a third party, but at the same time he may try to create a statewide organization" to advocate for the policies on which he campaigned and "hold the winner's feet to the fire," Dworkin said.

Patrick Murray, a political analyst at Monmouth University, said Daggett's run would be quickly forgotten by the two major parties but spell big dividends for his environmental consulting practice.

"Who wouldn't want to hire a former gubernatorial candidate?" Murray said.

Nursing his first beer in months as the hotel conference room emptied out Tuesday, Daggett had a one-word answer for what it would take for an independent or third-party candidate to win in New Jersey: "Money."

Daggett, a former Republican, was the third nonmainstream gubernatorial candidate - after Murray Sabrin in 1997 and Hector Castillo in 2005 - to qualify for matching public funding, said Amy Davis, a state election-law enforcement official. The $1.2 million he got from the state was more than either of those candidates received, but still fell well short of the $7.3 million cap, which Republican Christopher J. Christie reached Oct. 16.

Gov. Corzine funded his own campaign, spending more than $20 million.

"When we hit 20 percent in the polls, we got pummeled with negative campaigning and negative advertising . . . and we didn't have the resources to fight it financially," Daggett said.

His unofficial Election Day results still make him the most successful independent or third-party candidate in almost a century, beating the 5 percent Libertarian Sabrin garnered 12 years ago.

For the near future, Daggett said, he will pursue a lawsuit filed during the campaign contesting his ballot placement. Despite receiving matching funding and qualifying for the debates, as an independent he was lumped in with the other nonmainstream candidates, while Christie and Corzine sat at the top of the ballot.

Of the 30 states that give ballot preference to the two major parties, only New Jersey does not standardize where the rest of the candidates will be, said Richard Winger, editor of Ballot Access News.

"It's the only state where every single county has its own system, so Daggett couldn't even have a statewide ad saying, 'Find me in Row G,' " Winger said. "New Jersey is unique in giving counties carte blanche to fool around."

On Election Day, volunteers gathered at train stations throughout the state to pass out business-card-size indicators of where Daggett's name was on the ballot in each county.

"I'm going to at least continue that suit if I can get that done pro bono," Daggett said. "It's a waste of government money to have public financing of campaigns and then, when somebody gets it, bury them in the ballot."

Mark Magyar, who was Daggett's policy director, said he and many others in the campaign wanted Daggett to continue to fight the state's entrenched political system and the power of money in elections, possibly through the creation of a nonprofit agency.

"A lot of people, especially in the last two weeks when we were out there, kept saying to us, 'You can't stop. You've got to keep going,' " he said. "I know Chris heard that."

Though Daggett tapped a hot-button issue by outlining proposals to cut property taxes, Dworkin said his lack of cash and name recognition going into the race made it hard to analyze his candidacy as a blueprint.

"I'm not sure he provides any model for how a third party can run or be successful in this state," he said.

Joseph Marbach, political science professor and dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Seton Hall University, said Daggett would have to go a major-party route to get elected.

"I don't know how viable that would be for him because he's burnt bridges on both sides," he said. Marbach also said he could see Daggett as an effective spokesman for a watchdog group "à la Steve Lonegan." Lonegan, the state director of Americans for Prosperity, an advocate for conservative public policy, ran unsuccessfully in the last two Republican gubernatorial primaries.

As for the fresh-faced pair of Cacioppo and his 19-year-old friend, Mikey Leviss, they said Daggett's failed campaign raised mixed feelings about the possibility of seeing an independent or third-party governor in their lifetime.

"On one hand, I feel like there's a movement starting with young people who are fed up with Democrats and Republicans and aren't totally turned off from politics," Cacioppo said. "On the other hand, I realize the Democrats and Republicans have so much control."

Leviss said he felt the right candidate could pull it off.

"Definitely," he said. "Me."