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Pollsters and pundits give the independent little chance of winning, pointing out poll numbers nearly 30 points behind the major-party candidates with only three weeks to go.
But it has been a rapid climb for the understated Daggett, a 59-year-old former environmental protection commissioner, who, since August has morphed from the candidate nobody's heard of to a force to be reckoned with, pulling votes from the major-party candidates in a race that's growing tighter.
"I've believed from the beginning that the people of New Jersey are tired of politics as usual, they're angry at both parties, they're looking for someone who will tell them the truth about what's going on no matter how ugly that might be," Daggett said this week, as he dashed from one interview to the next, his time increasingly in demand as the Nov. 3 election nears.
Daggett, who holds a doctorate in education, has marketed himself as a well-reasoned, solution oriented independent who is the only one of the three able to fix a broke and broken New Jersey. He says New Jerseyans know he's the right man for the job because he's nonpartisan and void of special interests.
"Daggett's election would send shock waves through New Jersey's ossified political system and, we believe, provide a start in a new direction," The Star-Ledger said in its endorsement.
In sparse television advertising so far, he hired lookalike character actors to lampoon the other two - portraying Corzine as aloof and Christie as rumpled and ill-tempered. The packaging seems to have worked.
An Oct. 6 Fairleigh Dickinson University-PublicMind Poll showed Christie with 43 percent, Corzine at 44 percent. Four percent volunteered that they support Daggett, but the number grew to 17 percent when his name was read with the other two. The poll of 667 likely voters was conducted Sept. 28 to Oct. 5 and had a sampling error margin of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
Corzine called the Daggett factor "a huge, huge unknown" and political scientists agree.
"Independents tend to peak, then at Election Day there is some buyer's remorse and voters don't want to waste their vote," said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute. "If the voters feel the candidate they prefer doesn't have a shot, they may swing to a major-party candidate."
Daggett is hoping that doesn't happen here.
"If I have the vote of everyone who said to me, 'I really want to vote for you, but I'm afraid a vote for you is a vote for Chris Christie or Jon Corzine,' I would win," he said.
Murray said polling data show Daggett's first 5 percent of support is drawn equally from Corzine and Christie, but his next 5 percentage points are pulling from Christie.
"I don't think he'll decide the election one way or the other," said Christie, the former U.S. attorney for New Jersey. "He has no money to advertise. He has no natural constituency base. And it's not like he's caught fire here in any kind of way."
It is an uphill climb for a candidate who lacks the money to advertise in the pricey New York City and Philadelphia markets as much as the better-known candidates down the stretch. And, in most counties, it will be difficult to find Daggett's name on the ballot because he had to compete, lottery-style, for ballot placement with other, lesser-known third-party candidates. He unsuccessfully sued to force better ballot placement.
At a recent candidates forum in Orange sponsored by the Black Ministers Council, Daggett got a polite reception from the Democrat-leaning crowd.
"I like what I heard," said Robert Battle, a 47-year-old truck driver from Roselle Park. "He was on point. He was honest. He told us what he's going to cut." The registered Democrat said he hasn't settled on a candidate yet.
Independents traditionally fare poorly in New Jersey elections - Hector Castillo, the "Education Not Corruption" candidate, got less than 1.5 percent of the gubernatorial vote in 2005 - but Daggett says that's because they were extremists, not moderates with a resume full of government experience to back up their claims. He served in the Cabinet of well-regarded Republican Gov. Tom Kean Sr., for example. Kean has endorsed Christie.
Daggett was the first of the three candidates to come out with a detailed plan to slash the nation's highest property taxes, which he says he'd do by restructuring the system and strictly enforcing a cap on municipal, school district and county spending. His plan injected substance into the first gubernatorial debate and gave his candidacy legitimacy the others freely acknowledged.
"Let me compliment Mr. Daggett because he has a plan," Corzine said early in the debate. Later, Corzine said he had a high regard for Daggett, calling his candidacy "a serious effort to air a more moderate Republican view."
And though he has since said Daggett isn't a threat, Christie also complimented the independent several times during the first debate.
Daggett rejects the notion that he's only a spoiler, noting he needs just 34 percent of the vote to win the three-way race.
"I think the real spoiler here is Chris Christie," Daggett said. "If he were to drop out, I would win handily."
