N.J. gubernatorial candidate touts change

Chris Daggett hopped off the River Line in Burlington City yesterday looking for votes in his independent campaign for governor, and ready to listen to what people had on their minds.

Inside Lamplighter Confections, as a bright ragtime tune played, he met up with owner Mary Ann Taylor, a registered Republican, and her friend Karen Dunn, who owns the nearby Blackbeard's Deli, a registered Democrat.

One thing the two could agree on is that they are deeply frustrated by both major parties in New Jersey.

"I'm tired of this two-party system. All they want is to score points for their team. I'm sick of it. I've had it," said Dunn.

Taylor wasn't far behind. She said the parties are more interested in protecting the status quo than cutting costs for small businesspeople like herself, or making public schools more effective.

"With both parties, when you strip away the rhetoric, they're the same," she said, adding that they spend too much time catering to special interests.

It was a perfect combination for Daggett, whose theme is that neither party has tackled the tough questions in Trenton.

He used the Independence Day holiday as a foil to ask voters to consider an independent for governor. He kicked off a tour of historic sites yesterday, including stops in Burlington City at the Blue Anchor Inn, which served as Abraham Lincoln's Jersey campaign headquarters, as well as Bordentown, at the home of Thomas Paine.

In boardwalk and beach walks on the weekends, Daggett said he has been tapping into an overwhelming disappointment with the state government and major political parties.

"When I first decided to run, I did it in part because there was a feeling of discouragement and disillusionment," he said. "As I've learned on the campaign trail, that disillusionment and discouragement and disappointment about both parties is so much wider and deeper than I could imagine."

Daggett said Trenton has focused on cutting the state's operating departments rather than the most tax-consuming areas of government, which he says include Medicaid, pensions, and employee health care, as well as school and municipal aid.

Republicans and Democrats "don't talk about it. It's untouchable."

He said when candidates debate cutting the state workforce, they don't consider that 40,000, or half, of the state employees would have to be laid off to save $2 billion.

While he does not have a detailed plan on cutting those major expenses, he said he would draw the best minds in the state into his administration to come up with ways to reduce costs.

"We have to first acknowledge the problem and be willing to address it no matter how painful or how much time it may take," he said. "It took us 15 years to get into this mess; it's going to take a lot of time to get out."

A longtime Republican, Daggett was a regional director for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and served as former Republican Gov. Thomas Kean's deputy chief of staff and later as his environmental commissioner.

He is expected to raise enough money to get state matching funds by next week, which would get him into debates with Gov. Corzine and Republican candidate Christopher J. Christie.