The candidates squared off in a 60-minute debate broadcast on National Public Radio affiliates in Newark and in the Philadelphia region covering southern New Jersey. Independent Christopher Daggett, who has drawn voters from the Republican in polls, said he would cut the state’s property and income taxes by 25 percent and place tighter caps on local spending growth.
Corzine, 62, and Christie are neck-and-neck less than two weeks before the Nov. 3 election. Corzine is the first U.S. governor to face re-election since the recession. Christie has blamed the incumbent for the state’s 9.8 percent unemployment rate and highest-in-the-nation property taxes.
“I think we’ll be able to get very close to zero growth” in property taxes with an economic recovery, the governor said, adding that he would reinstate property-tax relief programs cut amid the recession. “We didn’t get here in four years. It took us a long time.”
The candidates faced off in a toned-down debate that also focused on government ethics, school construction and health care. The session marked the final time all three will share a stage with less than two weeks remaining in the campaign.
Real estate levies, which averaged about $7,000 last year, and how to curb growth in the locally levied tax have been a perennial issue in state politics. Corzine also said Christie’s anti-abortion stance is out of line with most New Jerseyans.
Campaign Spending
Corzine, a former co-chairman of Goldman, Sachs & Co., has spent at least $16.8 million on the race, more than triple Christie’s $5.4 million, according to campaign finance data released Oct. 7. Daggett, 59, has spent about $1 million.
Christie, who is accepting public matching funds, has said he expected to be outspent by the governor, who isn’t taking taxpayer funds. The Republican is limited under state public- finance laws to $10.9 million for the campaign.
Until this month, Corzine trailed Christie in polls. The governor caught up to Christie, 47, after running ads attacking the Republican’s support for ending state-mandated health- insurance coverage and his links as a fundraiser for former President George W. Bush.
The spots also questioned Christie’s driving record following a 2002 traffic accident in which he turned the wrong way down a one-way street, hit a motorcyclist and wasn’t issued a ticket, and questioned his ethics for giving a loan to an aide who worked for him when he was U.S. attorney for New Jersey.
Poll Results
Corzine led Christie, 39 percent to 36 percent, in a Rutgers-Eagleton poll released yesterday. The results are within the survey’s error margin of 4.1 percentage points. Daggett, 59, garnered 20 percent in the survey of 583 likely voters.
In a Quinnipiac University poll released July 14, Christie led Corzine 47 percent to 38 percent when Daggett was included. The independent received 8 percent in that tally.
In their first debate Oct. 1, Corzine said he wouldn’t rule out tax increases as a “last resort” to balance the budget and proposed encouraging towns and cities to merge and share services to control property taxes. Christie said he would move future state workers, excluding police officers, into 401(k)- style retirement plans and reduce overtime.
Christie has called for as much as $6 billion in spending cuts to balance the budget, saying he’s the only candidate who wouldn’t raise taxes. Daggett has called for extending the state’s 7 percent sales tax to professional services such as fees charged by lawyers, accountants and architects.
Christie Slips
“While Jon Corzine has made up a lot of ground in all of the polls since last summer, he has not done it by increasing his support,” said David Redlawsk, director of the Rutgers- Eagleton Poll and a professor of political science at Rutgers University, which in its poll said taxes top voters’ issue lists. “Instead, Christopher Christie has lost support.”
A defeat for Corzine would be only the second for an incumbent New Jersey governor since 1947 in a general election. Republicans haven’t won a statewide election in New Jersey since 1997, when Christine Todd Whitman defeated Democrat James McGreevey to win a second term as governor.
Daggett has positioned himself as a change agent unencumbered by partisan baggage. His sales-tax proposal would raise about $4 billion by extending the state’s 7 percent sales tax to fees charged for services.
‘Underdog, Underfunded’
“Democrats and Republicans made a mess of this state, and neither of my opponents has any plan to deal with it,” Daggett said. “Our underdog, underfunded campaign promised to tell you the truth and we’ve done it.”
Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than 700,000 voters in New Jersey, while about 46 percent of the 5.2 million registered voters are unaffiliated, according to state Division of Elections data released this month.
The victor in the gubernatorial campaign will inherit a budget deficit of as much as $8 billion in the next fiscal year, according to the nonpartisan Office of Legislative Services.
New Jersey has the third-highest debt load after California and New York, according to Moody’s Investors Service. The company on Aug. 3 cut its ratings outlook to negative from stable on $31 billion in New Jersey debt, citing declining tax revenue because of the U.S. recession.
To contact the reporter on this story: Terrence Dopp in Trenton, New Jersey, at tdopp@bloomberg.net.
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