In the Right

What amplifies that dynamic even more is that there will be reporters in the studio, writing about it tonight, for Saturday's newspapers. That means that even among the relatively few who will tune in to watch the debate on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, they will already have read about the debate before they ever see it for themselves.

And just as a review of a movie you'd like to see affects your perception of the movie, reading about a debate and then watching it for yourself will yield a different perception than if you had just watched it alone.

The audience, therefore, is not the audience at home, it is the reporters in the studio tonight. What they see and hear -- and, consequently, choose to write about in tomorrow's and Sunday's newspapers -- will shape the public's perceptions of the debate.

For the onetime leader in the race, Republican Chris Christie the good news is that from what I've seen, they don't like Jon Corzine much.

They've had ten years of Jon Corzine buying political support -- more than $130 million, at last count -- and they're really not that impressed. He never took very good care of them -- even when he hired a couple of them away from their newspapers to work for him, it didn't buy him much goodwill.

But they're not that impressed with Christie, either. They think he's gotten way too far with way too little specificity. And while they were perfectly willing to step in and write the anti-Corzine pieces over the last few years to help create the environment in which a competitive gubernatorial race could be held, now that it's crunch time, they're going back to their (liberal, goo goo) roots.

And now for the third candidate in the race, Independent Chris Daggett. He's had a pretty good ride -- he seen his opportunities, and he took 'em. And as a consequence, his numbers are rising, Christie's are falling, and the race is now a dead heat.

Corzine is stuck at 40. In virtually every poll taken this year, he's right around the 40 percent mark on the ballot test.

That's another way of saying 6 in 10 voters have decided they don't like him. Absent Daggett, this would be a runaway victory for Christie.

Now, turn that around -- for Christie to win, he must remove Daggett as a political force in this race.

So let's look at Daggett's support.

The first thing to look at is, where's it coming from? And the answer is, more than half of his support is coming from Independent and Unaffiliated voters -- according to the latest survey from the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, he's pulling 20 percent of the Independent vote, 10 percent of the Democrat vote, and just 7 percent of the GOP vote.

He's risen from 13 percent support from Independent voters in August to 20 percent today, while Christie has slipped among those same Independent voters, from 55 percent in August to 40 percent today. Coincidence? I think not.

Christie's support is firm -- 80 percent of his supporters surveyed said they were sure of their vote and were not going to change their mind; the bad news for Daggett is, his support is soft -- fully 59 percent of his supporters said they could still change their mind before casting their ballot.

However, when asked their second choice, 40 percent of Daggett voters said it was Christie, while just 33 percent of them said it was Corzine.

So 6 out of 10 of Daggett's voters aren't sure they're going to follow through and vote for him, and more of them go Republican when they decide to peel away.

Go ahead, Mr. Christie, you have my permission to lick your lips.

So how do you get them to peel away?

You convince the journalists in the room tonight -- and, through them, the remaining undecided and soft voters -- that you offer a better alternative to four more years of Corzine than does Daggett.

You will do this not by attacking Daggett, or even by attacking Daggett's $3.9 billion tax hike.

You will do this by ignoring Daggett and his $3.9 billion tax hike.

Every time you engage Daggett, you give him more credibility. You enhance his stature. You treat him as an equal. And you validate him and his ideas.

And, given that the only thing holding back a flood tide of support for Daggett right now is the fear that a vote for him is a wasted vote -- because third party and independent candidates so rarely win -- the very last thing you want to do is anything that will give Daggett supporters cause to believe he could actually win -- like you, treating him as an equal and engaging him.

Besides, every time you hit Daggett, you increase his support. He's like Obi-Wan Kenobi -- his power grows as you strike him.

Sure, you might get some of the Republicans and anti-tax Independents to come back your way with a good attack over his proposed tax hike. But you'll likely lose as many Independents who are your soft supporters, just because they don't like seeing you smack him around. So hitting Daggett is a net wash for you.

Thus, your best move tonight is to ignore Daggett.

But that's not to say that you're going to focus only on Corzine, and attack him instead.

No, you want to ignore Corzine, too. He's toast. He's done. Stick a fork in him, already. His negatives are already off the charts, and they're not going up any further.

Every time you hit Corzine, you send some of your own soft supporters to Daggett (because only hard-core partisans like watching one politician smack around another one), and, to the extent that you do peel off Corzine supporters, where do you think they go? To Daggett, not to you. So smacking Corzine increases Daggett's support.

Well, if you're not going to attack Corzine, and you're going to ignore Daggett, what are you going to do?

You're going to use this opportunity to speak to the journalists in the room, to demonstrate to them that you'd be a better Governor for the next four years than would be Chris Daggett.

How?

Begin by disavowing the Republican Governors Association's ads -- the attack ads they've been running on your behalf, first against Corzine, now against Daggett.

They've done you no good at all -- Corzine's negatives, as discussed above, were never going to get much higher, and Daggett shouldn't be the subject of any GOP advertising at all, because all it does is drive his name identification higher. He sees those ads running on television, and he acts like Br'er Rabbit -- "Oh, no, please don't run another ad attacking me by name!"

Daggett has no money for television advertising. Right now, the only team paying to put his name on the air and advertise his existence is our team. Does that make any sense to you? Me, neither.

So appeal to the goo goo nature of the journalists in the room by denouncing the RGA spots. That'll also have a nice salutary effect with Daggett's soft supporters.

Next, offer a plan, not just vague generalities.

The key here is, you've got to move beyond your current strategy -- "I'm not Jon Corzine" -- to a new strategy, more along the lines of "I'm the Man with the Plan."

You don't have to declare an abandonment of your current strategy; instead, you just say it's a natural evolution -- that as the campaign is moving into its closing phase, and New Jersey's famously late-breaking electorate (some insider jargon there will appeal to the parochialism of the journalists) is finally beginning to tune in to the race, now is the time to lay out your comprehensive strategy to rebuild New Jersey's economy.

Give it a simple name -- "Cap and Cut," or something like that -- and have no more than four bullet points to it, so you can tick them off on the fingers of one hand.

(If your policy wonks still haven't come up with a real plan for you by now, call Dan Clifton and ask him to turn something around on the back of a napkin. He's forgotten more about New Jersey's state budget and its economy than most of the bureaucrats in the state Department of the Treasury will ever know, and he gets the joke. Use him.)

Spend the entire debate talking about your new plan, and stay positive.

You're 18 days out, you're in a dead heat because your current strategy has exhausted itself, and it's time to close strong.

Be confident, be strong, maintain your discipline and don't attack the other two, roll out your new plan, and be positive. Pick up the wavering Daggett supporters and you're home.

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