TEANECK, N.J. — The independent candidate for New Jersey governor is primed to play spoiler in the Nov. 3 election. The question is which candidate he will hurt most.

Recent polls show Chris Daggett, an environmental consultant, getting 14% support, while Democratic incumbent Jon Corzine and Republican challenger Chris Christie each are averaging less than 40% each, according to polling aggregator RealClearPolitics.com.

Voters’ mood this year is more anti-Corzine than it is pro-Christie, and most observers believe Mr. Daggett is siphoning anti-incumbent votes from the challenger. In a poll last week, Quinnipiac University asked Daggett supporters who their second choice would be. Forty percent said Mr. Christie and 33% said Mr. Corzine.

Turnout is typically low in New Jersey’s odd-year gubernatorial election, and with the better-organized Democrats behind the incumbent, a key will be those who say they are supporting Mr. Daggett.

Mr. Christie, a former U.S. attorney, had hoped to capitalize on dissatisfaction among unaffiliated voters and unhappy Democrats. Mr. Corzine, who was elected in 2005 after five years in the U.S. Senate, has suffered from the perception that he hasn’t addressed the state’s biggest problem — high property taxes — and festering resentment at his handling of high unemployment.

The White House is on the case: Wednesday, President Barack Obama appeared at a rally with Mr. Corzine for the second time this year. In recent days, Vice President Joe Biden and former President Bill Clinton also campaigned in the state.

Mr. Daggett has no such star power backing him. At a grassroots meeting in the suburban New York City town of Teaneck Tuesday evening, Mr. Daggett tried to tamp down fears that a vote for him would be wasted.

“I believe the indictment of the two-party system is strong across New Jersey,” Mr. Daggett told a group of about 30 people. “A vote for me is a vote for me. It’s time to take action on your beliefs.”

Mr. Christie led in the polls until September. That’s when Mr. Corzine’s personal wealth from his Wall Street career began fueling ads that questioned Mr. Christie’s ethics and decision-making. Another Corzine ad seemed to highlight Mr. Christie’s girth while a voiceover said Mr. Christie “threw his weight around as U.S. attorney.”

Mr. Christie has fought back by frequently reminding voters of Mr. Corzine’s wealth, which allows him to contribute to political and church groups.

All the mudslinging has opened the door for the long-shot candidate. At a televised debate Oct. 1, the major-party candidates sniped at each other while Mr. Daggett presented a detailed plan that would lower property taxes by 25%. He said he would do so namely by expanding the types of services that are subject to the state’s sales tax. He also called for cutting pension and health-care benefits for public employees, a risky move in a state that is heavily unionized.

Mr. Daggett’s message that voters aren’t getting what they want from either major-party candidate has played particularly well with some of the state’s 2.4 million unaffiliated voters, which make up about half of the total.

“What the Chris Daggett phenomenon is is a pox on both your houses,” says Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute in Long Branch. “We don’t like the job Jon Corzine has done, but we don’t think Chris Christie has leveled with us and told us what he will do, either.” Mr. Corzine says he has capped local property-tax increases and preserved rebates for middle-class taxpayers and favors property-tax credits or rebates in the future. Mr. Christie’s campaign says he has a plan to cut the state property tax by cutting items in the state budget.

As the regional administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under Ronald Reagan, Mr. Daggett played a role in killing a popular New York development project that he says would have harmed the Hudson River. He later served as the commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Protection and was recently picked by Mr. Corzine to help overhaul the state’s environmental-permit process.

Mr. Daggett has spent about $1 million on the election. Mr. Corzine, formerly chief executive of Goldman Sachs, has outspent him by at least 17 times, while Mr. Christie has outspent Mr. Daggett by nearly six times.

At the meeting in Teaneck, Mr. Daggett impressed on the group the need for them to elect someone willing to address the tax structure and an anticipated $8 billion state deficit.

One audience member, Richard Karp, a professional artist in Teaneck, said he planned to vote for Mr. Daggett, even though he doesn’t believe he has a chance. “Realistically, people are not inclined to vote for an independent,” he said.

Mr. Murray of the Monmouth polling institute agreed. “New Jerseyans are just so used to voting for a political party,” he said.

The recent Quinnipiac poll found that only 39% of those respondents have made up their minds.

Write to Suzanne Sataline at suzanne.sataline@wsj.com

Independent gubernatorial candidate Chris Daggett at the Star-Ledger editorial board meeting on Friday. (Ed Murray/ The Star-Ledger)

The Star-Ledger today endorses independent candidate Chris Daggett and recommends his election as the next governor of New Jersey.

The newspaper’s decision is less a rejection of Gov. Jon Corzine and Republican Chris Christie than a repudiation of the parties they represent, both of which have forfeited any claim to the trust and confidence of the people of New Jersey. They share responsibility for the state’s current plight.

Only by breaking the hold of the Democratic and Republican mandarins on the governor’s office and putting a rein on their power will the state have any hope for the kind of change needed to halt its downward economic, political and ethical spiral.

New Jersey needs radical change in Trenton. Neither of the major parties is likely to provide it. Daggett’s election would send shock waves through New Jersey’s ossified political system and, we believe, provide a start in a new direction.

It would signal the entrenched leadership of both parties — and the interest groups they regularly represent — that an ill-served and angry electorate demands something better.

The lamentable fact is that the two parties are, themselves, little more than narrow special interests. Their competition for short-term political and/or monetary gain has jeopardized the state’s long-term economic health and left it with a tarnished national reputation.

Where the major parties have differed, their differences have been inconsequential. Where they’ve been the same, their similarities have been destructive.

They have contributed equally to gross overspending in Trenton by consistently pandering to the pay, pension and retirement policies demanded by powerful public employee unions. Democrats have financed the spree with tax hikes, Republicans with borrowed money, and both with pension-fund raids.

How do we now signal them that this has got to stop if not by rejecting their anointed candidates? How if not by electing Chris Daggett?

The most disappointing of the three candidates is Christie. Six months ago he seemed an almost certain winner, a highly successful federal prosecutor facing an embattled governor saddled with a collapsing economy and soaring budget deficits. He could run a rocking-chair campaign, it seemed, make only safe commitments, avoid controversy, and win.

Unfortunately, that’s mostly what Christie has done — a strategy that looks less promising now that his double-digit early lead has melted away.

Christie’s game plan for dealing with a looming, record budget deficit of $8 billion has been a work in progress. After pledging for months to cut taxes deeply despite the budget red ink, he disclosed Friday in an interview with The Star-Ledger’s Tom Moran that he has put most of the tax reduction on the shelf until the economy begins to recover.

But he’d still lower income taxes on the state’s wealthiest households by roughly $1 billion and restore a portion of the nearly $600 billion in property tax rebates rescinded last year — a neat trick while still balancing the budget.

Christie’s principal claim on voter support is based on his record as U.S. Attorney for New Jersey — and it’s not without merit. The Star-Ledger opposed his appointment to that post originally, only to be pleasantly surprised as Christie surrounded himself with capable, qualified people and performed well.

But his sketchy budget plans and his relative lack of familiarity with the details of state government, as evidenced in debates and before The Star-Ledger editorial board, give us pause.

Corzine is an eminently decent and likable man, and not without achievement. We especially salute his unflagging commitment to state education and his success in changing the Abbott school aid formula to ensure that money intended to help poor children follows them whether or not they live in specific districts.

But his shortcomings as a leader are serious. They’ve become all too apparent in his dealings with public employee unions, an often unruly Legislature and a Democratic Party that is, at best, an ethically compromised ship and, at worst, harbors a corrupt crew.

The governor may be the nominal leader of his party but there’s mounting evidence its commanding figure is George Norcross, an unelected South Jersey political deal-maker who’s currently rearranging the Democratic leadership in the Senate and Assembly.

Corzine is the chaplain on a pirate ship, not really its captain.

Like Christie, neither Corzine nor Daggett has adequately explained how he’d tackle the vast budget deficit. All three, to some degree, are like Dickens’ hapless Wilkins Micawber, hoping “something will turn up.” But only Daggett has produced anything close to a coherent plan to cut property taxes. He’d chop them by up to $2,500 per homeowner — but only if their municipalities kept spending increases in line with the Consumer Price Index. In effect, he’d require local officials to choose between their union supporters and taxpaying voters. It’s not a panacea, but at least a start.

As for government experience, Daggett, who has a doctorate in education, has at least as much as his rivals, having worked for both Democratic and Republican governors and served as regional administrator of the federal Environmental Protection Agency. His mastery of detail is impressive.

The reservation one hears about Daggett among the surprising number who say they’d like to vote for him is that he can’t win. And, indeed, the ballot position assigned Daggett and other independents makes his task daunting. You’ll have to hunt to find him.

But the value of a vote is not limited to picking a winner. The real value lies in the signal it sends about what the voter believes is best for the city, county or state — not merely at the moment, but long-term.

We believe Daggett is best.

For disappointed Democrats and Republicans, a decision to vote for Daggett will mean a break with party loyalty — no easy thing. What we’re suggesting is a temporary suspension of that loyalty as a way to begin changing the corrosive culture of Trenton. Daggett would owe nothing to either party establishment; he’d be free to recruit best talent wherever he found it. As he told The Star-Ledger editorial board, he’d feel no obligation to honor the traditional Democratic-Republican deal that requires bipartisan balance on the Supreme Court. He’d apparently take the best he could find regardless of party affiliation — or lack thereof.

For too long, the cliche about New Jersey’s two great parties has seemed all too true — that Democrats are corrupt, Republicans incompetent. Nothing will cause them to change their ways for the better except repudiation at the polls Nov. 3.

The election of Chris Daggett would deliver that repudiation and put a highly qualified occupant in the corner office at the Statehouse.

Independent candidate Chris Daggett, looking to boost his visibility in the New Jersey gubernatorial race, has launched a new must-watch TV ad using look-alikes to mock the two major party candidates.

The scene: an escalator breaks down, probably at one of the Garden State’s wonderful shopping malls. One passenger, Gov. Jon Corzine (D), is portrayed as an aloof, Wall Street Journal reading figure hoping someone will bail him out. Another, former U.S. Attorney Chris Christie (R), is shown as a rotund angry man shouting for help. “If someone doesn’t fix this right now, people going to jail. Jail I said, jail!” he bellows.

“When Democrats and Republican fail New Jersey, it’s up to us to take New Jersey back,” a narrator says. “Follow me,” Daggett himself says, leading people past the fake candidates, and directing fire men to help the other guys who “still need rescuing.”

The ad launched Sunday in the New York market, and will air on broadcast and cable during news programming and Yankees games, spokesperson Tom Johnson told RCP this morning. The ad is the brainchild of Bill Hillsman, who has a reputation for doing these type of “quirky” ads, for candidates like Jesse Ventura.

“We’re trying to raise our name recognition here, and we’ll be saying a lot more as the campaign goes on,” Johnson said.

Daggett is polling in the mid-single digits at this point, with many believing his role in the race will ultimately be that of spoiler. Unclear, though, is whether he draws more votes from Christie or Corzine.

“We don’t care who we hurt,” Johnson said. “People in New Jersey are understandably very upset with the state of affairs. … And neither party is willing or able to fix the fiscal situation.” Daggett is “in it to win it,” he adds.

The body doubles were cast by Hillsman through an open casting call. And they might appear again before the campaign ends.

“Underwater” Press Release