ORANGE - Clocking in at 13% as of Wednesday, the first time he's broken into double digits in a Quinnipiac University poll, independent candidate Chris Daggett affirmed that he has now outflanked fellow challenger, GOP gubernatorial candidate Chris Christie, on the question of property tax relief.

"The audience in there complained that he wasn't specific enough," Daggett said of Christie, shortly after emerging from the AME Church where first Christie and then Daggett addressed the Black Ministers Council of New Jersey. 

Gov. Jon Corzine addressed the same crowd after Daggett, who wants to extend the existing 7% sales tax to a greater range of personal, professional and household services while adding what Daggett said would be $3.9 billion in revenue, and lower the corporate income tax from 9.36 to 7 percent and caps municipal, county and school district budgets based on the Consumer Price Index (CPI).

"Christie is saying it's a tax hike, which it's not, it's a 25% tax cut," said Daggett, who appeared today at the black ministers' council with his running mate, Prof. Frank Esposito, interim dean of Kean University.

The independent, who was born in Orange, incidentally, received a laugh early in his presentation when he criticized Corzine and Christie for waging a mano-a-mano over mammograms, driving records and Michele Brown.

"Who cares?" he said, prompting an "amen" from the crowd amid some scattered hand claps.

Heavy on tax policy in his remarks and wonky as usual, Daggett said he's aware of the challenge he faces at Thursday evening's NJN debate to try to speak in attention-grabbing soundbites.

"Nixon and Kennedy had three minutes each to answer questions in their debate, and back then it was not considered a lot of time," Daggett told PolitickerNJ.com.  "We'll have 30 or 90 seconds each at this debate (60 seconds if the interlocutor goes first and then an additional 30 seconds for a rebuttal), but it's important for me to get a message out there to a broader group than I have so far, and to be extremely contrasting in the time allotted."