After he scored 760 out of a possible 800 in the SAT math test, Paul DiGaetano knew he was headed where no man from Passaic had ever gone before - outer space.
DiGaetano's gaudy test scores were his ticket to the aerospace engineering program at the University of Notre Dame, the first step toward the fulfillment of a childhood dream -becoming an astronaut.
"That meant absolutely everything to me,'' says DiGaetano, a veteran state assemblyman who is 51.
"In fact, if NASA called me right now and invited me to ride the space shuttle, I'd be there in a second."
DiGaetano's dreams of spaceflight ended in 1977 as he prepared to enter the Navy flight school in Pensacola, Fla.: Young Paul's father was gravely ill.
He would have to abandon his career and take over the family construction business to support his mother and two little sisters.
Paul DiGaetano
# Age: 51
# Education: Bachelor's degree, University of Notre Dame
# Family: Married, three children.
# Occupation: President, J. DiGaetano and Sons Inc. a construction and development firm.
# Political experience: Passaic City Council 1981-96, General Assembly 1992-present, 1986-87, Republican Leader 2002-03, Majority Leader, 1996-2001.
Now, 28 years later, DiGaetano wants to become governor of New Jersey, a capstone in a political career he never really bargained for.
The Nutley resident is one of seven Republicans running for the party's nomination and the right to square off against Democratic millionaire Jon Corzine.
DiGaetano's chance of winning the Republican primary may be as slim as the chance of getting that phone call from NASA and a ride on the space shuttle.
In a poll of likely voters released this week, DiGaetano barely registered a blip on the state's radar screen. He remains far behind the leading GOP contenders, former Jersey City Mayor Bret Schundler and Mercer County businessman Douglas Forrester.
And DiGaetano has little money in the bank to get voters' attention on the final days of the campaign. State elections reports released this week show he has spent a little more than $1 million, while frontrunner Forrester spent more than eight times that amount.
"Hey, I'm not deluding myself here. I know I'm a long shot in a race where name ID is everything,'' DiGaetano said in an interview Wednesday. "But I really feel strongly that voters out there are looking for a choice, an alternative - and if they look at me they're going to like what they see.''
When DiGaetano announced he was running for governor in November 2003 - long before anyone else in either party - skeptics said he was already preparing for a near certain loss in this year's Assembly race.
Towns in his home district of Passaic and southern Bergen counties were becoming more and more Democratic. He had already survived several close primary calls in his own party.
So when DiGaetano announced that he would seek the gubernatorial nomination instead of reelection to his 36th District Assembly seat, it looked like a preemptive effort to save face.
But DiGaetano sees his candidacy less as a nice résumé item than a stab at relevancy.
"Let's face it, the way things are going, Republicans are not going to win the Assembly back this fall. I don't want to sit in the minority,'' he said. "Isn't it better to take a shot at something where you can make a difference?''
DiGaetano understands better than most how the Trenton spoils system shuts out the minority party.
As Assembly majority leader from 1996 to 2001, he presided over the heyday of the Whitman-DiFrancesco era. As GOP leader in a Democrat-controlled Assembly in 2002 and 2003, he had virtually no power to move legislation.
DiGaetano ascended to his party's leadership by being a trusted and hardworking GOP acolyte with a reputation for compromise. Even though he is strongly conservative on many issues, he is viewed far less as an ideologue than a pragmatic deal maker in the tradition of such GOP leaders as Sen. Joseph Kyrillos and former Sens. Donald DiFrancesco and John Bennett.
If you ask him about his proudest moment as a lawmaker, he says it is his sponsorship of a 1998 law that set aside $5 million for stem cell research on umbilical tissue.
DiGaetano also wrote the legislation that deregulated the state's energy industry and sponsored a bill that created the NJSAVER, a popular property tax rebate program.
In a GOP primary that will most likely hinge on the support of conservative voters, DiGaetano has downplayed his reputation for bipartisanship in favor of a more populist image.
DiGaetano's Web site, where the candidate strides in dungarees, tool belt and a hard hat, hails him as the "blue collar" choice for New Jersey. If elected, he says he would immediately cap spending increases at the rate of inflation and ask voters to approve a constitutional amendment against new taxes.
State workers, he said, would have to learn to do with smaller pay increases and less benefits in a DiGaetano administration. Controlling costs, he argues, is the only reasonable approach to tax reform.
"The only way you're going to solve property taxes to the people's satisfaction is by having them pay less, not pay more out of one pocket to pay less out of the other pocket," he said.
DiGaetano's "common sense" plan for New Jersey also includes strengthening government ethics, tougher laws against terrorism and a more controversial proposals to revamp the state Supreme Court by putting judges up for voter approval.
As part of his judicial reform plan, DiGaetano would even advance a constitutional amendment forcing judges "to interpret the Constitution literally.''
"The courts cannot make their own laws, they cannot be above the people,'' he says.
If he loses, DiGaetano is not ruling out another run for governor or a try for state senate in 2007. Until then, he would concentrate on his family's construction and development firm in Elmwood Park; his wife of 21 years, Yvonne, and his three sons, Joseph, 17, Paul Jr., 14, and Michael, 10.
He'll also have more time to keep dreaming about space flight and boning up on aeronautic developments in his favorite magazine - Jane's All the World's Aircraft.
"You never know, that call from NASA could come any day,'' he says.
