February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
At home, it’s more genteel,” said the Dublin-born Republican candidate for freeholder in Bergen County.
“The force of personality is more important there. You had Garret Fitzgerald who was very personable and likeable, and Jack Lynch who had a fireside personality,” he said of two taoisigh of recent decades.
“Here, it’s who has the money,” said the College of Commerce, Rathmines, graduate.
“It’s 30 percent on each side [Republican and Democrat], and then the rest are the glorious middle, who just want lower prices and taxes,” said the 54-year-old Bogota-based realtor.
Duggan has been making his county’s precarious financial state an issue. In the Democratic-dominated Bergen, too, “pay to play” is an important subject with voters, he said. The Dubliner added that his involvement is as much about ensuring that there are checks and balances in the system. “The lack of them,” he said, “itself leads to skullduggery.”
Politics is a “contact sport” in New Jersey, he contended, because so many people are dependent upon government jobs. That’s why, he said, when he ran for the same office last year, his posters didn’t stay up anywhere for very long. (He got 70,000 votes in 2007, but his opponent had a comfortable 10,000 vote margin.)
Duggan began his political life towards the other end of the spectrum. He was once a member of the Irish Labor Party and he was an admirer of its deputy leader Barry Desmond, who was minister for social welfare and health in the 1980s coalition government.
“I did bit of a turn here,” said Duggan, who is now a crucial part of John McCain’s drive to turn the blue state of New Jersey red in 2008.
In fact, his ideological transformation began when he got a job in Germany as deputy chief of quality control for the U.S. army in Germany in the 1980s. His contact with that country began years before when his father, a senior officer in the Irish army, worked as an instructor there. The now 90-year-old John P. Duggan is the author of the standard history of the Irish army, and other works. “He joined the army during the Emergency [World War II],” said his son, who expressed pride in the Irish Defense Forces’ peacekeeping role with the United Nations. “He’s still writing. He’s a tough cookie.”
Duggan wouldn’t say that about himself necessarily but he will describe himself as a “maverick,” at least in the context of Irish immigrants’ traditional support for the Democratic Party.
“I think it was the process of becoming a citizen — taking the oath of citizenship was very emotional,” he said of his move to the right.
“I was in the army reserves at home, but nobody had ever asked me to swear an oath before,” he said.
“The liberty thing grows in you,” Duggan said, adding that he became increasingly libertarian in his views as the years passed.
He gravitated towards politics as soon as he came to the U.S. in the late 1980s, but it wasn’t easy as a non-citizen. “I was on the periphery. You have to get to know the ropes,” he said.
The Bergan Republican would like to see immigrants from his native land have “first dibs” when it comes to getting green cards.
“The Irish have shed enough blood for this country,” he said.
Duggan said that being foreign-born and having a Dublin accent isn’t a problem in a county that is one of the country’s most diverse. It includes, for example, significant Korean, Orthodox Jewish and Hispanic communities. In addition, about 12 percent of Bergen’s population claims Irish heritage.
The politician himself is married to an Italian American, Barbara, and the couple have a 2 1/2-year-old toddler, Jack. “Yes, ‘The Wild Colonial Boy,'” said Duggan, referring to the character of the same name in the famous ballad.