NJ Governor resigns
 

This Democrat against gay marriage resigns after cheating on his wife.

N.J. Gov. McGreevey Resigns Over Homosexual Affair
Thu Aug 12, 2004 04:49 PM ET

TRENTON, N.J (Reuters) - New Jersey Gov. James McGreevey, who earlier this year said he opposed gay marriage, announced on Thursday he would resign and admitted having a homosexual affair.
McGreevey, who is married with two children, told reporters he had a consensual sexual affair with another man and that he had been conflicted over his sexuality since adolescence.

"I indulged in a consensual sexual affair with another man, violating the bonds of my marriage," McGreevey, a Democrat, told a news conference, his wife by his side. "I have decided the right course of action is to resign."

-Rudey

that came as a complete shocker bc i was falling asleep watching oprah and to see my governor be a man and admit to being wrong by cheating on his wife is awesome. whats even more awesome is that he admitted to being gay and i think it takes alot of balls nowadays to admit that. yea gov!!

Yeah gov!!! You are an awesome guy for cheating on your wife with a man after being anti-gay marriage.

-Rudey
--Congrats!!! Woo woo!

That's kind of what I'm thinking.

It sounds very hypocritical to me.

That's what I am saying... :rolleyes:

I'm not sure we should be applauding him - he cheated on his wife, and hasn't his administration in NJ been linked to several fund-raising scandals?

A surprising story though to say the least.

Not all gay men and women are for same-sex marriage. Let's be clear on that.

Here's my issue...if he had cheated with a woman, would he have still resigned?

He's bold though...I'll give him that. His wife is a good woman...because there is NO WAY I would have been standing up there with my governor husband while he's admitting to the world he's gay. Who knows...maybe she already knew.

The news in Philly just reported that NJ's former Homeland Security person has just filed a suit against McGreevey for sexual misconduct...

Hasn't been a good year for governors in the NorthEast has it?

The scandals from his administration are still emerging. His political career was about to sink. Now he can be the darling of limo leftists, publish a book, make several million, and run for office again in a few years.

Smart move.

I think that I'll hold a press conference tomorrow to announce that I'm gay, and that I cheated on my wife. As long as no one on GC lets the press know that I'm not gay and not married, I'm on my way to power and fortune!

I think that there were a few investigations involving this governor and his associates. I am pretty shocked that this is what has led to his resignation. It seemed like it was only a matter of time before something happened that would cause him to resign.

Gay NJ Governor for President!

He's not leaving now
 

Apparently this sleaze-ball and other top Democrats in the
smoke-filled rooms of NJ are still trying to manipulate the system,
and won't actually leave office now.

If he resigns now, there would be an election of the new gov along
with the presidential election in Nov.

The democrats don't want that.

Re: He's not leaving now
 

Hearing his speech, I heard a new hyphenation:

"Gay-American"

Wow. He think he's a real live minority now that he sleeps with other men.

NYTimes Op-Ed
http://nytimes.com/2004/08/13/opinio...rint&position=

Great so it all came into the news because he had sexually harassed someone.

-Rudey



August 13, 2004


The Governor's Secret





Sooner or later, it was bound to happen: a major elected official's calling a press conference to tell constituents that he or she is gay. Yesterday, New Jersey's governor, James McGreevey, described his coming to grips with his sexual orientation with uncommon grace and dignity, offering an extraordinary glimpse into the private torment that can accompany a public life lived in the closet. "My truth is that I am a gay American,'' he said. If that had been the beginning and the end of the story, we would be celebrating Mr. McGreevey's candor, not assessing his resignation. But the story - like Mr. McGreevey's statement - was incomplete.


The governor's announcement was reportedly driven by the threat of a sexual harassment lawsuit by a former aide, Golan Cipel. Mr. McGreevey, who has two children from his two marriages and whose wife stood next to him during his press conference, acknowledged that he had committed adultery with another man. He did not say that the man in question had worked for his administration.


Gay or straight, that kind of relationship raises troubling questions, apart from the issue of whether it was consensual. Mr. Cipel was originally appointed as the governor's homeland security adviser, a job for which he had no discernable qualifications. If Mr. McGreevey put someone in that critical post because of a personal relationship, that would be an outrage, regardless of his sexual orientation.


The timing of the governor's coming out was apparently driven by the potential lawsuit, and the timing of his resignation - Nov. 15 - was driven by a desire to avoid an interim election. As it stands, the State Senate president, Richard Codey, another Democrat, will inherit the executive office until the end of 2005. While the mechanics of trying to hold gubernatorial primaries and an election this year would be daunting, Mr. McGreevey's strategy doesn't serve New Jersey residents well. The state will be led by an embattled governor mired in personal and legal problems for three months. Then, because of the peculiarities of New Jersey's Constitution, Mr. Codey will simultaneously lead the Senate and the executive branch - an enormous amount of power for someone whose voter mandate comes only from a State Senate district in Essex County.


Mr. McGreevey's governorship has, in a way, been similar to his dramatic performance yesterday. His goals were noble, and some of his accomplishments laudable - like the millionaire's tax he pushed through as a partial solution to the problem of the state's huge deficit, and his efforts to protect critically important watershed areas. But the story has always been marred by ethical questions swirling around his office.


The cast of characters is long, and the details unsavory. They include a trash hauler and fund-raiser charged in a scheme to extort money from a farmer, and another fund-raiser who is accused of using a prostitute to try to silence a witness in a federal investigation. The governor, tape-recorded without his knowledge in a private meeting, was linked to one scandal when he uttered the word "Machiavelli," which prosecutors claimed was a code word. He has maintained that the use of the word was a coincidence.


In the murky politics surrounding him, being gay may be the least complicated issue Mr. McGreevey could address - and that may explain why he did not delve into the other troubles in his speech.

Re: Re: He's not leaving now
 

I thought hyphens were silent?

Besides, he said he was a gay American.

Re: He's not leaving now
 

Kind of like the sleeze-ball Republican gov. of Conn?

The sad thing about this is the NJ Gov brought his pretty-boy Israeli boyfriend to Jersey, got him 3 high paying jobs and is thanked by blackmail and now a lawsuit. Goes to show- love is for suckers.

And can anyone blame him for wanting to get out of Jersey?

Re: Re: He's not leaving now
 

Y'all aren't having very good luck with governors back east, are you?

I am so tired of hearing about "Sleeze Ball" (fill in Republicans or Democrats).

Neither party has a monopoly on those.

If anybody doesn't believe that the GOP would have handled the possibility of a special election the same way as the Democrats did in this case, they've been recently delving into controlled substances.

It's politics as usual.

If someone wants to attach the "sleeze ball" prefix to "politician," I probably wouldn't argue as much.

In many cases power does corrupt. Thankfully, not all.

holy crap, this was actually an episode of Law & Order the other night, starring Peter Riegert (Boon from Animal House). A male coworker was threatening to sue him for sexual harassment and was found dead - they assumed he did it but that wasn't the case (his wife did).

So, truth isn't always stranger than faction.

Re: Re: He's not leaving now
 

No the sad thing is the guy lied. The sad thing is that he cheated on his wife. The sad thing is he violated the trust of his people by putting someone in charge of security who was a poet and had no training. That's what the sad thing is. Not everything revolves around gay romances Mr. Iowa.

-Rudey

Re: Re: Re: He's not leaving now
 

You hit the nail right on the head

Where do you think Law and Order get all their ideas from?

Out of the headlines, but they usually aren't ahead of the actual events.

Sometimes I think the producers probably make the headlines ;)

You hope that while the governor was living on the down low that he was practicing safe sex and didin't pass on anything to his wife.

Who knows who his lover was with before him?:rolleyes:

I haven't been keeping up on this story, but do we know for a fact that his wife didn't know he was gay from the beginning?

The gay thing was just something that was going to come out anyway. The real story is all the things McGreevey and his cronies have done. He hired his "girlfriend" and gave him a job as the state director of homeland security. The guy was a foreign national and Mcgreevey bypassed the security check to get the guy the job. The guy was a freakin poet with no qualifications for the job.

that's what i heard. that he told her and the daughters a few days earlier. isn't she his second wife, too?

While a public figure committing adultery is a violation of the public trust, I think the larger scandal (which some others have mentioned) was the fact that the affair was with someone on his payroll.

This case smacks of the Barney Frank affair of the 90's, which involved a gay prostitution ring being run out of the home of a congressman, and with the ringleader being one of Frank's staff members/boyfriend.

I don't give a rat's ass if he's gay, but since people are talking about how terrible it is that he lied to his wife, I thought we might want to consider whether he actually did.

household employee, and Frank did not know of the situation.

We should also consider if he's an alien.

-Rudey

Not just someone on his payroll. That someone had a pretty important position.

-Rudey

why should his citizenship matter in this case?

I believe the position he was given was the head of the state's homeland security department.

Dude, he was joking.

-Rudey
--He knew I meant like ET type alien

Sorry.. before you said that, I couldn't even consider discriminating against ET.

I think that is a totally unfair statement. Governor McGreevey supports same sex unions and even encouraged people in New Jersey to get them. He doesn't support gay marriage. That hardly makes him a hypocrite.

Really? So in sentence 2 he supports it but in the following sentence, he doesn't support it.

-Rudey