We're Going to Have to Have a McGreevey Thread, Aren't We?

so we have an affair with his homeland security advisor who is an Israeli citizen that is alleged by McGreevey to be consensual but is expected to be the subject of a sexual harassment suit. hmm. who in politics with an interest in New Jersey is particularly close to Israelis who specialize in security, has a history of dirty tricks, and knows how to exploit weaknesses like McGreevey's long-rumored homosexuality? too conspiracist?

Bush admin generally. Rove. Same people who recalled the Gov in CA and gerrymandered in TX.

I don't think they slipped him anything. I was positing that they got a guy with great credentials to apply to be one of his top aides and then seduce him. It does strain credulity, but I'm not sure it's impossible.

wow

his speech: "I am a gay American." n.b. not "bisexual" (not that he ruled it out, but read the rest of it for context). you think that their marriage is going to be resolved by assault with frying pan?

I don't mean seriously to suggest violence - it was just my first, cartoon-style response.

Um, sleeping with other people? It's not rocket science...

No it's not. If you are married to someone and they sleep with someone else you feel betrayed and angry. It can be totally unexpected and shocking for your life partner to become involved with someone of the same sex (it can be totally unexpected and shocking for the life partner) and that can make the betrayal worse. Maybe it shouldn't, but for some people it does.

if you are married to someone in a heterosexual relationship and your partner is not a heterosexual, do you think that learning of their affair would be your first clue to this fact? we don't know what their relationship is like and I see no reason to presume that his wife feels betrayed and angry.

maybe not but it's a pretty big deal-breaker

Gabbneb, remember when I jokingly asked you if you were a robot? I'm not joking this time.

maybe not but it's a pretty big deal-breaker

well, duh. i just don't think the frying pan is part of the breaking.

i will take the sexual partner half

I know two people for whom this was so. One was my dad.

(a) unlike CA, NJ doesn't have recall elections. NJ senate president richard codey (a democrat) will serve as the governor effective 11/15/04 (barring any controversies surrounding him) -- the same way that Donald DiFrancesco served out what was left of Christie Todd Whitman's term as governor when Bush named her to head the EPA (and difrancesco himself was ensnared in scandal, yet served out his term as acting governor). as far as i know, there will not be any special or recall elections before november 2005 (when the state gubernatorial elections would have been held had none of this happened).
(b) mcgreevey was not particularly popular, for a number of reasons. b/w the accusations (and, at this point, they are ONLY accusations) of various improprieties -- mostly by administration officials and a major fundraiser (who is accused of hiring prostitutes to tamper w/ witnesses) -- and certain unpopular policies (particularly his budget), even before today there were a number of people who were wondering whether mcgreevey would even be re-electable. another fact -- the NJ dems won back control over BOTH legislative houses only this past november. long way of saying: i wouldn't be surprised if bigwigs in the NJ Dem Party forced mcgreevey out behind the scenes, that the news of the gay extramarital affair was the last straw.
(c) when mcgreevey appointed him, the israeli security guy/boytoy WAS somewhat controversial in that some wondered exactly WHY he was appointing a foreigner to the position. whatever his credentials, the appointment DOES look pretty fishy in light of today's revelations (and not just among prudes and homophobes).
(d) as of this writing, i am not aware of the contents of this lawsuit being made public (though i am sure that we will hear all about THAT soon enough). it's entirely possible that some sort of blackmail -- and/or an attempt to undermine any future blackmail -- may have motivated mcgreevey to make his announcement. again, let's wait till the contents of the lawsuit are divulged, as well as the facts surrounding same.
(e) NJ has a LONG history of corruption -- in BOTH parties. don't rule this out, for ANY of the parties (known and as-of-now unknown). remember bob torricelli is from NJ.
(f) i will agree that this smells like a republican/rove-ian dirty trick, and that option should also not be ruled out. but what would the NJ republicans -- much less bushco -- get out of this? NJ will STILL go for kerry this election. there won't be any special or recall elections to put a GOP governor/lackey in the statehouse. the budget's been passed (though i think that some portions might end up in state court) the dems STILL control the legislature AND the legislative/gubernatorial election is a year away. not to mention that the state GOP is in a shambles. again, this does NOT rule out a republican dirty-trick of some sort (and perhaps some revelation will come out that this is indeed the case here). but i'm having trouble seeing where the IMMEDIATE payoff for the GOP would be here.

Of course he should resign, elected officials owe it to the people that elected them to be a role model. There are standards of dignity and character they should uphold, and no matter how much the people that are too liberal for their own good think dignity is unimportant or think they know what dignity is, they are apparently often wrong. It's that kind of "so what?" approach that in the future will bite those kinds of people in their asses. They need to learn what morals are, because more often than not knowing morality is the solution to any problem faced.

Guy with gun aimed at my head: "Now you die."

Me: "But I know morality!"

I suspect my odds wouldn't be good.

(x-post)

Amen.

I get commericals on my TV of Mcgreevey saying how great the new DMV is in New Jersey. ha ha ha hah a ha ha aha hahahahahahahahahahhahhhhhha aaaaaaaaaaahahhahahahahahhah aha ha aha aha
That is a laugh. The NJ DMV is a joke, it's so poorly run.

Corzine's a decent choice although he has a good chance to make serious moves in the senate. Will he be interested in the job? I don't know much about Codey but he seems alright.

on a more practical level, maybe they just think they can get more done as 1 instead of 1/100th. especially if they're in the minority. though that's not a very nice conclusion given that corzine is head of the dscc.

personally, wr2 the NJ governorship i'd keep an eye on US congressman chris andrews -- he was being groomed by jim florio as HIS heir apparent (which means that he has south jersey/philly $$$ if he wants it), and if he can convince north jersey/nyc $$$ that he's a winner he may be formidible.

-- Rockist_Scientist (phatw...) (webmail), August 13th, 2004 11:05 AM. (rockist_scientist) (later) (link)

well, i suppose she's on the market now, RS.

just about everywhere for the last 2 years? if Dems win the Senate back, it may be less likely.

"The true test of whether any minority is truly equal is when you can at last acknowledge that a person from that group can be just as much of an asshole as a vested member of mainstream society. And when you can do so easily, without straight, white, or whatever guilt."

(though i still fail to see just what the GOP would get outta this ... and i hope that mcgreevey [or whoever's running the NJ Dems now] tells them to blow it out their asses wr2 any "special election.")

Marisa Tomei?

May 22, 2006 -- Jim McGreevey shockingly admits that before he became governor of New Jersey, he'd have anonymous gay sex at Garden State highway rest stops.

"All I knew was that my behavior was getting crazier and crazier," McGreevey says of his torrid truck-stop trysts in an upcoming book that details his tortured life of lies and sexual repression.

"With each new encounter, I was getting nearer and nearer to being caught - which surely would have generated headlines, especially after I became executive director of the state parole board" in the mid-1980s.

"The closet starves a man, and when he gets a chance he gorges till it sickens him," he writes in his book, titled "The Confession."

McGreevey revealed to The Post that he spent time in a psychiatric hospital at an Episcopalian monastery in the Hudson Valley after his stunning resignation as governor in 2004.

And he describes in the book his fruitless attempts to conquer or hide his homosexuality by ogling Playboy centerfolds, frequenting strip clubs and becoming "as avid a womanizer as anybody else on the New Jersey political scene."

"The more the rumors circulated, the more public and brazen I became about my heterosexual conquests," the twice-married father-of-two writes.

All that came to naught when he resigned amid rumors of an affair with a male appointee, Golan Cipel. He then declared proudly, "I am a gay American,"

His wife, Dina, and his parents stood at his side.

His turgidly written tale, whose subject matter sometimes seems better suited to a sleazy dime-store paperback than to a former governor's memoir, is due to be published next fall by Regan Books.

Excerpts from the tome - for which McGreevey reportedly will be paid up to $500,000 - were printed yesterday by The Star-Ledger of Newark after the newspaper obtained them at a publishing-industry convention in Washington.

McGreevey, who is now separated from Dina, currently lives with his boyfriend, financial adviser Mark O'Donnell.

McGreevey writes that he was aware he was gay at a young age. While his parents' working-class Irish-Catholic identity comforted him, he knew "deep down . . . that this American ideal excluded me."

At one point, he told The Post, he considered entering the Catholic priesthood because he hoped its vow of chastity would solve the dilemma.

He also writes that while he had a "great number of heterosexual experiences" while attending St. Joseph's all boys high school in Metuchen, "I can't say I was interested in girls sexually."

"Yet I liked the physical contact, craved it even," McGreevey writes.

oh man he went to st joes? this should have been the dead giveaway.

I just ran into him at the Union County Courthouse. It was kind of surreal to see him posing for pictures with people while taking a break from his divorce proceedings. I said "hi." Couldn't really think of much else. Listening to the sarcastic cafeteria cashier talk shit about him as soon as he left was classic.