I feel for his kids and his wife
TRENTON, N.J., Aug. 12 -- Gov. James E. McGreevey resigned Thursday, announcing that he had an affair with a man and that it had left him vulnerable to "false allegations and threats of disclosure."
"My truth is that I am a gay American," the married father of two said at a news conference at the State House here.
The first-term Democrat, who has faced questions about his political ethics recently, said his resignation would take effect Nov. 15.
Golan Cipel, McGreevey's former lover, served in the governor's administration and earned $110,000 a year as homeland security adviser, several New Jersey political sources said. But Cipel, a published poet and a native of Israel, resigned after it was discovered that he had exaggerated his credentials, and he has since moved from one politically connected business to another.
Cipel, 33, threatened this week to publicize his affair with McGreevey, said a former aide to the governor. The aide and others in Trenton said Cipel is expected to file a sexual-harassment lawsuit against McGreevey this week.
He married, had a daughter and got divorced. After he lost his first race for governor against Republican Christie Todd Whitman in 1997, McGreevey met Dina Matos, a Catholic from Newark's Portuguese Catholic Ironbound neighborhood. They married and had a daughter. |
