By: Joe Strupp Since Gov. James McGreevey made the stunning announcement that he was gay, had had an affair with another man, and was going to resign, the shockwaves have spread far beyond the state of New Jersey.
The revelation brought plenty of heat McGreevey's way, both for deceiving the public and delaying his resignation for what appeared to be political gain. If McGreevey remains in office until November, as he plans, a special election will be avoided and the McGreevey-supporting state senate president to take over as governor until his term is up in early 2006.
Although he has avoided the press since he dropped his political bombshell on Aug. 12, McGreevey has attempted to defend his position in two newspaper Op-Ed pieces. Oddly, the first ran in USA Today on Aug. 16, while the second just came out on Sunday, in The New York Times. The soon-to-be-ex-governor showed that he believes in newspapers as a respected avenue for conveying his views, but if he really wanted New Jersey's voters to hear his side of things, why didn't he place a column in one of the 18 daily papers in his own state?
An editor at the state's biggest daily, The Star-Ledger in Newark, said the paper had had no conversations with McGreevey's office about an Op-Ed.
McGreevey spokeswoman Juliet Johnson said the outgoing governor chose to write for USA Today and the New York Times because editors from those publications asked him to. She said no New Jersey papers sought him out, except for interview requests.
"We're not granting interviews at this time, it just so happens that those papers offered," Johnson said. "Those were the two papers that came to us." But Johnson added that the governor never thought to approach the Jersey publications about writing an Op-Ed either.
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