Re the NJ Governor:
New Jersey newspapers have been chasing rumors and speculation for years that Gov. James McGreevey, who announced his resignation Thursday, had a special relationship with a top aide, but never had enough information to nail down the facts, editors and reporters said Thursday afternoon. Stories dating back to 2002, the year McGreevey took office, used phrases like "mysterious" and "unusual" to describe the governor's relationship with Golan Cipel, a former aide who resigned from a $110,000-per-year advisory job two years ago.
"There was nothing concrete that we could put in the paper," said Bob Tennant, editor of The Trentonian, the state's only tabloid daily. "If papers could have, they would have reported it." [Translation: He's a Democrat. If he were a gay Republican, you can bet we'd have reported rumors]
McGreevey, who is married and the father of a one-year-old, announced his resignation Thursday afternoon, saying "I am a gay American," and revealing that he had an "adult consensual" homosexual relationship. The announcement followed reports that Cipel planned to file a sexual harassment lawsuit against the governor.
Some state capital-based reporters, who requested anonymity, said the lawsuit had been rumored for two weeks, while speculation of an affair between the two dated back to McGreevey's campaign. "Rumors about his sexuality have been circulating since he was mayor (of Woodbridge, N.J.)," said one state reporter.
Gannett New Jersey newspapers, which include the Asbury Park Press of Neptune, conducted a four-month investigation into Cipel in 2002, following his resignation. The review was sparked by ongoing questions about why Cipel, who had little security experience, [not to mention wasn't even a U.S. citizen] had been hired as a homeland security adviser to the governor. "McGreevey relied on exaggerated anti-terrorism credentials to justify Cipel's hiring," according to an August 2002 Gannett story.
In addition, a 2002 report in The Star-Ledger of Newark reported on McGreevey's unusual efforts to help Cipel get an apartment near the governor's Woodbridge home. "McGreevey took time out from his transition plans to accompany Cipel on a last-minute walk-through of the townhouse," the story, by Star-Ledger staffer Josh Margolin, stated. The same article quoted Cipel as saying he "wanted to have a place that was in close proximity to where the governor was because he was a personal advisor on call 24 hours."
Still, none of the state's daily papers -- which are considered more primary sources of news than those in many states because of New Jersey's lack of major broadcast outlets -- wrote any definitive stories about the relationship. In fact, it was a television station, WNBC-TV in New York, that broke the first word of McGreevey's pending resignation Thursday.
editor & publisher.