After some quick research, we learned that Saia worked for a politically connected firm in North Jersey where Ray knew the principals. Ray volunteered to pay his old friends a visit, hopefully shaking some information out of Saia along the way.
“You’ve done your gay thing,” Ray told Curtis, “I’ll take it from here.”
In no time, Ray wrangled the firm’s manager to the phone—from his vacation in Nantucket—and set up a meeting to grill Saia later in the day.
But exactly what advantage this back channel was going to give us, none of us knew. If Timothy Saia was just a friend from the gym who talked too much, as I assumed, the most we could hope for was to quiet him down. I never believed he could get Golan to sit with us, not for a minute. I began to abandon hope.
My brain went white with resignation. As Michael DeCotiis and I headed toward the Highlands Reservoir in the helicopter, I consciously thought, This is the last time I’m going to fly over New Jersey before my resignation. I remembered the first time I’d seen these magnificent stretches, the beautifully lush horse farms, the aerial splendor of the state I’d always wanted to lead.
I knew also that my White House dreams were dead, however this crisis played out. Even if I survived in Trenton, after what I’d been through, there was no way I could withstand the glare of national press scrutiny.
Shortly after I returned to the statehouse, we reconvened in my office to hear what Ray had learned from his meeting with Timothy Saia. It was good news. Under pressure from his superiors, Saia agreed to set up a breakfast meeting the following morning with Golan, in New York City. It was a momentary ray of hope.
Of course, Golan never showed. Lowy was there instead, which led me to wonder—as I do to this day—whether Timothy Saia was some sort of double agent.
FROM THE FIRST MOMENTS OF THIS CRISIS, WE CONSIDERED GOING to federal law enforcement. There is no bigger crime than extorting and blackmailing a public official, especially if you’re a foreigner, especially now in the age of terror. Bill Lawler raised it at our first meeting. But I was reluctant, for a number of reasons. The main one was Christopher Christie, the U.S. attorney who had hounded me in the Machiavelli case. I just didn’t trust him.
Bill Lawler felt we could bypass the U.S. attorney’s office and go directly to the FBI, but he agreed that we should do this only as a last resort. “It lets them set the strategy,” he said. “So far, we’re still in charge of that, at least.”
I dreaded this for another reason. I knew it would stop the extortion campaign, but it would do nothing to protect my secret. Once an official complaint was made, I knew my heterosexual pretense was over. My story would land in the pantheon of messy love affairs. Whatever Golan and I had together would be made to look like something out of one of those tawdry reality-based TV shows—an entanglement so ill-fated that we needed cops to break it up.
No matter what happened, though, I knew I owed Dina an explanation, and an apology. Ray, with his tremendous spiritual footing, helped me prepare for the moment. His faith was so strong that, in this moment, it carried both of us.
That night, I headed upstairs to talk to my wife. At the last minute, I asked Ray to join me as my confessor.
There is an elegant living room in the private wing which we rarely used. We sat there on the sofa, all three of us. I took Dina’s hand. “I hadn’t planned this,” I told her. “It was broken off years ago. But he never let go. I want you to know how sorry I am. What I did was wrong, terribly wrong. I violated the sanctity of our marriage. I had no right to do that. I beg you to forgive me.”
She was silent. I didn’t expect her to be surprised.
“Now Golan is threatening to sue me for sexual assault, which is a total fabrication. We’re trying everything to get to him. We have talked this over a million ways, Dina. No matter what happens with his suit, one way or the other, I may have to resign as governor.”
Dina turned her gaze to Ray. She was silent for a long time. On her face she wore an inscrutable mask, neither hurt nor mad nor frightened. When she finally spoke, she said with no trace of bitterness, “Where are we going to live?”
I squeezed her hand. “We can’t show weakness or vulnerability,” I said.
Ray answered her question. “You don’t have to worry about that, Dina. Everything will work out.”
ON WEDNESDAY MORNING, I HAD TROUBLE GETTING OUT OF BED. I had a morning full of meetings and obligations, but all I could do was stare at the enormous elm outside my bedroom window, counting how many times it showed the whites of its leaves. I got to the office sometime around noon. Curtis was waiting. I brought him into my suite and closed the doors. I was relieved he was there. I started talking about the things I had hoped to accomplish in a second term. Being a Republican, he disagreed with a few. He couldn’t help himself.
I also relived some highlights of my term to date. We had enacted a good deal of my social and economic agenda, despite the constant din of chaos and scandal. I was particularly proud of increasing benefits for our veterans and improving standards for the National Guard. And in keeping with the promise I made to homeless vets so many years ago, we opened the Old Glory Wing at the Veterans Memorial Home at Menlo Park, a new residential wing for forty retired soldiers needing inpatient mental health services.
All this reminiscing wasn’t calming my mind, though. Psychologically, I knew I wasn’t fit to be at work. The world of artifice I’d created for myself was tumbling down, and the oncoming trauma was already excruciating. You don’t abandon a lie after forty-seven years without consequences. Coming out wasn’t as simple as removing a mask at a costume ball. The thing I was, my private truth, was nearly as occluded from me as it was from the world. I only knew my lies, like everyone else. Losing them was like losing my identity.
I had to get back to Drumthwacket.
Curtis and I left the statehouse through a back route, down a flight of stairs, through a tunnel that dropped us off right at my car, whose state troopers were always at the ready. Back at the mansion, we went to the library. Cathy Reilly, God bless her, brought us lunch.
“I can’t keep doing what I’m doing,” I told Curtis. What I meant was, I couldn’t go on posing as straight. “I suppose I could stay with Dina. I love and respect her, I really do. But I don’t want to fix it.”
“Have there been other guys?” he asked.
I didn’t know how to answer. I stared at him blankly.
“Well, do you think you might be gay?”
After spending a week admitting to a gay affair, this was the first time I’d been asked what it implied about my sexual orientation.
“Yes,” I said without hesitation. And then I started to cry in a way I had never cried in my life. Not sobbing, not angry—free. I felt free.
Curtis hugged me. Then he pulled away.
“That’s it!” he shouted. “That explains everything! Don’t you see? The truth will set you free. This is the truth! Tell it to everybody. Hold a press conference and tell the truth. And suddenly the tawdry affair with your political appointee makes sense. You were a man in the closet, and now you’re free. This is huge, Jim. I think the voters will understand.”
Curtis’s enthusiasm was like a preacher’s altar call. Tears splashed down my face. I’d never told anybody this about myself before, and every word of his affirmation lifted me on a thousand wings. The transformation in my soul was shocking and instantaneous. I had told somebody I was gay, and he was right—that explained everything.
He dialed Jamie and handed me the phone, saying, “Tell him.”
“I’m coming out,” I told Jamie.
“I’m coming right over,” he said.
By the time Ray arrived at Drumthwacket, Jamie, Curtis, and I had become a kind of support group in the governor’s mansion.
“I’m coming out,” I told Ray. “I’m a gay American.”
He looked at the three of us, not knowing what to say. I doubt Ray had ever knowingly been alone in a room of gay
men before. Ironically, the old party boss was the most flamboyant person there, in light-colored slacks and trademark blue-tinted wireless eye glasses. Then Michael DeCotiis pushed into the room. “Guess what, Michael,” Ray joked, flinging his hands in the air. “I’m gay, too!”
WHEN WE RECOVERED FROM A LONG LAUGH, I SAW MY PLAN LAID out before me. I wanted to hold a press conference on Friday, to confess my infidelity and tell my truth.
That night, I knew I would have to tell my parents. I got Sharon on the phone and asked her to gather the clan at the official beach house on the pretext that I had a major announcement for them.
As I drove down to meet them, I kept Curtis on the phone—he was driving back to Cape May to see Will and gather fresh clothes. I wanted to know what words he’d used with his parents, and how Will had broken the news to his own family; I wanted the collected experiences of this tribe to inform my language. I feared my family’s rejection terribly. My need for their love and acceptance was unchanged since childhood.
I knew it would crush my father that my political career was taking this unexpected blow. But frankly what I dreaded most was my mother’s disappointment over my violation of my marriage vows. Nothing was more sacred to her than honor and one’s promise to God.
It all went better than it might have. My father’s first response was, “You make a choice, Jim—Coke or Pepsi. You were married twice, you have two wonderful daughters. Why don’t you try to make that work? Why don’t you make the regular choice?”
“Dad, I’ve known my whole life. This is who I am.”
“You will always be my son,” he said, taking my hand and shaking it stiffly.
Later, he took refuge in the Church’s long struggle with the issue. “Holy Mother the Church hasn’t figured out this homosexuality stuff after two thousand years. So I figure I’m not doing so bad.”
My mother, whose love for me has proven tremendously resilient, mostly kept her thoughts to herself. But when we parted, she took me into her arms and gave me a long and tender hug, something she hadn’t done in a long time. “We will always love you, no matter what you do,” she said.
Back in the car, I called Curtis with a report, but his news took precedence.
“We have to push up the press conference from Friday to tomorrow,” he said. “Somebody in Golan’s camp leaked the news. ABC is getting a story ready, probably for tomorrow night. Jamie says we’ve got to keep out in front of this thing.”
I WAS DEAD TIRED ON THURSDAY MORNING, SO TIRED THAT I rolled downstairs in green sweatpants and a T-shirt before taking a shower. I was surprised to find the place overrun with political operatives, some of whom I didn’t even know.
Besides Jamie and Curtis, Michael and Ray, there was Joel Benenson, my pollster; Steve DeMicco, the consultant; Hank Sheinkopf, a political consultant from New York; the political ad man Jim Margolis; and some gay community liaison whose name I don’t remember. The room was out of control. But frankly so was every other part of my life.
I could barely concentrate on what was being said. They shouted over one another, rendering opinions, speculating about the press and the courts, recalling precedents and old war battles. Some thought I should strike a defiant stand; the polls showed I might survive this. Conventional wisdom, on the other hand, said I was dead. Straw polls were being taken on whether I should resign. Three times the eyes of the room moved to Curtis’s chair, and everyone awaited his observations. Each time I took his sleeve and moved him out of the room, around to the smaller study behind the library, so that I could hear him out in private. Frankly, it was the only way I could know what he was thinking without the din of professional politicians interposing their own ideas.
“They’re trying to drive, Jim. Is that what you want?”
“Curtis, I’ve just done something I’ve avoided for my whole life. The last thing I want to do is return to the modus operandi of the past twenty-five years. Political solutions are all they know. I need to do what’s right for my wife, my family, and the state of New Jersey. I need to follow my moral and ethical compass.”
When we got back to the room, somebody was laying out the consensus plan, but I interrupted.
“This is what I want to say,” I told them. I motioned for Curtis to take notes.
“I admit shamefully that I engaged in an adult consensual affair with another man, which violated my bonds of matrimony. It was wrong, it was foolish, it was inexcusable. And for this, I ask the forgiveness and grace of my wife. She has been extraordinary throughout this ordeal, and I am blessed by her love and strength.
“This individual now seeks to exploit me and my family and perhaps the state through financial and legal means which are unethical, wrong, and immoral. Let me be clear, no one is to blame for this situation but me. I accept total and full responsibility for the stupidity of my actions. I must now do what is right to correct the consequences.
“I will not seek reelection in November 2005. Yet I will continue with every fiber of my being to work on behalf of those issues which are of concern and hope to all our families.
“It makes little difference that as governor I am gay. In fact, having the ability to truthfully set forth my identity might enable me to be more forthright in fulfilling and discharging my constitutional obligations. But I have made a serious error, and for that I accept the consequences.”
Jamie wiped tears from his eyes. So did Ray.
“That’s great,” Michael said. “You own the affair, you apologize. You take the high road.”
But the other people in the library, the party stalwarts, had moved on to the perimeter of the room, returning cell phone calls and positioning themselves for their next assignments, which no doubt included handicapping who would take my seat in the next election. As Curtis later remarked, “the light drained out of the room immediately for them. You were dead.”
THERE WERE MANY PEOPLE I HAD TO CALL BEFORE GIVING THE speech early that afternoon. I spoke to Bill Lawler first; he was supportive. “Make your announcement, see what happens.” I asked what he thought the chances were that they’d go to court anyway.
“I have to be frank,” he said. “I think they’re going to take this to court. They’re that crazy. It only costs thirty-five bucks to file.”
“We’ll win,” I said. “But how bad do you think the fight will be?”
“You will be vindicated, but this’ll tie us up for six to eighteen months, easy.”
Almost as an afterthought, I gave Bill my consent to call the FBI.
Bill was pleased that I wasn’t planning to quit. But I didn’t admit to him how conflicted I was about that. I knew that what I did was not just foolish, but unforgivable. Hiring a lover on state payroll, no matter what his gender or qualifications, was wrong. I knew what my ethical convictions told me: if I’d been in the state Senate and some other governor had admitted this on the statehouse stairs, I would have called for his resignation.
AS JAMIE, CURTIS, AND RAY PREPARED MY SPEECH, I CALLED KARI in Vancouver. She didn’t react much when I told her I was gay. I suppose I’d known all along that she saw right through to my secret. But when I told her I thought I should resign, she reacted immediately. She asked to be put on speakerphone to address the room.
“You must not resign, Jim,” she said then. “Having an affair doesn’t make you a bad man. Being gay doesn’t make you a bad man. You are still the same man today that you were when you were elected—good, decent, moral. New Jersey is lucky to have you as governor. You must not quit.”
Her pep talk was politically galvanizing and immensely important to me personally. It opened up a profoundly candid conversation between me and my core group of supporters. They all still felt I should serve out my term, but not run for reelection. Despite Kari’s vote of confidence, I just wasn’t as convinced that was penance enough for my transgressions.
In the middle of this I took a call from Tony Coelho, the former House Democratic whip who had directed Al Gore’s presidential c
ampaign. I knew Tony through politics, and being active in the Portuguese community, he also knew Dina. He had offered me valuable advice in the past. This time he was calling to encourage me to step down, effective immediately. I didn’t know how he learned of our growing nightmare.
Then he added a personal note. “Dina will feel she is being punished by all of this. She will be stigmatized because of your homosexuality. I know the Portuguese American community, Jim. They’re going to hold this against her.”
Tony also offered some sound emotional advice, which I found extremely helpful. “The only way to get through this is to believe in yourself, because no one else will believe in you without that,” he said. “You have to radiate confidence. Don’t go into hiding. You have to hold your head up and be positive, relentlessly positive. You will have a political future. Maybe not an elective future, but under the right circumstances, if you do this right, you can re-create yourself as a positive public figure.”
JAMIE, RAY, CURTIS, AND I WRESTLED WITH MY OPTIONS. AT FIRST I was the only one in the group who thought I should quit. Finally Jamie asked a question that turned many people’s opinions.
“I’m sorry, but I need to ask this,” he said. “Are there other men besides Golan Cipel?”
I knew he meant in government, but I wrestled with the much broader question. Having come this far out of the closet, was I even capable of finishing out my term? I wasn’t sure. As Congressman Barney Frank once commented about our respective situations: “I was clinically depressed, on drugs, seeing a psychiatrist. I wasn’t functional. You can be a dysfunctional member of Congress, but not a dysfunctional governor. In Congress there are four hundred and thirty-four other people. You can’t put a governorship on autopilot.”
The Confession Page 35