Page 1 / 2 / 3 - Next

AE: I’d rather talk about politics, actually. Especially since your explanation of New Jersey politics makes it sound like nobody could possibly get into the governor’s mansion without risking serious ethical compromise. Even if you’d avoided the scandal of having appointed Golan Cipel, could you have avoided other scandals and ethical breaches? Do you feel there was an element of self-sabotage at work in the way your tenure as governor of New Jersey unfolded?
JM: Our cabinet was above reproach, and no one in the cabinet was subjected to legal action. But contributors were, and fundraising is a cancer on the body of politics. For my second election as governor, I raised $41 million, and as a dear friend stated, contributors are not the little sisters of the poor, and they’re not contributing out of a sense of largesse or public engagement. Most contributors are looking for something, and that was so wrong with the entire system.

AE: That’s what you refer to in your memoir as “pay to play.”
JM: Pay to play, exactly. That means that they are contributing so that they get influence in the government. Which is rampant across the nation, and in the federal government. Jack Abramoff personified that process.

AE: Allow me to quote from your book, when you write, “Much of the coverage following my resignation was respectful, but some of it claimed I had escaped a bad situation by drawing favorable attention to my gayness.” Now, this is still the reaction some critics have, even in the gay community. How do you respond to that?
JM: Just directly and truthfully. I resigned because I had placed my gay lover on the payroll, and in an inappropriate position. I was basically confronting a $50 million extortion suit.

AE: The negative buzz still makes a point of claiming that the reason you resigned was due to your sexuality, when your book explicitly states that it was an ethical concern — one that arose from within yourself, even as your staff and advisors were calculating how the polls would be affected by the news — about having inappropriately appointed Mr. Cipel.
JM: Yes. Recognizing the importance of being truthful; recognizing the importance of accepting responsibility for bad judgment. I don’t know if you read the transcript of my announcement speech?

AE: It’s included in your book.
JM: Yeah. Because, I mean, it’s quite clear that I say that [my resignation] was not because of being gay.

AE: Still, there’s the charge that comes up in the press even now, that you claimed you were resigning because of your sexuality. I’m wondering if that claim is repeatedly made in some camps as a form of payback for your Executive Order 1001, which strips some of the power out of the old pay-to-play system.
JM: I would have much preferred that I had signed Executive Order 1001 in my first year in office, but I would not have had the courage to do that. I mean, I was a prime recipient of [the benefits of] pay to play. How does someone from a working-class family raise $41 million? It’s a gargantuan amount of money. But, paraphrasing George Wallace, [in my final days in office] I was a lame duck’s lame duck, and now that I was able to walk away from the system, I was able to sign a restriction on pay to play, which was, as reported in the New York Times the next day, a sweeping and substantial change. It banned [contributors] from [contracts for] state work … if one had made a county or state [level political contribution].

AE: Anti-gay leaders are inevitably going to point to your administration as evidence to bolster their argument that gay candidates cannot be trusted with political office. How would you answer that argument?
JM: Again, I consider myself the antihero. I am not the right way to [execute leadership in public office]. The point I’m trying to make, though, is the lack of [integrity] in the entire political establishment, from my own actions in denying my sexuality to the war in Iraq and the attempt to create a [connection] between that and 9/11. It’s an entire culture of dishonesty.

One of the difficulties of being gay is that, typically, there is a lack of acceptance by the entire political [establishment]. When certain political consultants use homosexuality as a wedge issue, and use words that are condemnatory, accusatory, and judgmental, that — by definition — is attempting to bring shame to [the] gay community. My perspective is: Critics of the gay community can’t have it both ways. If they want to condemn and chastise, and not permit, and deny basic civil liberties, well then, they are inevitably making it more difficult to experience and to accept an openly gay life.

AE: Especially for those who wish to serve in public office?
JM: Yes, exactly.

Page 1 / 2 / 3 - Next