On the move!
Agh! You’re still here? My new site and weblog, ianking.ca is now up and running; new posts are building up over there, never to be mirrored here. Go! What are you waiting for? All the stuff worth keeping has been migrated over to the new server, and I don’t anticipate making any more posts here.
Bloggers and webmasters: Update your links! Simply replace vancouverscrum.blogspot.com with www.ianking.ca in your blogrolls or bookmarks to point to the new site. Old posts will remain on this server for as long as the people at Blogger/Google allow them to remain; unfortunately, I’m not going to bother to come up with any way of converting permalinks on this blog to their corresponding posts on the new site. Yes, I plead laziness. I also realize the irony of switching away from Blogger just it starts to add features that the demanding blog nerds insist upon.
Thanks for reading and linking, and see you over at ianking.ca!
—Ian King, December 13, 2004
Thursday, August 12, 2004
Exit Strategy
The previously well-in-the-closet guv’nah, now on his second wife, was elected in 2001, replacing Christine Todd Whitman, who joined the Bush administration as its normally-ignored EPA administrator.
McGreevey, 47, refused to answer questions at the Statehouse news conference. He said that “it makes little difference that as governor I am gay,” but added that staying in office and keeping the affair and his sexual orientation secret will leave the governor’s office “vulnerable to rumors, false allegations and threats of disclosure.”
“Given the circumstances surrounding the affair and its likely impact upon my family and my ability to govern, I have decided the right course of action is to resign,” he said.
Yeah, namely that the religious right and its apparats in the state legislature would dog him relentlessly and skewer his proposals not because they came from a Democrat, but from a Sodomite™. Or maybe not. Not all had been well in McGreevey’s professional life. The Washington Post’s William Branigin points out that rather different indiscretions from the governor’s bagmen and hangers-on were making his life miserable.
In recent weeks, the governor, who took office in January 2002, has been plagued by allegations of unethical financial activities by associates, Washington Post staff writer Michael Powell reported.
One of his prominent fundraisers, a trash hauler, was recently indicted on charges of extorting bribes and campaign contributions from a Middlesex County farmer. Then, another top political donor, a wealthy developer, was charged with trying to derail a federal investigation of his finances by hiring prostitutes to seduce witnesses, including his brother-in-law.
In addition, the state commerce secretary resigned after it was revealed that he funneled contracts to the sister of his chief of staff. And McGreevey’s former chief of staff is under investigation for getting contracts to put up billboards on public land while he was running the governor’s campaign.
A convenient basis for resignation replacing an embarrassing one? Shurely not!
There’s a local connection to all this kerfuffle, and we’re not talking about a certain once-closetted Member of Parliament who also recently left office.
A Roman Catholic, McGreevey had a daughter with his first wife, Kari, who lives in British Columbia with the child. He has another daughter with his current wife. McGreevey spokesman Micah Rasmussen declined to answer any questions about the future of McGreevey’s marriage.
Worth chasing that angle? I suppose so.
(via Yahoo, Washington Post)
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