Silent Partner: A Memoir of My Marriage (10 page)

Meanwhile, two days after our return from D.C., on Thursday, July 6, Jim asked former governor Jim Florio for his backing. But Florio, a South Jersey Democrat, wouldn’t support Jim due to a rift between the North Jersey and South Jersey Democrats. Jim’s home county, Middlesex, was in the north, and though he knew Jersey politics as well as anyone and realized that Florio’s endorsement might be unlikely, he thought it wasn’t out of the question either. And it would’ve been nice.

Over the weekend, Torricelli apparently resolved that he would run for governor, though he didn’t make the decision public for a few days. Meanwhile Jim had begun to hear the rumors about Torricelli eyeing the gubernatorial race, but he just didn’t believe that Torricelli would stoop so low as to challenge him for the nomination when he’d earlier assured Jim he had no interest in the governorship.

By July 9, the press had caught wind of Torricelli’s interest and an article ran announcing that he was seeking advice on whether to run. Two days later, on the eleventh, the headlines announced that Jim’s supporters might be deserting him because they were either remaining neutral or backing Torricelli. One Democrat who watched the battle between Torricelli and Jim heating up said that it was like watching Mark McGwire versus “the home-run king of the Pee Wee League.”

Publicly Jim maintained his civility toward Torricelli, telling the press in a story that ran on July 11, “For the past seven years I’ve been working very hard towards seeking the governor’s office, and I’ll continue to pursue that aspiration.” Privately he was furious and disgusted. “The guy has no honor,” he told me. He’d thought that he and Torricelli had a good working relationship, but now he saw what Torricelli was doing as a betrayal of his earlier assurances.

For the next week or two, Torricelli tested the waters, seeing what kind of support he might be able to muster while also watching to see if Jim’s support remained firm. But support for Jim had softened, and on July 19 the headlines proclaimed,
CORZINE LEADS A RETREAT IN SUPPORT FOR MCGREEVEY. WITH TORRICELLI IN RACE, DEMOCRATS TURN NEUTRAL
. (Jon Corzine was then running for the U.S. Senate.) That day Torricelli announced his interest in becoming New Jersey’s next governor. His rationale was that he felt he, more than Jim, could best heal the divisions between the counties of North Jersey and the counties of South Jersey and, in so doing, could deliver the state to Al Gore, the Democratic presidential nominee.

“So what’s the plan for this weekend?” I said to Jim when I spoke with him on the night of the nineteenth. We’d already been fighting Torricelli for a week, and we were determined to win. Jim had enlisted his entire family—his parents, Ronnie and Jack; his Aunt Kathleen; his Uncle Herb; his sister Sharon—and they were phoning voters practically round-the-clock. In just a few days, they made over two thousand calls to Democratic committee members. The majority were to members in my home county, Essex County, which had the largest number of voters and hence was the jewel in the crown for anyone seeking statewide office. Without the support of a county as large as Essex, you don’t even have a shot at the kingdom. Therefore Jim’s strategy was to try to hold his support there to demonstrate his power. If other counties saw that Essex was supporting him, they might postpone realigning themselves with Torricelli or even making a decision about it. As Michael Murphy, a prosecutor from Morris County who had once himself been interested in the governorship, put it to a reporter, “If Torricelli gets Essex, it’ll be tough for McGreevey to overcome it [but] if McGreevey gets Essex, then it’s a horse race.” Regardless of where Murphy’s sympathies lay—and I always thought they lay with Jim—his own bets were on Torricelli.

There was another part to Jim’s strategy that I interpret differently now from how I did then. It was the received wisdom at the time that the governor of New Jersey needed to be a married man. (Still, it’s worth noting that this “wisdom” is at odds with Jon Corzine’s recent success in getting elected, despite the fact that just days before the election his opponent got Corzine’s angry ex-wife to ventilate publicly.) Nevertheless, Jim’s idea was that while New Jerseyans were perfectly willing to elect state and federal legislators who were merely faceless names on a ballot, a governor had to be different. He believed that a governor needed to have a face—a family and an identity voters could relate to. Torricelli was childless and divorced. His mother was still alive, but his father was long gone, and he never had any other relatives appear at a podium with him. All his advocates were on his payroll.

Jim felt he already had at least three advantages over Torricelli. First, he believed he was willing to work much harder than Torricelli. Second, his extended family was heavily involved in his campaign. And third, he now had me.

Usually Jim’s weekend schedule involved about five events, but now he and I were driving upstate and downstate, going to maybe eight events a day. He was fighting for his political life, but it was exciting. He liked the battle, and so did I. We’d go into a sea of people, and he’d hold my hand, pulling me through the crowd as if I were a water-skier and he were the motorboat. People would shout out, “Could you be in a picture with me?” or “Come meet my sister . . . my brother . . . my grandmother.” It was thrilling, and it turned out I was good with crowds after all.

Jim wouldn’t say anything as explicit as, “OK, you take the left side of the crowd and I’ll take the right.” He didn’t have to. We were in sync. Like good dancers, we just knew how to read each other spontaneously and go from there. And that kind of attunement is exciting. During those events, I could see Jim’s admiration for me and a kind of gratitude in how he looked at me. It was fun, and it felt good to have a connection that didn’t need words.

Also, in my new role as visible fiancée I could take on the additional role of wardrobe mistress, picking up a well-made suit or two for him here or there. Jim once joked that he had 180 white shirts. Whatever the number, he wasn’t about to make the cover of any men’s fashion magazine. Every other guy I knew would go to a picnic wearing khakis and a polo shirt, but Jim would happily show up in dark suit, white shirt, and tie. He’d wear the same undertaker’s outfit to the football game that afternoon and to the church dinner that night. Jim used to laugh at me because once I knew the day’s itinerary, I’d pack for it, sometimes bringing along two to three outfits. I’d always liked dress-up anyhow, and so it was fun to think of the events of the day and what to wear to them—a tailored suit with a leather bag for a church service, a blue linen sundress for an afternoon picnic (no bag needed, but earrings to match the dress), and a black beaded evening gown with coordinating accessories for the black-tie dinner.

As Jim and Torricelli pursued their battle for the nomination, they both engaged in public “county counting,” an old political game where the candidates assess not just what counties were “theirs” but what those counties could offer in votes, money, and influence. It would take an advantage in all three realms to assure a potential leader’s likely efficacy. Even though the central county was Essex, the most populous of New Jersey’s twenty-one counties, an advantage in any one area wasn’t going to be enough to assure that Jim would prevail. Before Torricelli came on the scene, Essex County, and indeed all the counties, were perceived to be Jim’s because of his success in the ’97 election and the absence, prior to Torricelli showing interest, of any other viable candidate in the field. But as time went on, Torricelli claimed to be loosening Jim’s grip, finger by finger, on the county. Jim felt that Sharpe James, the powerful mayor of Newark, in Essex County, was in his corner. But now Torricelli was claiming that
he
had Sharpe James’s support. Torricelli’s claims had Jim worried, but Jim’s strategy was to assert, with practiced complacency, that Essex was his, while working tirelessly behind the scenes to try to keep Sharpe James in his corner. He hoped that other counties would then hold off before aligning themselves with any other candidate. There was some risk for county leaders in remaining neutral, even temporarily. Torricelli was widely perceived as a bully. If he had prevailed, those who hadn’t rushed to support him would have reason to fear payback. Jim, on the other hand, didn’t have the reputation of being vengeful, and besides, in this particular contest he was the underdog.

On Tuesday, July 25, Jim held a rally in Newark. He knew there wasn’t going to be a big turnout, so the night before, he asked me if I could get some of my friends to show up. I knew I could get at least a handful to go, and they spent that night making signs saying
JIM MCGREEVEY FOR GOVERNOR
and
PORTUGUESE-AMERICANS FOR JIM MCGREEVEY.
Meanwhile I tried to conduct my own barometric readings. If I saw a political leader, no matter how small his or her constituency, I would say, “You’re supporting, Jim, right?” Some would say, “Of course I am!” while others would just sort of smile and walk away. In the end, even the walkaways supported Jim. Beyond that, I can’t claim to have rallied Newark behind Jim. Sharpe James was not a mayor who paid a great deal of attention to the Portuguese-American community, so my organization didn’t have much leverage there.

During that time, Jim was more energized and more in-your-face than I’d ever seen him before. Jon Corzine had stepped back into neutrality. Nevertheless, one night when Corzine was holding a postprimary event to thank African-American clergy who had supported him, Jim walked unannounced into the restaurant where they were having dinner, shook hands with everyone, and left. A week later, on Friday the twenty-eighth, Jim stuck out his stubborn jaw and filed his application to run for governor—a full eighteen months prior to the election. Just what I would have done in his position.

On July 27, Jim got the support of local labor unions at a rally, and by Sunday the thirtieth, it was all over for Torricelli. That day, Jim and two members of his inner circle, including Ray Lesniak, met at a Newark Airport hotel with leaders from Essex and Hudson counties. That’s when it became clear to Jim that Sharpe James, who attended the meeting, was supporting Jim after all.

Once James announced publicly that he was backing Jim, the contest was over, though Jim and his staff were astounded at how quickly Torricelli had crumpled. Watching this all close up, I was riveted—but surprised. I remembered what I’d learned in my political science classes at Rutgers University, and this had been nothing like that. The books I read on the electoral process, and dutifully underlined in yellow highlighter at the Rutgers library, talked as if elections took place in an ideal universe where the best candidate would invariably win. It’s not like that anywhere, except maybe in the movies. In real life, the best candidate may not even be able to afford to run. What I learned about politics during this battle is that it’s a down-and-dirty business.

What I learned about Jim was that he was willing to work harder than almost anybody to get what he wanted, that he had guts and passion—all qualities you’d want in a candidate, not to mention a husband.

6. FROM THIS MOMENT ON

THERE WERE GLITCHES, OF
course. A wedding just isn’t a wedding without glitches. In the beginning, we had planned to get married at one of the chapels on the Georgetown campus. When the paperwork from Georgetown arrived, confirming our reservation for Saturday, October 7, I presumed that they were giving us permission to marry in Copley Crypt, the chapel we had requested. I went ahead and prepared the wedding invitations—after all, as a fund-raiser, I’d also had a lot of experience as an event planner—and when they came back from the printer, I went online to get directions to include in the invitations. This was about four weeks before our wedding date, so when I realized that the online photograph didn’t remotely resemble the chapel we’d chosen, I called Jim in a panic. He happened to be in D.C. that day. As soon as he could, Jim went to Georgetown and discovered that, sure enough, there was an error in the paperwork. Instead of being given permission to marry in Copley Crypt, a cozy little cave of a chapel, we’d been given permission to marry in St. William’s Chapel—a large, drafty barn.

“It’s awful,” Jim said when he called me a couple of hours later. “It’s much too big, not intimate at all. The rugs are frayed, the seats are old and uncomfortable. We can’t get married in this place.”

“OK,” I said. My panic had subsided now, and I switched back to event-planner mode. “I’ll take care of it.” I remembered that the catering director at Hay-Adams had said we could also marry there if we wanted. I called him right away. Luckily, the ballroom was available all day, which meant we could have our ceremony there, as well as our reception.

We had known all along that, because Jim was divorced, the ceremony wouldn’t be performed by a Catholic priest, so we’d asked Robert Counselman, an Episcopal priest and Jim’s friend, if he could come to Washington and officiate.

“Sure,” Father Counselman said. “I’d be honored.”

That’s when we encountered our next glitch. Father Counselman had spoken too soon. As it turned out, he didn’t have the authority to marry us in Washington, D.C., because it was outside his jurisdiction. Luckily, he figured out an alternative pretty quickly. We’d have to come to his church, Trinity Episcopal in Woodbridge, sometime before we left for D.C., where he’d take care of the legally binding technicalities—a set of no-frills “I do’s.” Then, on what we continued to think of as our “real” wedding day, he would come to the Hay-Adams and perform a more elaborate ceremony. With those issues resolved, we went forward with our plans.

On October 4, Jim and I were scheduled to meet Father Counselman at 7:00
P.M.
at his church. Jim was coming from a fund-raiser for Al Gore at Jon Bon Jovi’s house but had promised to leave early and get to the church on time to meet me and Kevin McCabe, his best man, and Celia, my matron of honor. Beyond the five of us, no one knew about the Thursday-night vows. Why should we have told anyone? To us, it wasn’t the “real” wedding. No wedding rings, no music. Just technicalities and paperwork.