The Confession (41 page)

I had to admit he was right. I knew that what I was going through was some sort of withdrawal. The book offered me great hope: “With God's power, the twelve-step program can be a tool to relieve our suffering, fill our emptiness, and help us extend God's presence in our lives. This releases energy, love, and joy that are new to us,” it promised. “If we work the steps faithfully, we notice improvements in ourselves, our awareness, our sensitivity, our ability to love and be free.”

In two hours I tore through the book, answering the questions posed on each page, and contemplating the steps as they related to my life. I came to some painful and lasting realizations about myself. It is true that
I suffer from an addiction, though I barely drink and have never touched drugs in my life. My addiction is not to control or power, unlike Ray's. I'm not addicted to sex, as one might reasonably surmise from my story so far.

Rather, my addiction is to being central in the world, to being accepted and adored in the way that celebrities are adored—by strangers, in abundance. That is what I loved about campaigning—so much that I was almost never at home, sacrificing my marriage and family. I was pathologically attached to “having a public.” Too often, it was more important to me than anything else. My ego demanded recognition.

My ego—that was the dopamine receptor for my addiction, the thing that needed feeding.

People with this need are often drawn to politics—just as they are to religious ministry, to medicine, or to Hollywood. Reading through Ray's book, I came to understand how my affliction had motivated me to make my pacts with the warlords, how it made me believe that I could get away with hiring Golan. And I saw how it ruined my home life, how it ultimately brought me no more permanent happiness than heroin use satisfies a junkie.

When I was finished reading the book, I called Ray immediately.

“I did the steps,” I said. “They were incredibly powerful. I learned new things about myself, Ray. I see my world in a whole new light.”

“Don't be ridiculous,” he said. “The steps are a lifelong journey. You've only begun.”

 

IN TOTAL SECRECY, DURING THE LAST DAYS OF MY ADMINISTRATION
, I began drafting an executive order that I knew was going to detonate like an atom bomb in the world of New Jersey politics. For years, good government types had lobbied against our “pay-to-play” system. I never liked it, either. But I always excused it away as our statewide version of “special interest money.” State government doesn't deal with a lot of ideological issues, like abortion rights or foreign policy, which motivates interest groups to donate.

So instead we reach out to companies and individuals who want to make an “investment” in their government—something they hope will pay out for them. On the state and local level, the people who donate to campaigns are exclusively self-interested. They demand something in return. Usually, they get it.

No one benefited from “pay-to-play” more than I did. Under my rule, the party had raised tens of millions from developers and lawyers who then were awarded handsome state contracts in return. The system, though perfectly legal—and, I should point out, practiced in Washington and in many other states, not just New Jersey—was morally corrupt and indefensible.

Over the summer, before I knew I would be quitting, I had made a big deal about signing a minor ethics reform bill that was remarkable for its gaping loopholes, as everyone privately acknowledged. It barred the state from awarding contracts to anyone who donated directly to the governor's campaign. But it was silent on money given to the state or county party organizations, which is in fact where most political donations are directed.

So the reforms actually made county bosses even stronger. They became filters for special-interest donations, soliciting large sums of money from government contractors on behalf of candidates, then attaching their own conditions while turning the money over to their campaigns. In actuality, it did nothing to limit my ability to raise and spend millions for my reelection—and reward my supporters with lucrative contracts. As critics complained, it was just the status quo dressed in reform clothing.

They were totally correct. I knew it then, and I didn't let it bother me. There was no way a politician with a future in New Jersey would strike a more meaningful blow to the system. But now, I realized, things had changed. To borrow George Wallace's phrase, I was “the lamest lame duck there could be.” My future in state politics had ended with my resignation.

And there was something more: through the drama of the past few weeks, I'd come to realize that I could no longer make compromises with my own value structure. I'd taken a million ethical shortcuts to climb the ladder, all the time thinking that that was the only way to amass enough power to serve the collective good. But in the end I'd done a great deal of damage.
Besides the harm my dishonesty had done to me personally, I'd brought shame to my family and heartache to my supporters throughout the state. I'd cast the government and my party into bedlam.

There are many aspects of my legacy that were positive and lasting. Leaving the pay-to-play system intact through phony reform measures was not one of them.

I was not going to let this huge opportunity pass. Maybe I saw this as my penance. Or maybe it was just the right thing to do. I was going to end our statewide reliance on pay-to-play for good.

As I worked on my executive order, I decided not to let anybody on my staff know what I was up to. I didn't want anyone implicated in my traitorous act. Jamie Fox and Eric Shuffler had long political careers ahead of them. If the warlords thought they were complicit, they would hound them out of government. Nor did I want anyone outside the administration to know what I was contemplating—I didn't want anyone trying to talk me out of it.

A few days before making the announcement, I did tell Dick Codey, who was preparing to be acting governor. I wanted to know that he would continue my executive order in his term, and he agreed. Luckily, he had no plans to run for the seat in his own right, making him a lame duck as well. In fact, with his support the legislature later passed the executive order into law, and he signed it.

My order was simple and effective. It prohibited donors from receiving significant state contracts if they had given any money to a winning gubernatorial candidate, the ruling state party, or the ruling county party boss within eighteen months of the contract's disbursement.

I signed it on the morning of September 22. An hour beforehand, I handed Cathy, my secretary, a draft of my signing speech, written in longhand.

“Type it up,” I said. “I'm delivering it in an hour.”

Somehow word leaked out to the county bosses. I spent that hour fielding their furious calls. “You'll be ruined. You'll never get another job,” they said. “You're going after people's livelihood and their power.”

“That's why I have to do it,” I replied.

Though nobody knew exactly what I was about to announce, the statehouse was packed. I was even more nervous than I'd been while announcing my resignation on live TV. It was one thing to disappoint the warlords and bosses who had aided my career, but quite another to take down the sources of their power with me.

But I was doing the right thing. It had been a long time since I'd felt that way.

“For better or worse,” I said, “recent events have been a catalyst, providing me with a personal and political freedom that has enabled me to confront challenges I have avoided in the past. Today, the relationship between political fundraising and government operations has become corrosive and cancerous. Legitimate lines of behavior are blurred, ethical ambiguities are the norm, and the need to sustain an all consuming fundraising effort has become almost as important as the function of government itself.

“Like an addiction, the fundraising culture takes hold of its participants and makes them weak and unable to resist, as if the need to sustain it becomes an end in itself. The requirement to amass staggering amounts of money has created a climate which has inevitably jeopardized the moral integrity of government's basic obligations.

“Today, finally, I am seeking to put an end to politics as usual in Trenton. God knows I wish that the circumstances were different, but they aren't. In a few minutes I will be signing Executive Order number 1,000, which will provide the most sweeping campaign finance reform this state has ever seen. And I know in my heart of hearts that this is the right thing to do. Thank you.”

 

IT WAS THE MOST HONEST POLITICAL SPEECH I'D EVER GIVEN.
Not that apologizing for my marital infidelities wasn't honest, but this speech came without being prompted by threats. I had free choice. My motive was purely ethical. That's the way I'd always wanted to function in life, and now, at the end of my political career, I was as integrated on a policy level as I'd become on a personal level. It was my proudest moment.

For once, the press cheered me on. “In many ways, his statement to the
press yesterday was as important as the executive order he signed,” read an editorial in the
Bergen Record
. “His remarks were nothing short of an indictment of New Jersey's political system—coming from a man who made a career out of exploiting that system. But anybody who has heard or read his statement knows that it has the unmistakable ring of truth.”

There's a lot more to be done before New Jersey politics is reformed. But that executive order dramatically changed the balance of power. It broke the dam.

 

ON NOVEMBER
15, 2004,
I LEFT DRUMTHWACKET AND THE STATEHOUSE
for good. Dina moved in with her parents while remodeling a comfortable new home nearby. My sister Sharon helped me pick out furniture for a two-bedroom apartment in Rahway, which I filled with family pictures to help ease Jacqueline's shock as she shuttled between our places. My mom gave me plates and saucers, sheets and towels, and the wife of my new landlord lent me some hand-me-downs—I felt like I was twenty again, setting up my first home. It was a strange sensation sleeping there alone on my first night. The ruckus that had surrounded my whole adult life had gone completely silent.

That Saturday night, Jacqueline came to stay with me for the first time. I hadn't realized until I sat alone with her in the new place how totally disorienting this transition had been for me. Jacqueline must have been disoriented by my manner, and she cried and cried. There wasn't a thing in the house to cook for dinner, and frankly I would have had no idea how to prepare her a meal. Instead, I took her to a fluorescent-bathed McDonald's on an isolated stretch of Route 1, where I prayed we wouldn't be seen.

The place was empty except for a few high school kids, who recognized me and waved. I called out greetings but stayed focused on my daughter as we ordered chicken finger strips for two and moved to a table in the far corner.

But Jacqueline enjoyed neither the meal nor the surroundings. She let out a few screams of frustration, which I tried to muffle, and started demanding to be returned to her mother.

Why shouldn't she? I thought. Look what I've done to myself, to my family, to everything I'd held dear.

I drove Jacqueline back to the apartment and read to her in her new Strawberry Shortcake bed until she fell asleep. After church the next afternoon, I took her to see my parents, whom she adored. Taking Jacqueline in her lap, my mother immediately saw through our happy façade.

“How's it going?” she asked with concern.

I tried to muster a lie. But instead I said, “I'm worn down to nothing, Mom.”

“What did you two do over the weekend?”

I told her about our lonely dinner at McDonald's, and a slightly better breakfast that morning at a bodega near my apartment before heading to church. I saw the pain mounting in her eyes as I talked.

“It's good you're going to church,” she said finally. “Turn your prayers over to God.”

I told her I was trying to do just that.

“You've got to distinguish between God's will for you, and your own will for yourself,” she reminded me. “Seek God's will. Do God's will. That's how you will find comfort.”

Then she folded her arms around me and held me in the way I wasn't able to hold my own child: she made me feel safe; she banished all care and made the future seem bearable. “I love you, Jim,” she said.

 

SHORTLY, I BEGAN MY NEW LIFE AT THE LAW FIRM WEINER LESNIAK
, where Ray kindly found a home for me. Unfortunately, the arrangement didn't last long; it would still be months before I realized how unready I was to take on new responsibilities.

My work involved legal advocacy on behalf of an ambitious new entertainment and retail development project called Xanadu, to be constructed alongside the Continental Airlines Arena at the Meadowlands, home to the New Jersey Nets, Devils, and Giants.

I'd been an early advocate of Xanadu, a $1.3 billion, five million-square-foot project that would transform the sports complex into a major
destination, similar to the Mall of America in Minnesota. As governor, I'd signed the contract giving the Xanadu development rights to Mills Corp., a Lesniak client.

Perhaps it was poor judgment for me to be working for Mills Corp. so soon after leaving government, on a project I set in motion. But I'd also signed legislation directly or indirectly favoring most corporate clients of most law firms in the state.

Nothing about my work involved representing Mills or Xanadu before state agencies. The task was to form a partnership with the local YMCA and Bergen Community College to develop a state of the art workforce training site. There was no ethical conflict in my labors.

Under state law, former state employees—but not governors—are barred from working for companies they aided in government for a period of a year. The press thought I should have voluntarily obeyed the same standard.