Ex-NJ Gov. Jim McGreevey considering political comeback after high-profile resignation

Former New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey is toying with a political comeback with a run for mayor of Jersey City.

“There’s an opportunity perhaps to look at this as a last final act if you will,” McGreevey told CBS New York, adding that he was being urged to do it by his friend, Union City Mayor Brian P. Stack, and is giving the matter serious consideration.

Current Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop, who’s led the city for 10 years, announced in April that he is running for governor to succeed term-limited Phil Murphy in 2025.

McGreevey said his campaign would focus on “quality of life issues” in the state’s second-largest city.

Once a popular Democrat, McGreevey resigned the Garden State’s top job in 2004 after a secret extramarital affair with a man who then-McGreevey aides said tried to blackmail him for up to $5 million.

“My truth is that I am a gay American,” McGreevey, a married father of two, told a stunned news conference in August 2004. “I engaged in an adult consensual affair with another man, which violates my bonds of matrimony.”

The news came in advance of a planned lawsuit by Golan Cipel, an Israeli political consultant, who accused McGreevey of sexual harassment. Cipel dropped the suit after McGreevey’s resignation.

McGreevey and Dina Matos divorced in 2008.

Since leaving office McGreevey received a divinity degree at General Theological Seminary in New York City and spent several years as executive director of Jersey City’s Employment & Training Program.