Free Silent Partner: A Memoir of My Marriage by Dina Matos McGreevey Page B

which I could do while riding in a car. So, while some of these rumors may actually have appeared in print (and many of them didn’t), they never made it to TV or radio, and they never made it to me. But what if someone from the press had presented me with the rumors? It wouldn’t have made any difference. The better I got to know Jim, the more I saw how often the press got things wrong. There was the tidbit about my necking with Jim on Election Night outside the hotel, when I wasn’t. Then there was another report that said we got engaged at an Italian restaurant in Middlesex County on Valentine’s Day, when we hadn’t. There were many errors and much speculation. I decided early on just to ignore them all.
    All politicians are subject to scrutiny and rumor, not to mention a fair amount of mudslinging. But a politician with a secret such as Jim’s is a politician who can be blackmailed, and a politician who can be blackmailed can leave his constituency vulnerable. The incompatible rumors—about both strippers and gay men—actually afforded him a certain amount of protection, each set undermining the other, but Jim’s sexual secrets did make him a target for blackmail. As the election approached, questions about Jim’s fidelity and sexual orientation were again newsworthy, because Jim was again newsworthy. He was setting his sights on the most powerful elected office in the state.
    After Jim lost the election in 1997, he caught his breath and began campaigning to win in 2001. Our courtship continued pretty much as it had been—public community breakfasts, public fund-raising luncheons—but the character of our relationship was changing. I was with Jim more, for one thing, sometimes working the crowds with him, sometimes watching from the sidelines when he gave a talk. Helping Jim campaign was exhilarating, and it was during this time that my respect for him grew. Here was a man who advocated educational reform and state-sponsored health programs to help care for uninsured children, a man who wanted to reduce New Jerseyans’ exorbitant property taxes and auto insurance rates, both the highest in the nation. And he was tireless. Yes, I knew that Jim had his critics, that many who followed politics called him a “perpetual campaigner,” but what other people saw as ambition, I saw as passion. I believed in Jim and in the integrity of his message. I found his politics attractive, just as I found him attractive.
    I’d always looked forward to our private dinners as a chance for Jim and me to unwind and get to know each other better. Now, with the campaign in full force, a new element was added. We still found time to relax here and there, but we became a team sharing invigorating postgame analyses. Jim knew that he could appear too scripted—no friendly, off-the-cuff asides—and too rehearsed, as if he’d given his speech hundreds of times before, which of course he had. He was trying to change that.
We
were trying to change that. Running through the events of the day to see where improvements could be made, we were partners, sharing the same ideals, working toward the same goal.
    “How’d I do today?” he asked as we settled into our booth at a diner outside Hamilton in Mercer County. It was 1:00 A.M. , and we were eating for the first time since breakfast, sharing a toasted bagel with cream cheese. Even at this hour, it was black coffee for me, tea with milk and no sugar for Jim. It had been a ridiculously busy day, with a stop at a senior-citizen center and three or four fund-raising dinners, at the last of which we were so hungry that even the rubber chicken looked good—not that we had the chance to eat it.
    “It went well,” I told Jim. He was great at engaging in one-to-one conversations, an opportunity he always had with seniors and at picnics.
    “Yeah, but how’d I do with the speeches?”
    I thought Jim was hitting his stride and sounding more relaxed in his speeches, and I told him so. “Even