The thing that needs to be said about the resignation of Governor McGreevey yesterday is that it wouldn’t have been necessary were the only thing involved the disclosure that he is a gay American. Nor is it likely that he would have had to resign simply because, as he put it, “Shamefully, I engaged in adult consensual affairs with another man, which violates my bonds of matrimony.” No doubt most New Jersey voters will agree with the governor, who said of his engaging in such affairs: “It was wrong, it was foolish, it was inexcusable.”

What made resignation the only course is that there is more here than private sexual conduct. The Associated Press quoted an unnamed New Jersey official as saying the affair was with a former government employee. ABC news was reporting yesterday that it had been told the governor was about to be named in a sexual misconduct lawsuit by one of his former aides, Golan Cipel, his former homeland security adviser, whose hiring and short tenure had also become highly controversial for other reasons. Gannett News Service was quoting one critic as saying Mr. Cipel’s qualifications for the $100,000 a year post had been highly exaggerated.

New Jersey cognoscenti have been following this drama for some time, since at least the summer of 2001, when press focus on the McGreevey-Cipel relationship forced the governor to accept Mr. Cipel’s resignation from the state payroll. It has long been clear that the quite apart from the sexual issues there is a serious question of judgment on the part of the governor and one that involves the staffing of an office that, in the middle of a major terrorist war against America, couldn’t be more important. Even after the governor’s disclosure of his sexual orientation yesterday, he has yet to deal candidly with New Jersey on this important dimension to the story.

How all this will play out is hard to say, but it is already clear that Mr. McGreevey would be doing a disservice to gay and non-gay New Jerseyans if he seeks to suggest that it was his sexual orientation alone that made his continued tenure in Trenton untenable. And he is doing a terrible disservice to New Jersey by seeking to serve until November 15 so that the voters of the Garden State wouldn’t have a chance to choose his successor in an actual election between a Democrat and a Republican.

What that is about is nothing more or less than a desire – a scheme – to give Senator Kerry a clear field in the Garden State in November. Clearly, though, the Republicans deserve a chance to present their arguments in November in this new context. In this sense it’s the same kind of stealth politics to which New Jersey Democrats resorted when, after the collapse of the Senate candidacy of Robert Torricelli in the face of ethical questions, they maneuvered Senator Lautenberg back into harness. The people of New Jersey, Democrats as well as Republicans, and those of all sexual orientations, deserve better.