Mr. Twersky is a contributing editor of The New York Sun

So I’m sitting in a Starbucks in Newark, N.J., waiting for Senator Torricelli to show up. He’s running a few minutes late.

I’m meeting with the senator because he missed a Senate vote expressing solidarity with Israel.

The second intifada is a few months old and tempers in the Jewish community are flaring, to put it mildly.

No stranger to controversy, Mr. Torricelli could ill afford to dismiss this mood as a flash in the pan. So Mr. Torricelli thought a chat with the editor of the state’s largest Jewish newspaper might help change the tone.

As our conversation progressed, I asked him why he had thrown his hat, from so far away, into the gubernatorial ring. He named two party bosses and said they “are worried about Jimmie’s problem.”

“Jimmie” was, of course, James McGreevey, who eventually emerged as the Democratic candidate for governor and who yesterday shocked the nation as he announced he would resign under the shadow of a gay extramarital relationship.

That “problem,” as Mr. Torricelli briefly referred to it with no more than a glancing nod in the direction of the truth, was the fact that Mr. McGreevey is gay, or bisexual, a fact Mr.McGreevey chose to keep well hidden.

Running in 1996 as a single, divorced dad (whose daughter lived with her mother in Vancouver), Mr. McGreevey narrowly lost to Christine Whitman. Running against Ms. Whitman’s successor, Mr. McGreevey remarried. His wife gave birth to a child a month or so before the election.

What forced him to disclose his secret was an impending lawsuit by a man charging the governor with sexual misconduct.

Keeping Mr. McGreevey’s sexual history secret was no longer a viable option. Under the circumstances, a preemptive strike was the best, if still terribly difficult, step.

In March 2000, Mr. McGreevey joined a Jewish community “mega-mission” to Israel. Then the Woodbridge mayor, he had always cultivated close relationships with Jewish voters, activists, and supporters. In the midst of preparations for his upcoming gubernatorial campaign, Mr. McGreevey was keen on rubbing elbows with a statewide delegation of committed New Jersey Jews.

During this visit, Mr. McGreevey met Golan Cipel, a former junior diplomat at the Israeli consulate in New York now serving as a spokesman for the mayor of Rishon Le’Zion.

Following a brief discussion and limited contact, Mr. McGreevey invited Mr. Cipel to relocate to the Garden State and serve as campaign liaison to the Jewish community.

As Mr. Cipel had no obvious experience in New Jersey nor any familiarity with New Jersey Jews, the appointment struck many of us as rather odd. Mr. McGreevey went on to win the election and to move into the governor’s mansion, from where he rapidly installed Mr. Cipel in a well-paid government position as his homeland security adviser.

Once this appointment came to the attention of the press, a chain of events was set in motion, which led inexorably to yesterday’s tearful press conference.

At first, journalists wondered whether Mr. Cipel held sufficient qualifications for the position, a challenge Mr. McGreevey dismissed on the grounds that Mr. Cipel was a veteran of the Israeli armed forces.

Then federal authorities said Mr. Cipel would not receive the required security clearances because he lacked American citizenship.

From that moment, Mr. Cipel’s tenure in government was fatally cut short. When a newspaper published a story that brought readers to the brink of discovering what they learned yesterday, the governor concluded it might be past time for Mr. Cipel to rejoin the private sector.

Off went Mr. Cipel in search of new pursuits, bouncing between several different lobbying outfits. The job offers trickled out.

Now the former secret lover of the politically humiliated Mr. McGreevey turned on his former patron and friend, bringing both of their lives to a crashing stop, costing them both their privacy.

It will be a long time before politics in New Jersey recovers from this episode.

For one thing, Mr. McGreevey’s drive to be governor has been a constant factor for almost a decade. He had traversed the state many times over, eating at local party dinners and shaking hands at diners, chatting up donors, trotting out his Yiddish for Jewish audiences, and gospel singing at black churches. Then he met Mr. Cipel. Mr. McGreevey’s fate was sealed when, forced to choose between the objects of his desire, he chose to ignore the need to choose. As it turned out, that was the wrong decision.