Mayor Healy.JPG

Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah T. Healy told Star-Ledger columnist Tom Moran that he was lured out of bed by "Hispanic girls" who were banging trash cans before he was photographed naked on his front stoop in October, 2004.

(Alyssa Ki/The Jersey Journal)

Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah T. Healy has come up with a new, expanded version of how he came to be photographed naked, and slumped over on his Ferry Street stoop, shortly before the special election for mayor that was held in November 2004.

In a column published in yesterday's Star-Ledger, Healy tells columnist Tom Moran that "three Hispanic girls, young kids" woke him up by banging trash cans outside his house, so he wrapped a towel around himself and went to investigate.

But then the narrative Healy gives Moran turns slightly bizarre.

"So I go out on the porch and they pulled the towel off me. Now I start laughing, and they started doing other stuff," the mayor relates. "I said, 'I'm old enough to be your grandfather.'"

What other stuff?

"It was filthy," the mayor tells Moran. "I chased them away and I just sat down."

At that point, according to the mayor, a political enemy snapped his photo.

When The Jersey Journal originally reported this incident, a spokeswoman for the mayor said he heard a commotion and went to investigate and that's when someone took his photo. But there was no mention of "Hispanic girls" banging trash cans or pulling a towel off the mayor.

The mayor told The New York Times in October 2004 that he had no clue how he ended up naked on the stoop, adding that he had consumed eight beers over a three-hour period the night of the incident.

Asked yesterday about this expanded story, Healy, through a spokesperson, declined to comment, but his campaign spokesman Joshua Henne said voters aren't interested in what happened more than eight years ago.

"Events from eight years ago aren't what matters to either Mayor Healy or the voters in this election," Henne said in a statement. "What matters is Mayor Healy hiring over 300 new cops, getting 1,500 illegal guns off the street at no taxpayer expense, creating the first five new parks in a century and stabilizing Jersey City finances as noted by Moody's."

Healy's main rival in the upcoming May 14 election, Councilman Steven Fulop, said the mayor's comments are embarrassing to the city..

Nidia Lopez, who is running for reelection in Ward C on Fulop's ticket, said the mayor's comments made her "absolutely sick."

"I think the Hispanic community deserves an apology ... When I ran in 2009, I asked him if that was really him on the stoop, and he said, 'I don't know baby. I was so drunk I don't remember.' Those were his exact words to me ... There is absolutely something wrong with this picture."

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