Jim McGreevey is getting out of Trenton while the gettin’s good. Because if George W. Bush has his way the next four years, gays will be hung from telephone lines.

Trenton – New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey’s reported sexual hijinks included visits to go-go bars and a gay club – worrying political allies for years before his career imploded last summer in a gay scandal.

The disgraced governor also battled rumors that he regularly hired a female prostitute even as he was dogged by questions about his sexuality, The Star-Ledger of Newark reported yesterday.

McGreevey, once a rising star in Democratic politics, plans to resign effective next Monday over what he says was a gay affair with an ex-aide. Government officials told the paper that the former aide, Golan Cipel, was repeatedly spotted at McGreevey’s residence at odd hours and apparently spent several nights there.

Political allies said they tried to get McGreevey to stop his alleged behavior. And they hinted that the married governor fostered a raunchy frathouse culture to mask his homosexuality.

“As far as I’m concerned, he was like every other guy that I knew,” Rahway, N.J., Mayor James Kennedy, one of McGreevey’s closest friends, told the newspaper. “It’s funny: Sometimes when people are in politics, they want to give the impression to everybody that they are a regular guy.”

McGreevey plans a farewell speech today in which he is expected to detail his policy successes. But he was also tarred by chummy ties to fund-raisers who admitted breaking federal laws.

The paper said McGreevey started engaging in sexually charged behavior early on in his charmed political career and never stepped back from the precipice.

Even as he ran for mayor of Woodbridge in central New Jersey, McGreevey reportedly regularly stopped by strip clubs to drink and ogle female go-go dancers.

An even more damaging accusation arose in 1997 as McGreevey mounted an unexpectedly strong challenge to then-Gov. Christie Whitman.

A hooker named Myra Rosa repeatedly claimed McGreevey had regularly paid her for sex, but she backed away from the claim after she was hustled off to Florida. She later died of a drug overdose.

The sex rumors later shifted to relationships with men, and McGreevey was spotted at a well-known Atlantic City gay club, the paper said. He also raised eyebrows by surrounding himself with male aides – a practice that exploded with McGreevey’s appointment of Cipel, a relatively inexperienced government worker from Israel, to a sensitive anti-terrorism post.

State Sen. Raymond Lesniak (D-Union) told the paper that he and other advisers discussed a $500,000 payment to Cipel that would be funneled through a shadowy legal defense fund.

Cipel denies he is gay, and denied he tried to shake down McGreevey.