Acting Gov. and outgoing Senate President Richard Codey (D-Roseland) penned a letter to U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano today asking her to resign based on her response to the attempted bombing of a U.S. airliner.

“Based on the handling of this entire affair, I think it’s time for you to consider stepping down and making room for an individual with more law enforcement and counterterrorism experience to take the reins at the Office of Homeland Security,” wrote Codey in the letter, which was copied to President Obama.

Codey said that the “entire affair,” including the intelligence bungling about warnings about the alleged terrorist, Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, was “handled poorly” and faulted Napolitano for her subsequent statements.

“After the Christmas Day near-miss, your public statements seemed more focused on public relations than closing the gaps in our nation’s security safety net that allowed a terrorist to board an international flight for the United States,” he wrote.

Codey served as acting governor from 2004 to January, 2006 – during that time, Napolitano, a fellow Democrat, was governor of Arizona.  Codey is New Jersey’s acting governor this week because Gov. Jon Corzine is out of state.

Below is the full text of the letter:

CODEY: NATION NEEDS SECURITY EXPERIENCE, NOT POLITICAL APPOINTEES

Acting Governor Calls on Janet Napolitano to resign as Secretary of Homeland Security

TRENTON – Acting Governor and New Jersey Senate President Richard J. Codey today issued the following statement calling on federal Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to resign her post, and make way for a more experienced law enforcement official to take the reins of the nation’s Office of Homeland Security:

“The recent revelations regarding the attempted terrorist plot to take down a Northwest Airlines flight into Detroit on Christmas Day has underscored for me and many other Americans the fact that current Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is not the right person for the job.

UNION – Talk to people in New Jersey’s legal profession and no one denies that what Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff perhaps lacks in charisma or courtroom presence, he compensates for with something more fundamental:  profound powers of reason. 

“Going back 20 years, he was a great lawyer, a brilliant lawyer – hard but fair,” said attorney Ted Wells.

His friends in the New Jersey political world say Chertoff’s a creature of hard analysis not politics.  “This is one of the brilliant legal minds of the country,” said Assemblyman Jon Bramnick (R-Westfield), who introduced Chertoff today at Kean University, where the Homeland Security Secretary and author of the USA Patriot Act reflected on his three-year term in the Bush administration.

His tenure included his grim mea culpa in front of Congress following what he acknowledged was his department’s 2005 failure to respond effectively to Hurricane Katrina. 

But Katrina didn’t come up today as a cross-section of audience members in friendly fashion mostly picked the Elizabeth native’s brain about general public policy during the question and answer portion of his presentation.

In case you missed it: Governor Jon Corzine delivered New Jersey to his preferred presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton – something some other major political leaders could not do. Barack Obama had endorsements from the two United States Senators from Massachusetts, Edward Kennedy and John Kerry, but still lost the state to Clinton. And Governor Janet Napolitano could not produce an Obama win in Arizona.

Two weeks after the New Jersey Supreme Court declined to legalize gay marriage, a former Assemblyman from Mercer County played a key role in stopping voters from approving a constitutional amendment to ban gay marraige in his new home state of Arizona. Joseph Yuhas, a Democrat who represented the fifteen district from 1994 to 1996, was the political consultant for Arizona Together, the group that led the campaign against the ballot initiative.

After moving west, Yuhas served as President of the Arizona Restaurant and Hospitality Association and worked on campaigns to expand Indian gaming in 2002 and to create the official framework for the Arizona Sports & Tourism Authority, which voters passed in 2000 to build the Arizona Cardinals stadium. After Democrat Janet Napolitano became Governor in 2003, Yuhas became the Deputy Commissioner of the Arizona Department of Commerce. He left earlier this year to head the public affairs division of Riester-Robb, a large west coast public relations firm.

Yuhas won an Assembly seat in 1993, running on a ticket with Shirley Turner; they defeated Republican incumbent John Hartmann, who had won a traditionally Democratic seat in the 1991 GOP landslide. Yuhas didn't run again in 1995 and was succeeded by Reed Gusciora.