Richard Codey

Senate President Richard Codey (D-Roseland) greets Newark South Ward Councilman Oscar James II at President Barack Obama's rally this summer.

Assembly Speaker Joseph Roberts' retirement announcement means the north-south civil war just intensified, as veteran Senate President Richard Codey (D-Roseland) looks to defend his chair at the head of the rostrum against Senate Majority Leader Steve Sweeney (D-West Deptford).
 
These two Democratic Party leaders come from different places, and not just geographically.
 
Ironworker Sweeney operates within the structure of the same South Jersey organization developed in part by Roberts and South Jersey Democratic Leader George Norcross III, which numbers 18 legislators strong. Roberts's departure at the end of the year places the burden on Sweeney - the next highest ranked South Jersey lawmaker - to wrest control of the upper house from the North Jersey-based Codey.
 
A insurance broker by trade with 35 years of legislative experience, Codey survives because of his ability to embody the solitary lawmaker who keeps his own counsel, who doesn't get bullied, and who relies on public appeal developed during his service as interim governor from 2004-2006 to counter the perception of statewide rule by machine politics.
 
If Sweeney's status as a dual office holder (he serves as freeholder director of Gloucester County in addition to senator) and machine product weaken his ability to stand convincingly on the Democratic Party's new era pedestal, Codey's image suffers as the former holder of multiple public sector insurance contracts, which made him a bundle of money during the course of his career in public service.

In the old days, State Senators either moved up (often to a judgeship) or out.  Of the Senators who have served since 1845, when a new State Constitution began elected one Senator from every county, only eleven men have spent more than twenty years in the Senate.  Of those eleven, four are there now, and another two left within the last decade.

New Jersey's longest-serving State Senators, since 1845:

The relationship between Gov. Jon Corzine and his predecessor, Richard Codey, has never been warm and fuzzy.  So when Corzine tells a group of union members on Friday that "it's  great to be at the Steve Sweeney for Senate Presidency breakfast," it is reasonable for some Democrats to wonder if this was the governor's way of taking sides in Sweeney's upcoming challenge to Codey for Senate President.  Then again, Corzine has never been the greatest communicator, and it's possible he just stuck his foot in his mouth.

Senate Majority Leader Steve Sweeney (D-Gloucester)

Sources say the announcement by Speaker Joe Roberts (D-Camden) today that he intends to retire at the end of the year creates the opening his South Jersey colleague, Senate Majority Leader Steve Sweeney (D-Gloucester), needs to make his move in the upper house.

Standing in Sweeney's way is Senate President Richard Codey (D-Roseland) of North Jersey, who doesn't intend to back down in the face of the ambitious majority leader who begins his leadership quest with six solid votes in the South Jersey political constellation. 

Sweeney today kept the focus on the re-election of incumbent Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine. 

"What I'm doing right now is helping him get re-elected," said the senator. "The other considerations come after the big election - the most important election."

Until the 1970's, Assembly Speakers served a single one-year term under a system where party leadership positions were rotated annually in both houses of the Legislature.  Legislators worked their way up in the rotation, usually from Assistant Whip to Whip to Assistant Leader to Leader to Speaker. 

Thomas Kean (R-Livingston) became the first two-term Assembly Speaker.  He was elected in advance of the 1972 session after the 39-member Assembly Republican caucus cut a deal with four Democrats from Hudson and Union counties to organize the Assembly.  He spent two years as Speaker, and four years as Minority Leader after Democrats won 66 seats in the 1973 election.

Christopher Jackman (D-West New York) became person to serve four years as Speaker (he served from 1978-82), followed by similar stints by Alan Karcher (D-Sayreville) and Chuck Hardwick (R-Westfield).  Jack Collins (R-Elmer) became the first person to spend six years as Speaker - the longest stint in state history.

Getty Images Photo

Ted Kennedy and Barack Obama backstage at the IZOD Center on February 4, 2008 -- Kennedy's final campaign visit to New Jersey.

U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy's (D-Mass.) last public power performance in New Jersey occured last year on Feb. 4th on the eve of the Democratic Presidential Primary at the Meadowlands.

He appeared onstage at a rally with Barack Obama and other primary backers of the underdog candidate who would go on to seize his party's nomination and the presdiency.

"We have a candidate for the president of the United States that will inspire a new generation of young people, bring our people together, and face the great issues that we should face in this century, at this time," Kennedy said in his introduction of Obama.

Among those onstage with Kennedy and Obama were former U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley, niece Caroline Kennedy, Newark Mayor Cory Booker, actor Robert DeNiro, and state Sen. President Richard Codey (D-Roseland).

Assembly Speaker Joseph Roberts will have no problem keeping his job, if Democrats hold the Assembly and if he wants it. But there is some speculation that Roberts is eyeing Dana Redd's State Senate seat, which is almost certain to open up in January.

Some Democrats think Assembly Speaker Joseph Roberts (D-Camden) might be interested in moving up to the Senate in January, if Dana Redd wins her race for Mayor of Camden.  Roberts has been Speaker for nearly four years, and while he is fully engaged in the campaign to retain the Democratic majority in the lower house, more than a few Democrats sense that he's ready to move on.  Redd is an almost certain winner.

Roberts move to the upper house would trigger an election for Assembly Speaker, with Majority Leader Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-Ewing), Democratic State Chairman Joseph Cryan (D-Union), and Assemblyman John Wisniewski (D-Sayreville) as the leading contenders. 

Sources say that Louis Greenwald (D-Voorhees), Nellie Pou (D-Paterson), and Sheila Oliver (D-East Orange) are also possible Speaker candidates, although clearly in a third tier category.  Even below them on the list are John McKeon (D-West Orange) and Vincent Prieto (D-Secaucus), who fancy themselves as future Speakers, but appear to be just pretenders to the throne.  (Prieto's own Assembly seat could be in danger in 2011 if Democrats fail to win the Secaucus mayoral race following the arrest and resignation of Dennis Elwell.)

Part of the race for Speaker will be influenced by the results of the gubernatorial campaign and closely tied to the potential contest for Senate President between incumbent Richard Codey (D-Roseland) and Senate Majority Leader Stephen Sweeney (D-West Deptford).

A day after Karl Rove admitted he had conversations with Chris Christie about the latter's gubernatorial aspirations, including while Christie was in office as U.S. Attorney, Senate President Richard J. Codey (D-Roseland) again plugged a bill of his that would bar the state’s top investigators from running for political office for two years after leaving their post.

“The recently released testimony from Karl Rove underscores the need to pass this bill," Codey said in a statement. "The public has a right to know whether their top law enforcement investigators are acting in good faith. Given the power that prosecutors hold, it should be clear whether they are motivated by the sole desire to uphold the law or by future political aspirations.

“The rumors were circulating for ages that Chris Christie would run for office and he formally started to explore a run just a few months after leaving the U.S. Attorney’s office," Codey added. "The testimony of Karl Rove only adds fuel to the fire that Christie was planning a run for Governor while he was U.S. Attorney. If  anybody in New Jersey thinks Chris Christie only had this conversation with Karl Rove, and Karl Rove alone, then they probably think they’ll be shopping at Xanadu by Christmastime too. Unfortunately, because it’s a federal post, we may not be able to apply these provisions to U.S. Attorneys, but we can at least have confidence that our other top investigators are acting with pure motives.”

Senate Majority Leader Steve Sweeney (D-Gloucester), left, and Morris County Democratic Party Chairman Lew Candura

PARSIPPANY - Not to be outdone by other political chieftains who went street level this week with state Sen./Mayor Brian P. Stack, Senate Majority Leader Steve Sweeney (D-Gloucester) gave his blessing to a new community pool in Union City before coming here to GOP gubernatorial candidate Chris Christie's home territory and exhorting Democrats to take the fight to the enemy.

Sweeney's move came just days after Christie improbably walked on New York Avenue with Stack as part of a voter outreach effort in an overwhelmingly Democratic legislative district.

Countering Christie's intrusion into Democratic territory, "We're fighting on Republican turf," Sweeney told a crowd of about 60 Morris County Democrats, some of whom - Diane Weeks of Mendham Twp., for example - describe themselves as Christie's neighbors in this leafy, heavily Republican county.

"This election will be won in the suburban areas - that's where the battle is going to be," said Sweeney, speaking at a picnic in a park next to Lake Parsippany.

A labor pal of Morris County Democratic Committee Chairman Lew Candura's going back 12 years now to his earliest, county level campaigns, Sweeney (who also serves as Gloucester County freeholder director) used his own story as a whiplash on the tables of mostly beleaguered-looking local troops, whose last year's passions for Barack Obama have become this year's dread for the chances of a Democratic incumbent who in mid-summer limps behind Christie by double digits.

State Sen. Minority Whip Kevin O'Toole (R-Cedar Grove), left, confers with state Senator and Union City Mayor Brian P. Stack.

UNION CITY - Among the Republican faithful accompanying GOP gubernatorial candidate Chris Christie as he walked New York Avenue hugging and touching hands in a crowd of 100s of mostly Latino Union City residents Tuesday, was state Sen. Minority Whip Kevin O'Toole (R-Cedar Grove).

Long an ally of Christie's, O'Toole and state Sen. Brian P. Stack (D-Union City) have forged a State House relationship while serving together on the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee, and as Stack has for the most part played it coyly up the middle in an ongoing North-South war for control of his party's caucus between Senate President Richard Codey (D-Roseland) and Senate Majority Leader Steve Sweeney (D-Gloucester).

Hoping to nudge Stack over to the Sweeney side and keep him there to get rid of old foe Codey - who also appeared in Union City tonight with Stack at the mayor's National Night Out event, incidentally - O'Toole tonight relished Stack's gamesmanship of the gubernatorial race as a street version of how Stack works in Trenton.