Incoming governor has hands-on, low key style

Those who know him say Richard Codey will take the job seriously.
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) -- New Jersey's incoming governor is an old hand at the Statehouse who has been in politics for 35 years.
But many people outside state Senate President Richard Codey's home district don't recognize the name of the man who is inheriting the governor's job after fellow Democrat Gov. James E. McGreevey's career was derailed by a gay sex scandal.
Codey becomes acting governor at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday, filling out the term until January 2006.
What he's like
Codey, 57, has been described as folksy and calm, and his secretary of 31 years says he gets quiet when he's annoyed.
"He appears to be outwardly very laid back, but he has an internal intensity about him," Chief of Staff Peter Cammarano says. "He has a very keen sense of politics. He hasn't survived this long in Essex County without that."
Codey is getting the post because New Jersey has no lieutenant governor.
He inherits formidable problems -- a $4 billion hole in the state budget, property taxes so high they're forcing retired homeowners to sell, and the long-accepted but ethically suspect practice of awarding government contracts to political donors.
Although some have speculated that the acting governor may be little more than a placeholder, Codey has spent three months preparing for the job.
"I don't see him as a caretaker at all," said lobbyist Sonia Delgado, who worked with Codey for eight years in the Senate majority office. "The things he's passionate about, he understands this is a gift and he intends to use it. This was not something he sought, but he's going to own it and he's going to put forth the best leadership he can."
He has a hands-on governing style, demonstrated when he investigated the state-run Marlboro Psychiatric Hospital in 1987. Borrowing the name of a dead felon, Codey got hired as a night attendant and, after seeing patients being abused, he championed mental health reforms.
He continues to support mental-health issues -- in part because his wife of 23 years has suffered from depression -- and will begin his tenure as governor with a visit to Greystone Psychiatric Hospital in Parsippany on Tuesday.
Shocked about affair
Codey says he was as shocked as anyone by McGreevey's bombshell resignation, when the married governor announced in August that he was gay and had an affair with a man.
Codey says he has "a 14-month contract," and has not said whether he intends to run for a full term in the state's highest office, a race Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Corzine is predicted to enter.
Codey will skip moving to the governor's mansion in Princeton. He says he'd rather commute from his own four-bedroom home than uproot his wife and two sons to live "above a museum." He says he considered naming his one-third-acre property "Drumroll," in deference to the governor's estate, named Drumthwacket.
He's passionate about sports, especially basketball.
He is a Nets and Seton Hall University season ticketholder, and wears a gold ring from Seton Hall's 1989 appearance in the semifinals of the NCAA Tournament, a gift from former coach P.J. Carlesimo. He once had a horse named "Seat 'N Haul," though he no longer owns racehorses.
Codey coaches his 15-year-old son's high school basketball team and a youth travel team. Game dates are already reserved in the governor's calendar.
"He's a very quiet, subdued person, but when he coaches basketball, he's completely different," said his longtime secretary, Maureen Roehnelt.
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