CALDWELL – Former Governor Richard “Dick” Codey built his public reputation as an independent-minded peacemaker, which in the power grinder of politics routinely made him a target, especially of bosses who prefer windup robots to free thought and mechanized rubber stampers in place of a humanized twinkle in the eye.

As the country careens now into another election cycle, Codey – who served as governor of New Jersey from 2004-2006 and retired from the state senate last year – persists as a man who genuinely likes people, and seeks relatability through shared culture, sports, politics, movies, humor, humility, and nobility. Never rabidly ideological, he appears to delight as much in the presence of street people as presidents and carries the same all-weather persona of gentility combined with an edge forged in his home city of Orange. Codey came of age looking up to President John F. Kennedy, a leader of public dignity, who in Codey’s estimation, possessed all the traits a youth could strive for on the streets of Jersey.

So, what does Codey, the Garden State elder statesman best known as the leader who restored trust and dignity to the Office of Governor, think of the 2024 presidential election?

He knows both men personally, President Joe Biden and Donald J. Trump, the former president.

In the state senate, Codey helped design the casino legislation for Atlantic City that benefited Trump, and as a former governor, counted himself in that small group of New Jersey elected officials who backed Barack Obama, and in the years subsequent attended numerous public events with then-Vice President Biden.

Now, “Republican Donald Trump holds a narrow lead over Democratic Joe Biden in a head-to-head test of the expected 2024 presidential matchup in a new Wall Street Journal poll out this weekend, with 47% backing Trump and 45% picking Biden, a difference within the survey’s margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points. In December, Trump led by four points.”

“Trump’s going to be a hard candidate to beat,” acknowledged Codey, a lifelong Democrat.

But, “Biden is a wonderful human being,” said the former governor. “I never met that man when he didn’t have a smile on his face and a hug. I saw him constantly when he was vice president because he was always in New Jersey. He’s very down to earth. Can he win again? I don’t know.”

Like Codey, Biden lived an entirely public and political life. Most polls identify his age as a significant hurdle for the incumbent. At 81, the President appears to lack the quickness and sharpness of his youth. “I don’t think he’s done a bad job, not at all,” said New Jersey’s former governor, who intends to vote for Biden.

Why does he believe people follow Trump, indicted for stirring a mob to attack the United States Capital on Jan. 6, 2021, who threatens to support Russia against the NATO allies of America? “I think they’re taken with him because he’s anti the political thing,” Codey said.

“But Joe is very identifiable and a nice person,” he added.

Partisanship and rancor define the times, along with distrust for those institutions shaken and sometimes fallen since the Kennedy assassination. “That’s the way it is right now,” Codey acknowledged. “But that could change. We have to understand fundamentally that just because someone doesn’t agree with you politically, that doesn’t mean he’s not a good person.”

Throughout his career, Codey maintained friendships with his Republican colleagues, sometimes preferring their company to powerful Democrats trying to get rid of him. Those relationships, he notes, didn’t just materialize.

In many ways, he mirrors Biden, who just last week extended an arm to Trump at the U.S.-Mexican border, as the President diplomatically seeks to release the cultlike stranglehold his nemesis has on House Republicans.

From PolitiFact: “Trump spent the hours before his speech blasting Biden’s immigration policies over social media and in a Daily Mail article, and positioning himself as the only person able to ‘stop Biden’s illegal immigrant invasion.’ “At the end of his speech, [conversely], Biden asked Trump to join him in getting Congress to pass the Senate border security bill. ‘Instead of playing politics with the issue, why don’t we just get together and get it done,’ Biden said.”

Democrats once tried to get rid of Codey by lumping him in a district containing a significant number of Republican towns and didn’t count on him making friends.

People in politics need to pick up the phone, says the former governor.

They can’t succumb to being controlled.

They need to call.

They need to talk.

They need to go to the events of those supposedly in the opposition.

They need to develop those vitally human connections.

Undertaking that expansion of human experience resulted politically, in Codey’s case, in a greater awareness in New Jersey, and more vital public response, to the mental health crisis, his signature policy achievement.

While his habit of keeping his own counsel and working to preserve political viability by building and maintaining relationships outside of party-prescribed machines ran him afoul of meaner-spirited rivals, Codey survived in politics because he knew how to genuinely handle himself, but also, critically, because he could genuinely smile.

Codey’s always going to back that kind of politician, the flawed but warmly human and publicly interested person willing to reach beyond one side of a neighborhood, or to the other side of the aisle.

Maybe even now, says the Irish American from New Jersey, amid all the anger out there, and bitter resistance, Biden of Scranton, perennial underdog, who restored trust and dignity to the office of the presidency post Trump, has a shot.