Thrown out of the senate presidency in 2009, Senator Richard Codey offered no malice or devilish glint of payback euphoria in his assessment of the evening that apparently saw the demise of the man who relieved him of the throne with the help of South Jersey Power Broker George Norcross.

The decade-long imperial presidency – to borrow a phrase by the late Nick Acocella – appears over today in a loss by Steve Sweeney that clashed spectacularly with 2017, when the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) tried to get rid of him in a multi-million dollar collision that ended up being the most expensive legislative contest in United States history.

Sweeney won then with plenty of room to spare, only to get upended last night at the hands of a non-union truck driver named Edward Durr, his loss made even more ironic by the fact that the NJEA pumped money into him this time instead of against him.

Organic GOP forces overwhelmed him in a set-piece that revealed some of the state’s bifurcated politics, and forces always bubbling just under the surface in South Jersey, where Sweeney always had to keep an eye on the district he wrested from Republicans 20 years ago returning to Ray Zane form.

Sweeney and Governor Phil Murphy never got along, and prior to COVID-19, the state’s political classes delighted to the seesawing antagonisms of the moderate South Jersey senate president and liberal governor, with only self-preservation ahead of the 2021 election seeming to gruntingly co-join them. Finally, though, Murphy could rely on North Jersey Democratic Party pluralities to haul him across the finish line as Sweeney collapsed in the grip of a deepening red region of the state.

More uncharitable sources jeered at South Jersey’s arsonist tendencies when it came to Murphy, and celebrated the irony of the senate president falling in stunning fashion. “Those guys down there set the theater on fire and ended up getting caught inside,” an operative cackled.

But Codey – who helped snag party support for Murphy over Sweeney, then a gubernatorial hopeful, in 2017 among the North Jersey Quad – refused to dance on the grave of his South Jersey tormentors.

“He had a helluva career,” Codey said of Sweeney. “It is what it is.”

The governor appears on pace to squeak out a win on the strength of Essex County vote by mail ballots. He’s up right now over Republican challenger Jack Ciattarelli by about 15,000 votes.

Operatives on bar stools statewide bemoaned Murphy’s reelection effort – capped by a Bernie Sanders appearance last week – as truly appalling.

Codey himself criticized the campaign.

“It was clear to me, looking at Murphy, that here’s a guy who had kidney cancer surgery in New York, and three weeks later he’s hit with a pandemic and comes off a hospital bed,” said the Essex Senator and former Governor of New Jersey.

“He did a very good job,” said Codey, referring to Murphy. “I tried to tell them to run on that, but instead they wanted to run him as a progressive. My point was, ‘You’ve already got the progressive vote. It’s pandemic, pandemic, pandemic.”

Asked if the governor lacked people skills behind grinning and backslapping at public events, Codey offered no criticism, but did say that in his own work he strives to be friends with other politicians and to routinely talk to people.

“I talk to all the legislators,” he said. “Jon Bramnick is a good friend of mine, so is Tom Kean.”

Of the senate caucus going forward, the former senate prez wouldn’t speculate on a Sweeney successor, but added, “We’ve got to get back to being a more collegial party in the senate. We’ve got to get back to treating people with respect.”

Last night, Codey won reelection with one of the biggest pluralities of any incumbent legislator in the state, in a 2011 apportioned district that included parts of then-much redder Morris County in a move undertaken by the establishment of his own party and meant to unsteady him.

“I’m still standing,” Codey told InsiderNJ.