An Essex insider vacated today’s press conference on the 14th floor of the county Leroy F. Smith Public Safety Building and couldn’t help but remark on the difference between Gov. Phil Murphy and his predecessor Gov. Chris Christie.

“If Christie had still been governor, he would never allow this press conference to be held here,” the source opined.

He was referring to the ease with which sitting Governor Murphy played a seemingly no or low-ego

“good-government”-centered role at the event, unruffled as Essex County Executive Joe DiVincenzo carried the ball in for the winning political touchdown.

Given the severity of the lead contamination crisis, DiVincenzo resisted an endzone dance, and praised Murphy.

But Murphy’s low-key presence hardly radiated the unmistakable imperial gleam favored by Christie.

If an ally had a thought – or a plan, as DiVincenzo did, in this case – the Republican would waste no time appropriating it for his own political gain, the source said.

He would have the press conference in Trenton, in his outer office, with DiVincenzo and Newark Mayor Ras Baraka in the background of his overarching theatrical performance. Or he might have opted for the neighborhood of his own Newark West Ward upbringing.

But it’s unlikely, the source insisted, that he would give a lower level functionary in his political schematics – someone like a county executive – control of a press conference, the way Murphy seemingly today yielded the floor to DiVincenzo.

“It’s just not his way, to take credit,” the source said. “He’s not that guy who looks to be the center of attention of everything.”

That said, during his tenure, Christie had the kind of political relationship with DiVincenzo that arguably enabled him to rightly take credit for the county executive’s achievements, whereas Murphy is locked in an intra-party political war, and – it appears – mostly on the opposite side from DiVincenzo.