WEST ORANGE – Joe DiVincenzo used to play quarterback.

Tried coaching it for a year at Marist and it didn’t work out.

He wanted to be on the field.

He didn’t want to obsess over x’s and o’s so much as he wanted to run the plays himself, and the ensuing frustration over watching failed execution drove him into government. He gets to run the plays on the field himself with a team around him; people like Phil Alagia, whom he’s known for almost 35 years, whom he installed in charge of a sports team at the North Ward Center. When he went to check on the progress of the operation, he found Alagia relaxed and at ease and everything around him running smoothly.

That’s the way the pair of them the county executive and his chief of staff see the Essex County government they run now, a well regulated – and delegated – piece of junk bonds to tripe A-rated machinery, a billion dollars strong in patronage, with a diverse and loyal team of upper echelon players in place, carefully built over time by a combination of on-the-ground politics and results.

Joe D. may be the thrower, but it’s a real team.

Unlike the Giants right now with Odell Beckham, Jr.

And unlike what Governor Phil Murphy constructed when he alighted in office last year, said a gleeful source tonight at DiVincenzo’s party at McCloone’s Boathouse. InsiderNJ asked what the source meant by that and got a jarring brass section in response from the band as the person hustled past a roaring fire into the crowd.

The place was packed.

You know the faces, the names.

Senator M. Teresa Ruiz. Assemblywoman Eliana Pintor Marin. East Ward Democratic leader Joe Parlavecchio. Essex Freeholder Lenny Luciano. MBI operative Chris James. Sheriff Armando Fontoura. Newark Councilman Anibal Ramos, Jr. East Ward Councilman Augusto Amador. Assemblyman Tom Giblin.

More.

Many more.

There too was Senate President Steve Sweeney (D-3), described as positively beaming with happiness at the prospect of working with “the team.”

For the relationships forged countywide – to be effective – require statewide reach.

That’s why South Jersey’s Sweeney was in the house.

He and Joe D. are longtime allies.

It was the second time in as many weeks that North Jerseyans saw Sweeney in their midst. The senate president attended Senator Sandy Cunningham’s (D-31) fundraiser last week.

Cunningham’s on that select committee Sweeney put together examining the hiring practices of Governor Murphy’s team – one that included Al Alvarez, Adam Alonso and Derrick Green.

So is Ruiz.

Attorney Mike Critchley sat down with Sweeney earlier today to talk bureaucratic x’s and o’s.

All the talk at the DiVincenzo event was about that committee coming together to investigate the Murphy Administration. Everyone had an opinion about it. No one had anything positive to say about the Governor’s Office.

“It’s a horror show,” someone said grimly in the parking lot outside the restaurant, amid the SUVs cluttering the entranceway, half on the sidewalk.

Unlike this, was the implication.

This was a team.

It wasn’t the Governor’s team.

It’s Joe D’s.

There’s an election in less than three weeks.

It wasn’t as urgent a topic of conversation as the administration.

But DiVincenzo told InsiderNJ earlier today that Essex – the New Jersey county with the most Democrats – is all in for incumbent U.S. Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ).

“Bob came through for Essex, now Essex has to come through for Bob,” DiVincenzo said.

A source fleshed it out.

“No, this is meaningful for Joe. He wants to be able to say that his county carried the election for Menendez,” said a source. “He wants anyone running statewide to have to go through him, to go through Essex.” He wants people who might be thinking statewide thoughts to pay attention to a well functioning machine on Nov. 6th.

Sweeney roamed McCloone’s with the brass band playing and legislative allies happy to see a friend – a government guy kind of like Joe D., but from the South – one of their own, almost like family.