In the Jersey ristorante against the backdrop of redistricting, the source’s eyes flickered with recognition when someone mentioned the word “conditioned.” “Yes, yes,” he said. “They’re conditioned to believe the South is still in charge.” They, in this case were politicos, bit players, influence peddlers, the motley attired caravans of Trenton insiders, and elected officials, all long schooled to believe that Democrats in New Jersey operate only according to the dictates of George Norcross III and the South Jersey Democratic Operation.

The source rolled his eyes.

“They’ll learn,” he said.

The South offers a rear view mirror image of power, the source assented, a point of view reinforced by Democratic State Committee LeRoy Jones assuming the helm of redistricting in part by hitting the eject button on  former state Senate President Steve Sweeney (D-3), as Middlesex and Essex appear happy to occupy the core of a party power-sharing arrangement over the rapidly shrunk and shrinking Camden environs domain of Norcross and company.

It retrospect, 2019 signaled the beginning of the end within the party incubator that pecked away on the inside of the political shell basically undisturbed by the public interest impacted tax incentive story wrought by a Governor Phil Murphy administration at war with at least half of its own party establishment.

When Jones, South Jersey’s choice to run sitting Democratic State Party Chairman John Currie off the throne to humiliate Governor Phil Murphy, condemned a racist mailer generated in LD1 by the Norcross-affiliated General Majority PAC, Norcross went ballistic.

What the hell was Jones doing?   

Condemning a racist mailer issued to assist a Democratic ticket?

Was he out of his mind?

“I absolutely condemn this mailer,” Jones told InsiderNJ at the time.

“It doesn’t matter whether it’s Democrat or Republican, it is a racist mailer that reeks of that, and this is unacceptable across the board. You can’t condemn someone in Virginia when it’s happening here. I can’t tolerate that. I wouldn’t tolerate that in my county, in my state, or in my country. If the gentleman is offended by that, he should be. It’s wrong.”

That was bad enough, worse when Sweeney’s Democratic ticket lost that election to the Republican slate led by state Senator Mike Testa (R-1); worse still when intermediaries went to Norcross and Sweeney and told the South Jerseyans they didn’t think Jones could beat Currie for the chairmanship.

They were sitting in a country club, Norcross and Sweeney and some other insiders, and Norcross let Sweeney have it over Jones.

Was this really happening?

Was the candidate they backed for the state chairmanship really losing to John Currie?

Excoriated by the South Jersey power broker, Sweeney shot back at Norcross, who left the table in disgust.

Then Jones, who indeed appeared just short in his attempt to take down Currie, personally went to Currie without consulting Norcross and Sweeney and cut his own deal for the state party chairmanship. Currie would serve through the 2020 convention, and Jones would take over in June.

Newly infuriated, Norcross gave Jones a call to give him an earful. They ended up going toe to toe over the telephone. It wasn’t pretty.

Relations worsened.

Remember, this was the Norcross group’s choice to humiliate Murphy, going rogue and peaceably cutting a deal with Murphy’s chair for the chairmanship.

Blood boiled south of 195.

But the Democrats down there had more trouble than just the intrigues they engineered that blew up in their own faces within the auspices of their own party.

A storm called the GOP was still silently gathering.

When U.S. Rep. Jeff Van Drew changed his party affiliation to avoid the fate of his LD1 ticket, Sweeney and Norcross suffered another humiliation. When Jones assumed the oath of office down the shore, Sweeney didn’t bother showing up.

Middlesex County Democratic Committee Chairman Kevin McCabe did, though; as a playful intraparty rivalry intensified.

McCabe was going after another state senate seat in LD16. A victory there would give him five senate seats (six, including neighboring Union Senator Joe Cryan) and position him to threaten the South’s lock on caucus power. Deprived of LD1, Sweeney and Norcross had flipped LD8, which still gave them the edge with six seats heading into the 2021 election. McCabe won LD16 to get to five, while Sweeney and Norcross lost two seats: LD8, and LD3 (which happened to be Sweeney’s seat) to slip to four. Later, Norcross, rattling to remain relevant, irritated Jones when he tried to horn in on congressional redistricting in the 11th hour. Presumably, the South thought Middlesex would have its back if it tinkered with northern districts and weakened U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill (based in Jones’ Essex County). Sherrill and Speaker Craig Coughlin (D-19) appeared on their way to a 2025 face-off for governor in a Democratic Primary. Wouldn’t Middlesex assist in making Sherrill more vulnerable in the name of advancing Coughlin as a more muscular statewide option?

No.

Middlesex put too much value in the relationship with Jones.

All that conditioning by party members over the course of nearly two decades, strengthened during the years of Sweeney’s decade-long reign as senate president, to see and know the South as ruler, and all others subservient and obsequious in the name of rigorous organization and discipline, to act as the functionary of the old power center, proved unequal to incremental reinforcing political events that saw the South swallowed utterly. “We won,” the Norcross text rang in particularly hollow fashion on the other side of the vote wrangling for senate president, as Senator Nick Scutari of Union County supplanted Sweeney with Middlesex behind him. Too many casualties mounted in Sweeney and Norcross world, starting with Testa as the Republican spear tip removing the vestiges of a once robust Democratic Party in LD1, and ending – spectacularly – with Sweeney himself going down in LD3, engulfed in a deeper South Jersey sea of Republican red during the Donald Trump years, while the North simultaneously tilted deeper blue in horror.

Even after all that, there were still those trained to think about first “running it up the flagpole with George” before making a move, long suckled and obedient players in the opposing party, for example, some of them not far from the redistricting process, but even Republicans soft on South Jersey Democrats couldn’t credibly summon the political will to deny impressive GOP gains in LD1, LD2, LD3, and LD8 going back to 2017 – they would need to protect and amplify them now – as Democrats left standing on the strengthened bridge mostly defined by Essex and Middlesex (McCabe’s pickup in the caucus, which gave him the most senators in a single county and Jones’ Essex pluralities protecting the governorship), sought new realms bottled up during the Norcross years, their prior conditioning to stand down in the face of the South lost in the South’s obliteration, and in the grander implications of their own newly exercised Democratic Party power.

Perhaps one day soon, Jones and McCabe would find themselves fighting over the governorship in a Democratic Primary, with the former backing Mikie Sherrill of Essex and the latter in the corner of Coughlin from Middlesex, but for the moment, that berating southern voice fading in their ears, they would be friends. Such was their current condition.