Democratic State Party Chairman (and Essex Chairman) LeRoy Jones has to be careful with how he handles Middlesex County, conceivably the new South Jersey of the senate.

He also has to keep a long game eye on South Jersey Democrats – in heat seeking revenge mode – possibly teaming up with an emboldened GOP.

More on that later, but the play option exists.

First some options for the party to replace Steve Sweeney:

Senator M. Teresa Ruiz (D-29)

Jones has at his side the vice chair of the Essex Democratic Party: Senator M. Teresa Ruiz (pictured, top), a favorite daughter of Newark’s North Ward, whose late father worked in a factory, who worked her way up through the party to become the smartest and most no-nonsense policy person in the state on education as chair of the Senate Education Committee. She is an unerring champion of urban educational opportunities for underprivileged children, and the political acolyte of the late Steve Adubato, Sr., who threw his political capital into education for Newark children.

The Puerto Rican Ruiz is a mother, and expert communicator and Spanish and English, who hails from the most populated city in New Jersey, which morosely underperformed in Tuesday night’s election.

She is said to have the backing of Senator Brian P. Stack, who oversees an Hispanic district and awarded Governor Phil Murphy huge numbers out of Union City Tuesday while much of the rest of the party snoozed through the election.

Ruiz is a policy nerd, not a garrulous union hall type who revels in the company of people tugging at her, which is often the province of a senate president, and which is how Sweeney in part excelled at the job.

Senator Paul Sarlo (D-36)

Like Ruiz with education, Sarlo – a civil engineer by trade – has a particular area of expertise: the budget.

He’s chaired the budget committee for years.

His district includes South Bergen County, with its firehouses and ballparks and blue collar families, and urban Passaic City.

Sarlo has strong political skills, ties to the Building Trades base that hatched Sweeney as a political player, and a play to be had as a consensus choice to cute Bergen if a Middlesex-Essex deal for Ruiz looks less than advantageous for the signal parties involved.

He keeps Bergen involved;

So does Senator Joe Lagana (D-36).

A Paramus-based attorney, he has the political advantage of bridges already built to Middlesex.

He was seen darting in and out of the steakhouses of power at events presided over by Middlesex County Democratic Party Powerbroker Kevin McCabe back before it was in fashion.

Paramus – like South Bergen – contains Jack Ciattarelli voters and he kind of hardhat, infrastructure guys Democrats want to wrench back into their column. If Governor Murphy is still trying to run for president as a Bernie Sanders progressive, Lagana could ground Murphy as a Jiminy Cricket figure from a county that proved – arrestingly for Democrats – to be a battleground.

Senator Nellie Pou (D-35)

If the bottom drops out of an Essex play for Ruiz, Pou – a favorite daughter of the City of Paterson and, like Ruiz, a Puerto Rican with party organizing skills – could emerge as a consensus choice.

Hudson power broker Stack would have to take a hard look.

Pou would help Jones recohere the so-called quad (Hudson, Essex, Bergen and Passaic) and stop the bleeding in a county where the three commissioners tonight were fighting for their political lives in the wake of Tuesday’s election.

Pou, like Ruiz, would re-center the party in one of those base cities that woefully underperformed on Tuesday.

Senator Joe Cryan (D-20)

A former Democratic State Party chairman, Cryan is one of the smartest political minds in the State of

New Jersey; a real operator – that rare bird who also loves policy.

He’s the closest on this list to Sweeney in terms of political social skills (he would be a formidable challenger to Sweeney in a pool hall) but very different in some critical areas.

Even at his strongest, Sweeney could never escape the looming shadow of George Norcross III, the power broker from South Jersey.

Son of the late Essex County Sheriff John Cryan, Joe Cryan keeps his own counsel and has a history of undertaking fights with powerful entities if they try to push him around.

His base includes a large share of public sector workers. Protecting them often pitted him against South Jersey. While other northern Democrats rolled over in the era of Governor Chris Christie, Cryan fought public sector worker overhauls championed by the Christie-Sweeney duopoly, suffered the consequences, and not only survived, but augmented his power in the Christie aftermath.

His Jersey district includes a large cross-section of Hispanics, African-Americans. Cryan would represent perhaps the least obvious but in one sense most dramatic – given his history of bucking them on key issues – departure from the Sweeney-Norcross era of New Jersey governance.

Considerations

These contenders for the throne will likely face the misfortune of easy mischaracterization and stereotype.

On one level, Ruiz perhaps confronts the prospect of getting branded as too close to the same machine connected to Sweeney; and yet, the populations she primarily advocates for – and who lack a voice in this state – are from the white male-dominated Building Trades halls that hatched the sitting senate president. The political school she hails from has no equal in the state in terms of service delivery to New Jersey’s disadvantaged urban children, with the possible exception of Stack’s Hudson County organization.

It’s deep.

An elevation by either Ruiz or Pou to the senate presidency would mark a massive history-making moment for New Jersey.

Identity politics have exhausted everyone, even Democrats.

But Puerto Ricans in New Jersey – long a vital part of the state’s culture – have not wielded the same backroom clout as Cuban Americans. No other Hispanic group has in this state. Pou or Ruiz going to the senate presidency would represent a true penetration into power by a group usually estranged from those inner circles. Moreover, Sweeney, Coughlin, Murphy exchanged for Cryan, Murphy, Coughlin, for example, might demonstrate a certain diversity, if one takes the time to parse old country Ireland origins.

At the same time, Ruiz is a loyal and pragmatic soldier in the party, who has toiled mostly without protest in the era of what the late Nick Acocella described as the Sweeney imperial senate presidency. The party machine – dominated at the caucus level now by Middlesex – still must factor in the influence of the south, which claims four caucus members (Madden, Beach, Cruz-Perez, Singleton) and its broad range of Building Trades equipage. No one wants to make an unsalvageable enemy of South Jersey. The state already has the example of U.S. Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-2) changing parties.  Remember, Madden nearly lost on Tuesday night too: 52-48%.

Middlesex will try to make the case that they’re progressive pioneers by getting behind her candidacy, but they need her perhaps more than the Essex candidate needs them. Middlesex power brokers last year ganged up on the lone woman Puerto Rican Mayor in New Jersey when they eradicated Wilda Diaz of Perth Amboy.

That move could come back to haunt them.

Ruiz or Pou offers them a reanimating lifeline.

Again, Ruiz would be less of a departure than Pou from a Trenton establishment fed up with Murphy and truly irritated by the tin-eared campaign he ran, which ended up expunging some of their colleagues.

To that point, Middlesex is said to be as interested in a 2025 Coughlin gubernatorial candidacy as South Jersey was in advancing Sweeney to governor. Their motivation comes in part as a reaction to the uncontrollable Murphy, who came to high elected office suddenly, from outside the gradations of the New Jersey party power structure, and ended up putting the establishment through Election Night hell.

Coughlin would be sedate, manageable, and incapable of imperiling the party.

A source tonight said their hope is to get Ruiz to the senate presidency in exchange for LeRoy Jones’s backing of Coughlin for governor 2025.

There are built-in dynamics here for the future.

Another consideration is whether any of these individuals truly wants the job.

And More Thing…

Senator Nick Scutari (D-22) is said to be very interested.

Might he emerge amid less than wholly committed prospects as a real contender solely as a consequence of raw drive and hunger?

After all, he has the crumbling south behind him.

Also, the south has strong ties to the Republican caucus if it turns into a fistfight, and that alone might be enough to pull Middlesex if the North is in disarray, and even give South Jersey the chance to enact a punishing back of the hand to Jones, who cut his own deal with Middlesex for the chairmanship without the backing of the south.

The affirmation of Senator Steve Oroho (R-24) earlier today as senate minority may be more significant than meets the eye.

The leader of an 17-member caucus could – conceivably – activate on behalf of South Jersey’s candidate.

Oroho has strong ties to the Building Trades, Sweeney’s old base.

If we can cohere his caucus he could possibly make Scutari senate president with 22 votes.

Or – in a stunning acknowledgement of voter attitudes and a repudiation of the progressive governor who nearly lost to Jack Ciattarelli, and the ultimate revenge spectacle for South Jersey – summon those votes to take the job himself, a la Republican Tom Kean, Sr., who seized on fractures in the Democratic ranks to claim the speakership in 1972 as a member of the minority party:

“At the start of the Assembly session, Democratic leadership had wanted to name S. Howard Woodson of Trenton as Speaker, until Assemblyman David Friedland made a deal as one of four Democrats who voted to give the minority Republicans control of the General Assembly, electing Kean as Assembly Speaker.”

While it makes for good parlor room conversation, South Jersey Power Broker Norcross still has to keep an eye on the political safety of his brother, U.S. Rep. Donald Norcross, who would become a juicier target for progressives in a primary if the boss enabled a Republican senate presidency. Notwithstanding his and Sweeney’s rage over Murphy and his campaign, Norcross may not be able to go with the nuclear Oroho option.

In any case, it’s volatile, and will undoubtedly make for a more intriguing League of Municipalities convention in Atlantic City this year.