So far the rookie mistake of the year award goes to Josh Gottheimer, the freshman congressman from Bergen County, who showed up at U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell’s birthday party at Duffy’s last month wearing a bulletproof vest.

It wasn’t a masquarade ball, or someone have might have thought he was trying to be Bob Menendez. It turns out Gottheimer was trying to be funny, apparently trying to use the setting of Paterson to make a point about public safety, or lack thereof.

One source told InsiderNJ that Gottheimer entered the famous establishment with a police detail.

Arms akimbo on the other side of the bar, proprietor (and Passaic County Freeholder) Terry Duffy was unamused, and supposedly expressed his displeasure to Gottheimer, who this month is formally a battleground district target of the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee.