HUDSON COUNTY – The day breaks in North Bergen, where you turn on the tube in the highway-ravaged motel and half expect to see leotard-clad locals with baseball caps on backwards chanting, as part of an exercise routine, “I don’t know where you be from, but I be from North Bergen, son.”

It doesn’t happen.

And it’s too bad, because nothing on TV equals what’s happening here, which boils down to this:

This thing, state Senator Brian P. Stack versus Hudson County Executive Tom DeGise (or Amy DeGise) features a classic Hudson matchup.

You listen to the arguments on both sides.

It’s uncomplicated.

Stack will work hard.

He’ll work so hard that he actually might tread dangerously at the edge of forcing you to work hard.

DeGise won’t work as hard.

He’s tired.

If you don’t believe it, just ask him.

“Tired,” he says, when asked how he’s doing.

If it sounds like a losing formula, think again.

The mayors and their local county committees have to do a real gut-check before choosing a new direction for the party.

Before choosing Stack.

DeGise looks like everyone’s favorite beloved uncle, who can tell you stories about climbing up on the shoulders of his favorite uncle when the Heights still sold penny candy and every kid either looked like Alfalfa or Orphan Annie. He’s going to leave you alone. He works for you. Get it. If he picks up the phone and screams, you can technically tell him he’s fired. But the point is he’s never going to pick up the phone and scream. He’s the nicest guy on earth, and he just happens to live in Hudson County. He is Hudson County.

He’s tired.

But isn’t everybody?

Who wants the threat of that telephone call and someone on the other end who may humiliate you while you’re trying to blow out the candles on your daughter’s birthday cake?

DeGise has a daughter.

She’s running for Hudson County Democratic Organization (HCDO) chair.

Against Stack, that maniac from Union City who wanted to hurt your favorite uncle who just wanted another four years on the clock.

That’s loyalty, or so goes the argument.

Stack?

On his own birthday, he celebrated by going door to door.

He’s not human.

Or at least, he’s 24-7, which in fact was his nickname for some time.

Brian “24-7” Stack.

“He doesn’t get the joke,” says one source, who shuffles like a Florida retiree when he walks.

What is the joke?

Presumably that elected office is not really a job? Holding public office is not work?

Brian thinks it is.

Oh, I get it.

So here’s the most deadly boomerang for Stack in this fight for the chairmanship: if he gets elected, not only will he work hard, but he’ll make you work hard. He’ll whip you into shape. He’ll turn the HCDO into a SEAL team. You want to ride around in a golf cart on your spare time?

That will be over.

To paraphrase Roy Orbison, you’ll never see another golf course again.

Do people who get “the joke” really want that?

You can picture someone saying, “I’ll support Brian if he works hard for me, but not if he makes me work hard.”

Bob Menendez no doubt wants someone to work hard.

He’s up for reelection this year, the senior U.S. Senator from New Jersey running against some guy,a  Republican.

Ah, but he’s not just any Republican.

He’s retired big pharma executive Bob Hugin, a Marine Corps veteran, no less, who hails from Union City – just like Menendez, and Stack!

Wasn’t Billy Musto, the late former Union City Mayor who schooled Menendez and Stack, in the Marines?

No, no, no. Now, you’re getting carried away.

Musto was in the Army.

Yeah.

Under General George S. Patton!

All right, so the point is the organization needs to be in fighting shape this year.

It probably doesn’t need an avuncular touch so much as it requires a touch of the Tom Berenger character from Platoon.

But here’s the problem, Stack’s candidacy comes stuck to Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop, Menendez’s political enemy.

Politics is never easy, even at the Menendez level.

You get Stack for the chairmanship, but you also promote Fulop.

To those who live by loyalty, that’s a terrible bargain.

DeGise.

Loyal.

Stack.

Loyal.

They actually have something – something critical in the Menendez universe – in common.

Fulop.

Disloyal.

Stay out of it, Bob, the sources tell him. Bobby… Sorry, Senator. Senator Menendez. Stay out of it.

If that is indeed what is happening, Stack’s allies say the senator is so dogged, so willful, he plans to shoulder Jersey City solo if he has to check DeGise, or at least in a way that demonstrates his own capacity to connect, unfettered by allies who may not have always had Menendez’s best interests at heart, at least by the boss’ own reckoning.

Stack will outwork DeGise.

A dose of Frank Hague will reawaken the real Jersey City.

Don’t you want a hard worker?

One can hear the hesitant, eyes-darting-around answer again, down this corridor of squat storefronts and steeples still half clinging to a firehouse, beer-spattered past.

“I do… yeah, I’m blue collar, hard work, sure, but geez, I gotta a lot on my plate right now. I got a family. I got tickets to see the Mets next week. My golf handicap. My vacation days. My cable bill. I don’t know if I got the time. I can work hard. Got the scars to prove it. My family The war. But if I wanted to work hard right now, I wouldn’t be in government. Besides. This is supposed to be about serving the people. I don’t know if I want a dictator in there.”

That’s simplified to its barest terms, in the language used by both sides to characterize the stakes, but make no mistake, it’s a war with a hard undercurrent of opposite political styles. If the priority is keeping the peace, is perpetual war really an option? If Hudson is less complacent than the rest of the state, how can it lose?