In a side-by-side comparison of GOTV events in the closing hours of this historic campaign cycle, Democrats proved more robustly overlapped by party organizations and new voters determined to voice their disapproval of President Donald J. Trump than Republicans looking to capitalize on a wounded U.S. Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) or navigate political straits severely complicated by the President.

As the polls closed on general election night 2009, Democratic Party operatives in Elizabeth noted the lack of energy and enthusiasm for then-Governor Jon Corzine; even gently bragged about not working hard – or at all. InsiderNJ checked in with those same operatives this weekend, who busily headed up GOTV crews intent on reelecting Menendez. They even doubled back later with late phone calls, eager to prove activity.

Menendez originated from the cousin machines that produced them. Molded in his – not Corzine’s (or, for that matter, Republican challenger Bob Hugin’s) – image, they gamely toiled.

Saddled by his own failed asset monetization plan and exposed by a then-damaged organization that had lost its godfather John Lynch, the pre-Election Day flailing Corzine similarly demonstrated weakness in Middlesex, which he ended up losing to Republican Chris Christie.

But Menendez – determined to stay alive after surviving a public corruption trial – has stayed busy in both augmented counties: Union and Middlesex.

Union, for its part, has unity to demonstrate – and power to show off amid some little lingering tiffs and rifts – and to that end Union County Democratic Committee Chairman Nick Scutari, Senator Joe Cryan and Elizabeth Mayor Chris Bollwage are all engaged. They love one another, they say, but no one wants to be the weak performing link in a throw-down with Trump’s GOP.

A rebuilt Middlesex under the leadership of Party Chairman Kevin McCabe hopes to prove don’t-confuse-us-with-anyone-else strength.

The county is home to Speaker Craig Coughlin (D-19), who wants to maintain – amid the ever present ripple of statewide party discord – the appearance of undisputed organizational power. Always tested by the frayed nerves between Senate President Steve Sweeney (D-3) and Governor Phil Murphy, Middlesex – among other things – wants to bat signal a warning to anyone who cares to ever cross Coughlin.

Not that that would happen, but there’s enough volatility between Murphy and the legislature – and enough demonstrable progressive juice on the ground – for the development of certain political convergences and alliances. For the moment, with time ticking down to Election Day, everyone’s friendly: Murphy (who tells crowds he’s from the Howard Dean wing of the party), and the Middlesex-local machines associated with Coughlin, who not only attended  events for Menendez in his home county but also in Essex this weekend. Everyone’s engaged.

Bottom line: it’s not Bob love so much as self-love against the backdrop of percolating party friction and fraction – that deeply motivates Middlesex.

And – as elsewhere – Trump hate; or as they might prefer it expressed, resistance to his hate.

Of course, Murphy wants a win, and doesn’t mind marching at the head of that same parade that the late Essex County Democratic Committee Chairman Ray Durkin described as the happy duty of every heads-up politician. It doesn’t hurt that his cultivated pockets of regional support will perform more avidly for his ally Menendez than – with the exception of Camden – Sweeney’s local watering holes in Gloucester, Cumberland and Salem.

If CD-11 Democratic candidate Mikie Sherrill proved the transcendent figure of the cycle, able to overcome the perceived albatross of Menendez and brand her opponent as the Trump candidate in the same district where retiring U.S. Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-11) fled rather than explain Trump to irritated voters – many of them women – picketing his office – she was but the most obvious symbol of a larger story of newly energized anti-Trump independent voters who could live amid the machines of party politics but not be handcuffed to them.

It’s not over, of course. Given the dimensions of the district, Webber could still spring an upset tomorrow.

But Sherril showed late energy, on top of demonstrable incremental energy, just as challenger Tom Malinowski did in CD-7 and even Andy Kim did in CD-3. Insiders expressed most concern for Kim, whose district includes Ocean, home to some Trump fervor. In Somerset, Democratic Party Chair Peg Schaffer seemed prepared to reap the benefits of a national environment to snag two long-elusive freeholder seats. The convergence of party organizations and independent uptick raw voter angst late made the Ocean-Monmouth centric U.S. Rep. Chris Smith (R-4) look like a last-man-standing party pillar amid coming ruins; and beyond those halls long scuffed by the soles of party organization people in Essex and Hudson, Menendez was either a suburban afterthought, or simply a fortuitous passenger atop a blue wave; either way he was on Monday – by the reckoning too of polling – the beneficiary of an expected anti-Trump onslaught.

But, of course, there was still an election to be had.