Confronted about the potential LD36 candidacy of Clinton Calabrese, a Democratic source this afternoon angrily pushed back.

“Look at the Buccos – you don’t hear anyone complaining about them,” the source said. “Look at Chris Connors. Wasn’t his father the senator, too?”

IniderNJ pointed out to the source that it was Democrats – not Republicans – pushing back early against the Calabrese narrative, flagpoled this week as a way to keep both state Senator Paul Sarlo (D-36) and Assemblyman Gary Schaer (D-36) from getting at each other’s throats for control of the seat.

“Give it to the Calabreses – let them handle it,” the source argued. “Who cares who they put in there, the point is they can be responsible for the seat – not Gary and not Paul.”

A second source, however, railed against Calabrese, speaking in a shaking voice about “Bergen tradition,” and a long record of people dutifully dragging from one totem pole tier to the next: council, freeholder and assembly.

Assemblywoman Marlene Caride (D-36) came out of relative nowhere, the source acknowledged, but in her case it made sense because the late Alan Rosenthal – the tie-breaking 11th member of the 2011 redistricting commission – had explained the priority of more Hispanic representation in LD36.

“Now, it’s like the rationale for a newcomer is being applied – not on the basis of opening up opportunities to a minority – but, in effect, the opposite of that: in order to advance the interests of a family member. It’s crazy,” the source said. “It’s the worst kind of regression imaginable.”

North Jersey sources mentioned the possible pick in the context of Essex County Executive Joe DiVincenzo’s discussions around that time to frontend load his son, Joe, Jr., into a can’t seat, a tiral balloon that blew up almost the instant it came out of the executive’s mouth.

The second source objected to even the suggestion that Calabrese the Younger could get where Joe D. Jr. failed to tread.

“Bergen is not Essex,” said the source.

But does that mean too – in defiance of the first source’s point – that Bergen equally isn’t Morris (Bucco) and Ocean (Connors)?