PISCATAWAY – Staci Berger stands in front of her house on Ellis Parkway and scans other homes in the neighborhood.

Many are in Ward 2, according to the township’s revised map after the 2020 Census. Berger’s house is in Ward 3, just like it was before.

This may be inconsequential trivia to many, but not if you’re politically active.

Berger ran for township council in 2018, losing in the Democratic primary by about 150 votes.

She’s running again this year, but here’s the problem. She remains a resident of Ward 3, but many of her neighbors – and she presumes supporters – now live in Ward 2, meaning they can’t vote for her.

Berger doesn’t think any of this is coincidental. In a statement, she put it this way:

“My opponent and the Democratic machine are so afraid of me that they moved 18,000 people all over town in order to justify this scheme. They carved up the historic Ward 3 Heights neighborhood where I live and drew the new ward boundary literally around my house.”

Not surprisingly, Brian C. Wahler, who has been mayor for 22 years, has a different take.

He says boundaries change in line with the population, noting that his parents’ home in the township has been in three different wards. The mayor says Berger is just looking for publicity.

As you may surmise, there is some history here.

Probably the first thing to know is that the township, which has a population of 60,000, is solidly Democratic. Joe Biden got 70 percent of the vote here. Republicans don’t always run candidates for council, but when they do, they normally lose by more than 2-1.

Intra-party wars, of course, are not uncommon.

Berger says this one mirrors a national split between progressives and what she called the “Joe Manchins” of the Democratic Party. That may be an exaggeration, but it makes the point.

Berger is a long-time activist who worked nine years with New Jersey Citizen Action. She is now president and CEO at Housing and Community Development of New Jersey, which promotes affordable housing. Of more local concern, Berger heads the township’s Progressive Democratic Organization.

Throughout New Jersey, it is common for towns run by one party to split into factions. Sometimes they’re philosophical; sometimes they’re personal and oftentimes, a combination of both. That seems to be the case here.

Clearly, the ward dispute is not the only sign of inner-party strife in Piscataway.

In an interview this week, Berger pointed to a seemingly bizarre referendum on last year’s election ballot to livestream public meetings. What’s bizarre is not that the measure easily passed, but that it took a referendum to make it happen. Prior to livestreaming, some towns began putting meetings on community access television 30 years ago.

As for the upcoming election, Mayor Wahler in a phone chat dismissed Berger’s concerns about running in a ward that has changed. He said that if you only want to run in a certain ward, “Maybe you shouldn’t be running.”

Berger, by the way, is preparing to run and to explore her old, but “new” ward.

“I like meeting people,” she says.