About a week ago, Democrat Josh Gottheimer and Republican Steve Oroho came together to demand more federal relief money for Sussex and Warren counties on the state’s northern and western frontier.

Now the appeal is growing.

Just this morning, Gottheimer joined with the state’s entire New Jersey delegation to demand money not just for Sussex and Warren, but Salem and Hunterdon counties as well.

None of these counties are political heavyweights, but that’s really not the problem – at least not initially.

Back on April 3, Bob Menendez and Cory Booker braved the pandemic to announce at a press event in Hackensack that $82 million in federal money from the CARES Act – the roughly $2 trillion stimulus program – was being distributed to dozens of county and municipal governments throughout the state. Funds will be used to bolster many services, including infrastructure improvements and rental assistance.

But not one penny of the $82 million was earmarked for any of the four counties.

The problem is a funding formula that apparently dates back more than 40 years. Under that concept, money goes to counties with more than 500,000 people, cities of more than 50,000 or so-called principal cities under a Census Bureau designation.

By those standards, Sussex, Warren, Salem and Hunterdon all miss the cut.

But there’s some hope.

New Jersey itself has about $15 million in CARES money available, according to a letter sent today to the governor’s office.

Signed by all 12 members of Congress from the Garden State, the letter asks Gov. Phil Murphy to send some of those funds to local governments in those four counties.

“These counties remain in the so-called ‘hot region’ of the outbreak in our state and need this critical funding to get through the challenging next weeks and months,” the letter said.

A few interesting things here.

One is that last week’s appeal by Gottheimer and Oroho, a Republican state senator from Sussex, doesn’t appear to have done much good.

The other is more encouraging – it’s not only the bipartisan nature of things, it’s the idea that House members are supporting federal money going to districts they don’t represent.

Like little traffic on the roads and cleaner air, this is one of the tiny “silver linings” in the ongoing pandemic.