Phil Rizzo showed up at last year’s Morris County Republican convention convinced he was going to get the party endorsement for his CD-7 campaign.

He even had the details mapped out. He assumed Tom Kean Jr. would top a crowded field in the first ballot, but that he (Rizzo) would finish second, necessitating a runoff.

And Rizzo said he would win the runoff.

How did he know that?

His data told him as much.

In reality, Rizzo finished fourth. So much for winning, or even getting into, a runoff with Kean, who we now know won not only the endorsement, but also the June primary and general election.

So, Rizzo’s data had to be a bit off.

Not to him.

Rizzo testified in state Superior Court, Morristown, on Monday that the problem was with county Republicans. They are outliers, he said.

All this drama is part of an ongoing legal battle between Rizzo and the Morris County Republican Committee.

The committee says Rizzo “rented” a campaign table at said convention for $1,500, but refused to pay. The committee sued and despite the small amount of money involved, relatively speaking, a settlement has been elusive. The latest hearing in the case was Monday and there will be more to come.

This is a dispute about money, but as Rizzo’s testimony suggested, his real point seems to be that county Republicans unjustly denied him the nomination.

The deck, he said, was stacked against him from the start.

“I’m an outsider. I knew the system was sort of against me as a political outsider,” he said.

Rizzo testified that the fix was in – so to speak – from the outset, and that it started in 2021 when he ran for governor.

At the 2021 convention, Rizzo said he followed the rules and limited his presentation to voters to the allotted four minutes. So he wasn’t happy that Jack Ciattarelli spoke for 15 to 20 minutes. Ciattarelli won the endorsement and also the nomination.

This type of thing continued in 2022.

Rizzo said he thought he was in a good position going into the convention even if you discounted his polling data. He reasoned that he was destined to do well, because he grew up in Morris County.

But – again – he was pushed aside, so he claimed.

He said he paid $600 for convention advertising, but the ad never appeared. He further complained during his testimony that the convention was filled with “chaos,” which stymied people from voting.

It is worth noting that there were problems with the voting machines that night last March, so much so that the convention was suspended until a week later.

There is also some truth to political insiders on a county committee not embracing a so-called outsider.

Nonetheless, the legal core of this dispute is not alleged political favoritism at a convention, but something less esoteric – paying a bill.