The stairs seemed more worn than before and InsiderNJ could remember them looking ready for repair a half decade earlier. They held, but barely, and in the mildewed half darkness of the bar, the source held up a bottle to signal the way forward into the dive, where the crack of a cue pole against the tortured side of an eight ball sounded amid a general depraved din that included the whine of Mark Knopfler’s guitar on the juke.

“Put your notebook away,” the source snapped from an adjoining stool.

The source had summoned InsiderNJ for the meeting following the appearance on the site of a poll and a story about the possibility of a shakeup in the Legislature and against the backdrop of speculation concerning a South Jersey deal for the U.S. Senate seat in exchange for the Senate Presidency if sitting U.S. Senator Bob Menendez – facing corruption charges – nosedives into political oblivion.

“It won’t be Ruiz,” the source said. “It won’t be Sarlo.”

Both would be seen as  too close to George Norcross III, the boss of South Jersey, who would want to make the play for his brother, U.S. Rep. Donald Norcross (D-1), for U.S. Senate in exchange for releasing sitting Senate President Steve Sweeney (D-3) from the senate throne. Ruiz serves as deputy chief of staff to Essex County Executive Joe DiVincenzo, as close as anyone in the north to Norcross, with the possible exception of state Senator Paul Sarlo (D-36) of Bergen County.

“That would be too obvious,” the source added.

Now that the deal for Assemblyman Craig Coughlin (D-19) appears cemented – Speaker Vincent Prieto’s (D-32) tomahawked by his play to seat confidant Joey Muniz on the Horizon Board – speculators can remove state senators Bob Smith and Joe Vitale from contention. Both veterans hail from Middlesex, and with Party Chairman Kevin McCabe’s bet on Coughlin and Essex on board, Smith and Vitale won’t be able to leverage the senate prez.

“It’s Scutari,” the source said. “That’s the buzz. If the U.S. Senate seat is vacated and the South needs to make a deal with the North to get it, look for Scutari to emerge as the consensus candidate on the strength of him being just sufficiently capable of standing on his own feet to keep [Democratic gubernatorial contender Phil] Murphy from breaking into a cold sweat every time he sits with the South, but just malleable enough to be receptive to those phone calls from Uncle George. He’s the perfect choice.”

It seemed too neatly packaged. Too speculative. Too contingent on too many other things happening to make sense.

“I’m not saying this is a done deal,” the source clarified. “I’m saying it’s buzz right now. Scutari circulates. More than others.”

The cue cracked against the ball again, and InsiderNJ’s gaze drifted to the guy up at the table, and maybe the gaze drifted a hair too long. The face under the Make America Great Again cap stared back with hatred.

“Everyone wants freedom, but that’s what’s out there,” the source said, pointing under the bar at the face at the pool table. “You don’t like bosses and machines and the two-party system? It offends your little delicate sensibilities, does it? But it also protects you from that wilderness, which is the real America, and barely contained – even here – but for political organization.”

Of course, this is all cleaned up here. The actual quote was something like this: “f’ing, f’ing, you f’ing… etc.”

InsiderNJ said other sources disputed a Norcross play for U.S. Senate. Why would he want to relinquish that kind of power? At least one other insisted Murphy would never give Norcross the reins of senatorial courtesy over a U.S. Attorney pick.

The source rolled his eyes.

“Everyone knows Phil, what he thinks, what he’ll do,” he mused.

“You yourself said a minute ago that Scutari wouldn’t make him uncomfortable. Now, just how do you know that?” InsiderNJ said.

“My point was he’s more palatable than Ruiz or Sarlo,” the source said.

He breaks up somewhat, the appearance of an Irish Cabal. He gives Murphy a fresh body on the throne, someone who’s liked, and whose signature piece of legislation – marijuana legalization, meshes with Murphy’s economic designs. Having tapped Assemblywoman Sheila Oliver to run as his LG and expected to go with Hudson County Prosecutor Esther Suarez as his Attorney General, Murphy has enough diversity options to go with a Scutari in the event he can weigh in on Sweeney’s replacement – if it comes to that. Then the source recounted a Trenton leadership story that every fifth source keeps reiterating, the one about how every rat in the kingdom was convinced Joe Doria would be speaker until Jim McGreevy became governor and abruptly went to neophyte Albio Sires.

“The New Jersey Governor’s hand on the scale should not be underestimated,” the source said.

Another source on the phone earlier today made the point that Sweeney would secure another term for senate president before anything else happened; cutting a deal for a power exchange wouldn’t occur prior to Sweeny and South Jersey affixing the Gloucester County brand name atop the ant hill again. Only from a position of power could they then convincingly make a play for a statewide senate seat. The source on the barstool nodded. “I agree,” he said.

The meeting ended with the bartender slopping another beer down in front of the source.

It was still overall very fluid, despite the appearance of rock-ribbed solidity in Middlesex with Coughlin.

Should anything be read into Kevin Drennan – a Sweeney diehard – leaving the Senate Majority Office, InsiderNJ asked another source. No, the source said. Drennan had already left the private sector to return to Trenton in the lead-up to the 2017 gubernatorial primaries, presumably to land in the buckboard wagon that was supposed to ramble all the way to Drumthwacket. His departure now was expected. More interesting, the source said, was Atlantic County Democrats’ decision to fill – with Senate candidate Colin Bell – the vacated seat of the late Senator Jim Whelan, which would pull the upper house back into session, and force Sweeney to also seat Passaic County Clerk in the 40th District senate seat, which would jar loose State Party Chairman John Currie’s public designs on the clerk’s seat.