They all walk the same halls in Trenton, but sources both in the Murphy Administration and in the Senate describe increasingly sharp elbowed and irritable encounters as Governor Phil Murphy attempts to settle in as the state’s chief executive in the statehouse proximity to the man he beat for the job: powerful Senate President Steve Sweeney (D-3).

Sources say Murphy is finding himself stymied early on several key fronts.

Most notably, the senate president has not directed the Judiciary Committee to schedule hearings for the Governor’s cabinet picks. Only Attorney General Gurbir Grewal is officially installed. The rest of Murphy’s picks find themselves awaiting a hearing.

The situation compounds other policy headaches for the Governor as his administration struggles to interface with a Senate Democratic Caucus where the majority has deep connections to the Senate President.

Sweeney, sources say, remains infuriated by Murphy’s close political relationship with the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA), an irritability that reanimates easily among his senate associates, who last year signed a letter of solidarity with the senate prez when the teacher’s union attempted to rid the 3rd District of the ironworker who sits on the senate throne.

In addition to facing an apparently stalled confirmation process, the Governor must confront key opposition in the senate to his marijuana legalization policy; and resistance, starting at the top with Sweeney, to a millionaire’s tax as a feasible imposition alongside President Donald J. Trump’s national tax, which eliminates state and local property tax deductions.

Murphy ran on the millionaire’s tax and marijuana legalization as way to contribute to his being able to generate over a billion in new revenues to fund his programs.

The Murphy Administration has responded to Sweeney with tough-talking Chief of Staff Peter Cammarano, a Trenton insider who knows where the bodies are buried, and who has apparently adopted a let’s-cut-the-crap demeanor with Sweeney and those deemed by the Murphy Administration to be part of the Sweeney inner and outer circles. Some of those collisions have not gone well, leaving senators smarting from Cammarano dress-downs and feeling disrespected, even as administration sources complain about the upper chamber’s complete disregard for the new Governor’s agenda. One soruce told InsiderNJ that while he has had two nasty exchanges with the new chief, he doesn’t take it personally, and expects a working relationship going forward.

But others don’t feel the same way, as a sense of distrust between senate and front office persists.

When state Senator Paul Sarlo (D-36) moved to partner across the aisle again with transportation and infrastructure chum state Senator Steve Oroho (R-24) to craft a senate vision for taxes, Cammarano picked up the phone.

What the hell were those guys doing now?

Sweeney had expressed caution about a millionaire’s tax in light of Trump’s tax plan. But now Sarlo and Oroho appeared to be moving on a blue collar tax bucket list.

The chief wanted a gut-check.

Was the senate moving in bipartisan fashion to put the millionaire’s tax out of reach?

Then there was Senate Judiciary Chairman Nick Scutari (D-22), who sat down with Grewal at the outset of the Murphy Administration’s tenure as Murphy prepared to take the oath of office to succeed Republican Governor Chris Christie.

Why wasn’t he scheduling hearings for the Governor’s cabinet picks?

He hadn’t received any direction from the senate prez, was the word in the halls of the statehouse, even as Sweeney continued to nurse worry about the influence of the NJEA on the Murphy Administration, and whose ally, NJ Building Trades President Bill Mullen, last Friday fired off a letter to lawmakers urging them to oppose Murphy’s choice to head up the state’s Economic Development Authority (EDA), yet another battle front between the senate and the administration.

Scutari, for his part, appeared to have his head down – not on the scheduling details of the judiciary

committee, but on the streets of Plainfield, where he was glimpsed going door to door this week in search of county committee votes as he seeks the county chairmanship of the Democratic Party.

“He’s fighting [Senator] Joe Cryan,” a source told InsiderNJ. “But it’s a pretty healthy guess that the two of them are united in their disappointment with how the administration is handling things so far.”

Another source lamented the early Cammarano-Sweeney allies brawls, noting that if the senate finds itself in a position where it can’t work with Murphy’s chief of staff, the Governor would be in a position of losing “one of the only adults he has over there.”

From the beginning, Cammarano, former chief of staff to Acting Governor Dick Codey, a  former Metuchen Mayor and consummate insider, struck most insiders as that Murphy pick best equipped to induce rigor to the front office team and be the bull required in close quarters combat with the Christie era-tested Sweeney.

Yet doubt pervaded this week amid intensified collisions and – but for the Governor’s eager use of executive order – a static big picture agenda vis a vis the senate, and a general reevaluation of where the upper chamber’s ranks stood in relation to a front office that during the Christie regime could usually count on a solidified GOP caucus and the willing votes of several key Democrats.

Now, in control of all the arms of Trenton power, and with some old unresolved issues enlivened by recent policy challenges, the Democrats appear to have picked a fight with themselves, or, at the very least, found in the Sweeney/Murphy rivalry a cauldron to test the party’s true direction – and to determine the distribution of political muscle on the party’s resident alpha males.