SOMERVILLE – Governor-elect Phil Murphy today swore Clerk Steve Peter into office, delighting hitherto success-starved Democrats who went for 40 years without one of their own occupying a seat countywide.

Local Councilman Peter out of Somerville broke the drought in 2017 when he dislodged veteran Clerk Brett Radi.

Tonight, Somerset County Democratic Chair Peg Schaffer led the charge of partygoers across the street from the old County Courthouse to Verve, classically a local celebratory watering hole, usually of those newly punched-back-in Republicans.

Schaffer had wanted to share the festivities tab at Verve with Somerset County GOP Chairman Al Gaburo, whose party still picked up two-thirds of the county seats up last year (incumbent Freeholder Brian Levine and Freeholder Brian Gallagher).

But Gaburo was not in a bipartisan partying mood.

Sources say he was still stinging from charges by Schaffer and company that mailers he and the GOP put out were racist.

Schaffer dug in.

They were racist flyers, the rival chair argued through Election Day.

But Gaburo denied it, standing by mail pieces that highlighted the local tax-hiking record of Franklin Twp. Committeewoman Shanel Robinson and the absence of a taxpaying residence by her running mate.

Murphy drove in here earlier to put his own personal stamp of approval on Peter, and celebrate history in the process.

But after the ceremony, Gaburo and Schaffer parted company, with county Dems filing in behind the Democratic chair and threatened Republicans trailing their GOP leader.