MARTINSVILLE - Mikie Sherrill came to Somerset County this evening and immediately tried to turn her opponent's presumed advantage in these parts into a deficit.

Republican Jack Ciattarelli hails from Somerset.

So, in a roomful of Democrats, on a mountaintop overlooking the rest of the county, lights twinkling in the distance, Sherrill promptly made a tactical maneuver.

"You know Jack," she said.

As if they didn't want to.

Surrogates drilled down on the point.

Yes, they know him, said Henry Goodhue, president of the Hillsborough Education Association, leading a band of NJEA diehards in a bulging ballroom at Martinsville Gardens.

At the microphone in the front of the crowd, Goodhue represented Steve Beatty, president of the NJEA.

In 12 years as a labor leader, he said, "I've known legislators - like mine - who are wonderful advocates for unionized labor and public education. I know that Congresswoman Sherrill shares these values and will work for every New Jerseyan, not just those who pull her strings."

Ciattarelli, Goodhue added, is "a fake" labor advocate. He tries to collect endorsement from labor, but he doesn't back labor. Not really, said the labor leader, probably steamed that the Republican backs vouchers and school choice and Abbott School overhauling.

Boos ensued.

The Democrats here struck a couple of other themes.

Assemblyman Joe Danielsen (D-17) and Somerset County Commissioner Director Shanel Robinson proudly underscored their military records, something they have in common with Navy vet Sherrill.

State Senator Andrew Zwicker (D-16) reminded his fellow Democrats that they believe in some other values, too.

Like science.

Zwicker's a physicist, and the crowd here received the point as if the other side seems to revel in Trump cultism as a substitute.

Somerset County Democratic Chair Peg Schaffer lapped up the mood.

When she took the helm here almost 20 years ago, during Ciattarelli's political ascendency, Republicans ran the county. Now Democrats are in charge countywide, and Sherrill, walking in on the pumped Central Jersey suburban crowd of party loyalists, found an organization at full tilt, probably right on time, in Ciattarelli's backyard.

It was compelling political theater with less than two weeks to go until Election Day, in a county where Democrats once resembled - charitably - the sparest suggestion of a Samuel Beckett play.