If Pete Cammarano does indeed emerge as Phil Murphy’s chief of staff (an outcome that could only occur if Murphy wins the governorship on Nov. 7th), he would signal a significant departure from the nascent 2005 Trenton world of Governor-elect Jon Corzine, the man to whom Murphy is often disparagingly compared. But he also inevitably bears Dick Codey fingerprints, which could prove troubling to Murphy as he attempts to forge government relations with South Jersey Democrats, the George Norcross III-led troops who command the biggest delegation in the Statehouse. Bluntly, Codey and Norcross hate each other.

“You’re going to the Statehouse, which is like landing on the beach at Normandy,” a source told InsiderNJ, referring to Murphy’s apparently imminent toehold on the battered Delaware River beachhead. “You’re trying to get up the beach under heavy fire and now you’re telling Pete Cammarano, who was Codey’s chief of staff, to go deliver a message to Steve Sweeney. I don’t know. I don’t know.”

But others say Cammarano, who serves as mayor of Metuchen and has deep professional connections in all corners of the state, has put together a career that enables him to transcend that narrow strand of association created by his tenure in the Codey Administration. His Trenton insider street cred, sources say, more urgently puts distance on the Goldman Sachs-Corzine narrative, which has dogged Murphy on the general election campaign trail.

Corzine and Murphy both hailed professionally from global bank Goldman Sachs, so they both started as outsiders to the Trenton scene. But while Corzine doubled down on his outsider status when he selected Tom Shea, who came from the national Democratic Party political scene, as his chief of staff, Murphy in going with Cammarano would have a creature all-but conceived in the Gold Dome.

The early kick-around of the name caused sources to speculate on the political heft Cammarano has on the one hand, but also on the delicate needle thread of unveiling him so that it doesn’t amount to a Codey grenade going of in Norcross world and hobbling Murphy early. “Good in that he knows Trenton, knows the issues, has relationships, and done the job before…. problem is, does it mean Codey is governor, or perceived to be governor?” said one source. Still others noted that as governor Murphy can do what he believes his best without having to worry about offending the always easily-ruffled South, and celebrated both Cammarano’s skills on their face, and the political benefit of giving Codey – in with Murphy early – some sense of ownership.

And critically, it stops the bleed of a Corzine Part Two narrative in its tracks, at least on the operations front, sources say.

A veteran Trenton source told InsiderNJ that the pick had nothing to do with Codey or those narrow groundhog holes punched by past North-South wars. “This is about the best person for the job, a person who knows Trenton as well as anyone, period,” said the source.