WASHINGTON
ONLY months ago, Representative Robert Menendez pulled Governor McGreevey aside and asked him to help round up support for his bid to land a coveted leadership post in the House.

Mr. McGreevey was more than happy to help, mindful that Mr. Menendez, a powerful Hudson County Democrat, was a major force in getting him elected governor in 2001, according to one official close to the governor.

Mr. McGreevey worked the telephones, urging fellow Democratic governors to put in a good word for Mr. Menendez with members of Congress in their own states. In the end, Mr. Menendez wound up narrowly winning the post he was seeking.

That episode, in many ways, captures how close Mr. McGreevey and Mr. Menendez, two of New Jersey's most powerful Democrats, had become.

But these days, Mr. McGreevey and Mr. Menendez are suddenly bitter rivals, locked in a roiling battle that is as much over policy differences as clashing personal ambitions and political realities.

There is a lot riding on this for Mr. McGreevey, who – weakened by a series of troublesome nominations, assorted gaffes and having the misfortune of holding office during a time of economic uncertainty – can ill-afford to jeopardize any more of his constituency.

As for Mr. Menenedez, though he casts a large shadow in Washington as chairman of the Democratic caucus in the House, the No. 3 leadership position among Democrats, all politics is local and he may feel he has to mobilize his Hispanic base of support.

It is a feud as open and politically significant as the one that erupted a few years ago between two other New Jersey titans, Frank Lautenberg and Robert G. Torricelli, when the two men were serving in the United States Senate together.

"We're quite baffled by it," the official close to Mr. McGreevey said. "The two have always had a good relationship."

Over the past few weeks, Mr. Menendez has publicly rebuked Mr. McGreevey, accusing him of neglecting the Hispanic community, an increasingly important New Jersey voting bloc, by withdrawing his support for Zulima Farber for the state Supreme Court.

Mr. McGreevey said he withdrew the his support for Ms. Farber, a – former public advocate who was born in Cuba, only after he learned that a bench warrant had been issued for her arrest when she did not appear in court for a traffic ticket.

But Mr. Menendez says, in effect, that he does not buy that explanation, contending that Mr. McGreevey withdrew his support for Ms. Farber so he could name a black candidate, John E. Wallace, a judge from Gloucester County, to replace Justice James H. Coleman Jr., who was the first black appointed on the court, in response to demands of black leaders.

In a recent interview, Mr. Menendez said the governor's "political calculus" in deciding to replace Ms. Farber with a black nominee was "that Hispanics will be upset, but they don't revolt as much as African Americans."

"Enough is enough," he said, claiming that the Farber episode was just the latest in a series of insults by the McGreevey administration toward a constituency that Mr. McGreevey had courted assiduously during the gubernatorial campaign.

He noted that there are no Hispanic officials in the governor's inner circle.

"When you look at the totality, you say, 'Oh my God,'" he said.

"I have my finger stuck in the dike with the Hispanic community," he said, referring to what he claimed was the pent-up frustration of. Latino voters.

For now, the New Jersey political establishment is watching to see how Mr. McGreevey, whose handling of the state crisis budget has already hurt him in the polls, moves to calm his stormy relationship with Mr. Menendez, a county leader who can hurt the governor politically should he decide to run for re-election.

Indeed, many Democrats say that it was Mr. Menendez who effectively blocked Mr. Torricelli's attempts to push Mr. McGreevey aside in 2001 and wrest the gubernatorial nomination for himself.

So far, the governor and his aides have refused to challenge Mr. Menendez, preferring instead to stay above the fray. In fact, Mr.McGreevey's office declined a recent request to comment publicly on the matter.

But behind the scenes, people close to the governor are sharpening the knives. The McGreevey camp is accusing Mr. Menendez of engaging in ethnic politics to advance his own political ambitions.

They say Mr. Menendez has political problems back home, where he and Mayor Glenn D. Cunningham of Jersey City are engaged in a struggle over who will dominate Hudson County, a place long known for its bare-knuckle politics.

The McGreevey camp contends that Mr. Menendez played the ethnic card to solidify his base of Hispanic support in the county, where Mr. Cunningham has encouraged Democrats to challenge Mr. Menendez for his congressional seat.

"I think he actually used the governor to get some press stories and some oomph in the Hispanic community," one person close to the governor said.

More than that, though, the McGreevey camp says that Mr. Menendez, who has considered running for statewide office, may have hurt himself among crucial black voters with his ethnically charged comments.

"He may have hurt himself by saying the governor caved to African-Americans," one McGreevey loyalist said mischievously.

People close to Mr. McGreevey insist that he was completely prepared to push Ms. Farber's candidacy, but that the disclosures about her driving record made it impossible for her nomination to get confirmed by the Senate.

"She never would have been confirmed," said the McGreevey ally. "That's just a fact of life."

Ms. Farber, for her part, has said that she never received any notice that she had to appear in court to respond to the traffic charge, and has accused the governor's spokesmen of making "defamatory statements" about her.

The McGreevey camp says the governor was himself disappointed over having to withdraw his support for Ms. Farber – largely because he was aware of how much her nomination meant to Mr. Menendez, a man he regarded as a close ally.

The governor even made a special trip to Mr. Menendez's Washington office to break the news to the congressman himself, the person recalled.

"He personally traveled to Washington, D.C., to tell him," he said. "That's how much he thought of their relationship."

But now it is unlikely the controversy will fade any time soon. Waving an olive branch at the Hispanic community, the McGreevey administration recently decided to restore nearly $1.6 million in cuts that the governor had proposed for Hispanic organizations. But in a recent interview, Mr. Menendez made it clear that that was not enough.

"He's going to have to make significant appointments," Mr. Menendez said, calling on the governor to appoint Hispanics to top jobs in Trenton.

He also expressed disappointment that Mr. McGreevey did not seize a chance to make history and appoint the first Hispanic person to the high court.

"I like the guy, but that doesn't buy my silence," Mr. Menendez said of Mr. McGreevey. "He had an opportunity to have a huge historic import."

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