Bill Pascrell and Steve Rothman Battle Over N.J. District Representative Steve Rothman, center, whose district was eliminated, is moving into a new district where he will challenge Representative Bill Pascrell, a fellow Democrat. The last time Representatives Bill Pascrell and Steve Rothman spoke, the conversation ended like this: Mr. Pascrell, center, at a luncheon organized by the Passaic County Building and Construction Trades Council. I love you, Billy. I love you, too. Six weeks later, love looks like this: Mr. Rothman accuses Mr. Pascrell of double-crossing him. Mr. Pascrell has taken to calling Mr. Rothman a coward. And the two Democrats, who once shared late dinners and commutes between New Jersey and Washington, avoid each other. At the root of all this, New Jersey's most high-profile unfriending, is a simple dispute over turf. But it has roiled the Democratic establishment in New Jersey and Washington, and complicated the party's hopes of winning back the 25 seats it needs to recapture the majority in the House. When political mapmakers in New Jersey redrew the state's congressional districts in December, Mr. Pascrell was given the Ninth District, a heavily Democratic area in Northern New Jersey that analysts predicted he would hold. Mr. Rothman was not so lucky. His home in Fair Lawn was dropped into the Fifth District, which stretches from the George Washington Bridge to the Pennsylvania border and tends to favor Republicans. So what did Mr. Rothman do? He decided to run in friendlier terrain: Mr. Pascrell's new district. Mr. Rothman's new district is represented by Scott Garrett, a Republican and Tea Party favorite. Many Democrats believe Mr. Rothman could beat him - or if he didn't, would earn the gratitude of colleagues, who would support him if he later runs for Senate, as he has told people he would like to do. Instead, his move assures that Democrats lose at least one member. Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, phoned Mr. Rothman and told him he was making a mistake. "She tried to convince him that a race against Garrett was his opportunity to become a national figure and take on a Tea Party icon," said a senior Democrat close to Ms. Pelosi who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Representative Steve Israel of New York, who is leading the Democrats" campaign efforts, pledged to help Mr. Rothman with the money he would need to defeat Mr. Garrett. And the chairman of the Democratic Party in New Jersey, Assemblyman John Wisniewski, tried to broker a truce, but could not get the two men to meet. Mr. Rothman has also resisted the entreaties of columnists and editorial pages urging him to challenge Mr. Garrett instead. New Jersey, which lost one House seat, is not the only place where a new map is forcing Democrats to run against one another. But it is unusual in that one is planning to move into another district to do so. And Democrats say it may be the most bitter of the redistricting fights. One union leader compared it to watching your parents get divorced. Mr. Pascrell's message can be boiled down to "Steve Rothman is a chicken." A campaign Web site, RealDemsStandAndFight.com, features a running countdown of the days (and hours and minutes and seconds) since Mr. Rothman has not actually moved into the district. The primary is in June. "We didn't start this fight," Mr. Pascrell, 75, told a rally of Latino voters on a recent night. But we know how to finish it! "He has to deal with his conscience," Mr. Pascrell said in an interview. He's in for a hell of a fight. Yet Mr. Rothman, 59, argues that more than half his former constituents are in Mr. Pascrell's new district, even if his house and district offices are now outside it. "His campaign is feverishly working this spin in, I think, an unsuccessful attempt to question the legitimacy of my running for re-election in my own home district where I was born and raised and lived practically my whole life," he said. Since Christmas, the two have competed to show who knows the district better. When Mr. Pascrell attended the annual swearing-in of officials in Bergen County, the part of the Ninth that used to belong to Mr. Rothman, Mr. Rothman declined to recognize him by name, but welcomed "visiting dignitaries." When both attended a ceremony honoring Gerald Calabrese of Cliffside Park as the longest-serving mayor in New Jersey, Mr. Rothman told the crowd how he had known the mayor for 30 years, since his own days in Young Democrats. Mr. Pascrell then got up and recalled that he had known Mr. Calabrese's father.