Listening to Brett Kavanaugh testify last week, one might have easily mistaken him for a Hudson County pol, groomed in the school of political hard knocks, not in the elite prep school culture of suburban Washington.

"As we all know, in the political system in the early 2000s, what goes around comes around,'' the embattled Supreme Court nominee warned members of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Kavanaugh, barely containing his fury, went totally Jersey, using words like "revenge'' and "political hit," issuing veiled threats and making forecasts darkened by political fallout.

"Today, I have to say, I fear for the future,'' said Kavanaugh, who is accused of attempting to rape Christine Blasey Ford at a house party in Maryland when they were both teenagers in the 1980s.

Given that kind of payback talk, Kavanaugh would have no trouble climbing the political ladder of power in New Jersey, where threats, intimidation and payback are almost job requirements. But a growing portion of the public across the country and in New Jersey is soured on Kavanaugh's nomination, and more and more law professors and ethics experts are joining Democratic senators who say that kind of temperament makes him unfit for the Supreme Court.

Kavanaugh's vendetta swagger would be right at home in a state where the world's busiest bridge could come to a standstill, leaving countless thousands of commuters frozen in a rush-hour traffic jam, simply to punish a local mayor who refused to endorse Gov. Chris Christie's 2013 re-election.

While Christie and his allies may have been colorful and ruthless practitioners of payback — it's hard to think of another governor who would cut funding to a Rutgers political science program led by a venerated professor who sided against Christie in a redistricting battle — he is hardly an outlier.

Leonard Lance, a Republican congressman running for re-election this fall, was bounced from his high-profile chairmanship of the Assembly budget committee after opposing then-Gov. Christie Whitman's bond scheme to bolster the pension fund. Whitman herself punched back at her enemy, then-Democratic Senate President John Lynch, by cutting state funding for a sidewalk lighting project in New Brunswick, where he was mayor.

Then we have the occasional blunt political threat issued in public.

"To those who were digging my political grave so they could jump in my seat — I know who you are, and I won't forget you,'' warned U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez moments after his federal corruption trial ended in a mistrial.

Continues below video

Kavanaugh would have been a perfect fit in Christie's administration, maybe with a desk in the map-lined Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, where they kept a running tab on Christie's allies and enemies. It was an office that operated under the "what goes around comes around" ethos.

Kavanaugh could have issued memos detailing which mayors deserved to be rewarded with valuable projects from the Port Authority's "goody bag" of pork spending, and which ones would have the door slammed in their faces.

Except that Kavanaugh isn't vying for a government job, but to become one of the most powerful judges in the nation, a job that requires him to appear, at least, to be an impartial, dispassionate arbiter of facts.

In his furious venting last Thursday, Kavanaugh was nothing of the sort. He painted himself as a wounded political martyr, smeared by "millions of dollars from outside Democratic opposition groups" that are still angry over his zealous pursuit of Bill and Hillary Clinton in the Whitewater investigation in the 1990s.

Or, he speculated, they wanted his scalp as a sort of consolation prize for losing the 2016 election to Donald J. Trump, who nominated Kavanaugh in July.

"This is a circus,'' he complained, and then went about helping to turn the hearing into one, browbeating senators who questioned him about his drinking during his high school and college days and deflecting and evading direct questions.

In the eyes of Democrats — and a growing number of law professors and legal experts — Kavanaugh's behavior alone should disqualify him from a seat on the court, even if he's eventually proved innocent.

"In a judge at any level, particularly in the Supreme Court, it's essential that judges remain calm, they listen to all points of view, they show respect to each other, to lawyers and to the entire process,'' said Sally Goldfarb, a law professor at Rutgers Law School in Camden. "His behavior was shocking in any setting."

Goldfarb was one of 500 law school professors from around the country who signed a letter this week asserting that Kavanaugh "did not display the impartiality and judicial temperament requisite to sit on the highest court of our land.” Goldfarb said she signed the letter on behalf of herself, not the law school or its faculty.

Kavanaugh's "what goes around comes around" remark did not strike Goldfarb as a threat aimed at Democratic special interest groups that have opposed his nomination. Rather, she said, it seemed like more a general warning to Democratic senators that they may face voter backlash for opposing him.

"But even so, to threaten senators with possible future defeat in a future election is not an appropriate position for a judge, who, in theory, should be above politics,'' she said.

Gary S. Stein, who served as a New Jersey Supreme Court justice for 18 years, said judges must "work hard to manage personal predilections and feelings" to prevent them from interfering with the decision making.

"Sometimes a judge is not even aware of how personal views on issues, sometimes partisan issues, have an underlying effect on how he or she" rules on a case, said Stein, who did not sign the letter.

But Stein said Kavanaugh has now given the public reason to question his ability to be impartial.

"It casts a shadow on his objectivity, and derivatively, it casts a shadow on the objectivity of the court,'' Stein said. He noted that he is also on the board of the New Jersey chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, an advocacy group that often appears before the court.

The FBI has completed its investigation into Ford's allegations and others, setting up a procedural vote on Kavanaugh's nomination.

Republican supporters are confident that the report won't torpedo the nomination. But if it does, Kavanaugh might find a new start here in New Jersey.

More from Stile

More:How a recording about Brett Kavanaugh's nomination upends a battleground NJ House race

More:Brett Kavanaugh hearing poses pitfalls for Trump's GOP as it seeks to keep women in party