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ALBANY — The closed-door meeting of the State Senate Democrats began with a discussion about social media use. But it quickly devolved into a shouting match, with two senators exchanging personal attacks before one stormed out of the room.

The confrontation on Wednesday, confirmed by three people who witnessed the exchange, is the latest sign of the growing rift between the party’s established core and its newly empowered progressive wing.

The clash occurred between Senator Kevin Parker of Brooklyn, who is in his ninth term, and Senator Alessandra Biaggi, who won a seat in the Bronx last year by dethroning Jeffrey D. Klein, a powerful Democratic incumbent, in the primary.

The skirmish highlighted the shifting dynamics in Albany, where Democrats have simultaneously cheered the new energy and reform spirit, and been leery of pushing it too far. A similar battle in Washington has captured national attention, as the Democratic leadership in Congress has sought to contain the outsider streak of new members like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Senate leaders told the members to not talk about the event; Mike Murphy, a spokesman for the Senate Democrats, said the conference never comments on private meetings. Mr. Parker and Ms. Biaggi did not return requests for comment.

The encounter began with Mr. Parker telling the conference that lawmakers making potentially inflammatory statements on the internet should be aware that they did not speak for the entire group, according to the senators, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe a private meeting.

Ms. Biaggi is among a handful of legislators who have used social media to criticize those they see as roadblocks to progressive change — including fellow Democrats. This week, Ms. Biaggi suggested on Twitter that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo treated government like a dictatorship. Another new senator, Julia Salazar of Brooklyn, called the State Assembly’s stance on rent reform “perplexing.”

Mr. Parker said that while some people were “used to being on the outside,” loudly pushing for change alongside grass-roots activists, legislating was different. It required working with colleagues in both chambers, rather than attacking them, Mr. Parker said, according to witnesses.

Ms. Biaggi responded that while new lawmakers recognized they did not speak for everybody, they would continue pushing for the issues they cared about, according to two senators.

She also mentioned that some of Mr. Parker’s actions could reflect on the conference as well — singling out a Twitter post from Mr. Parker in December, in which he told an aide to the Senate Republicans to “kill yourself.” (Mr. Parker later apologized, before posting new attacks on the aide.)

That was when Mr. Parker — whose history of outbursts have led to mandated anger management counseling — began shouting, including personal criticisms of Ms. Biaggi, two senators said. He accused her of having been “born on third base” and thinking she “hit a triple,” they said.

Ms. Biaggi shouted back, asking at one point if Mr. Parker was threatening her. At another point, Mr. Parker took off his tie and threw it down. “I am unbeatable,” he said, in an apparent reference to any attempts to challenge him in a primary.

Eventually, he left the room after two senators tried to calm him.

Afterward, a few members called the behavior unacceptable.

The senators who described the confrontation emphasized that tempers may have been running higher than usual after contentious budget negotiations that extended into last week. They also said that disagreement was inevitable within a conference with so many new members.

Still, the divisions between the new and veteran lawmakers — both in age and levels of experience — will force one of two outcomes, said Christina Greer, an associate professor of political science at Fordham University.

“They could get alienated, or they could change the conference,” Professor Greer said of the new legislators. “Time will tell. Either they’ll remain the outsider and the agitators, or they change the norms and they become the status quo.”

Already, powerful figures have pushed back on the new arrivals’ calls for change.

Last week, Ms. Biaggi wrote of her disappointment with the state budget. She said she had learned that some legislators “talk a big game about working for the people, but who are actually captured by lobbyist influence.”

“Now we know who those legislators are, and will plan accordingly,” she wrote in an email to supporters — a comment many took to suggest electoral challenges.

Mr. Cuomo, in a radio interview on WAMC this week, called threats of primaries “dangerous” and “destructive.” His top aide, Melissa DeRosa, echoed those comments at an event on Thursday, comparing the dynamic within the Democratic Party to the Tea Party movement in the Republican Party in 2010.

The Assembly speaker, Carl E. Heastie, when asked on Tuesday about potential primaries, said that the Senate and Assembly should be working together, and noted that he had helped raise money to create a Democratic majority in the Senate.

Ms. Biaggi later told a reporter that she had not used the word “primary.”

Ms. Biaggi had also attracted attention last month, when she and another new senator, Jessica Ramos of Queens, as well as Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou of Manhattan, held a news conference to excoriate Mr. Cuomo for holding a $25,000-a-couple fund-raiser during the budget. (The Senate Democrats have held expensive events during the budget as well.)

Afterward, the Senate Democrats’ leadership asked the members to be strategic about their tactics before the budget. Mr. Heastie also called the lawmakers’ comments “a problem,” saying they would invite constituents to view the Legislature negatively.

Ms. Salazar has also been vocal on Twitter about her dissatisfaction with the budget and her ambitions for this year’s renewal of rent regulations. But after she called the Assembly’s stance on an eviction bill “perplexing" on Tuesday, she followed up by saying that she had not been targeting Mr. Heastie, though some had assumed she was.

Mr. Parker has a record of outbursts and sometimes outright violence. In 2005, he was arrested and charged with punching a traffic agent; the charges were eventually dismissed.

In 2009, he was indicted on a charge of assaulting and menacing a New York Post photographer outside the senator’s mother’s home. He was found guilty of two misdemeanor counts but acquitted of felony charges. A judge gave him three years’ probation and ordered him to attend an anger management class.

J. David Goodman contributed reporting.

Vivian Wang is a reporter for the Metro Desk, covering New York State politics in Albany. She was raised in Chicago and graduated from Yale University. @vwang3

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