(Claude Brodesser-Akner | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)

By Claude Brodesser-Akner | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

Here in Jersey, we all know Cory Booker: To us, he's just another bald vegan Democrat who runs into burning buildings to save constituents, shovels the walkways of the elderly and is so kind to animals he won't even eat them.

In light of a recent audit that found NJ Transit commuters get angry if you even wish them a "good morning" on Twitter, it's easy to see how all that isn't always endearing.

But what about in Iowa, where people are more, well, ...nice?

To find out, I followed Booker earlier this week on a four day get-out-the-midterm-vote barnstorming tour through Iowa, where shell-shocked Democrats are looking to take back the GOP governorship, Legislature and hope to send some congressmen to Washington after a drubbing at the polls last time 'round.

The results illuminate much about what Democrats want -- and don't want -- in the age of #Resistance to President Donald Trump. They also show how Booker, a likely 2020 candidate for president, might fare in the first major contest of the United States presidential primary season.

Follow along as I take a trip through the Hawkeye State with our favorite bald eagle...

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In the race for Iowa, worry about race in Iowa

The night before his Iowa address, I had dinner with a pair of volunteers with the Iowa Democratic Party in the cafeteria of a Des Moines health supermarket. Scott Thompson, 57, and his wife Ruth, 53, are committed progressives (and, fittingly, also vegetarians) who should have been salivating like Basset Hounds at the idea of seeing Booker speak live the following night.

And after two years of Trump, they said they were more than ready to fall in love with a Democrat. Both like Booker, whom Scott says has "experience, talent and likability" but they're also fans of Kamala Harris, the former California attorney general turned U.S. Senator.

And yet: they're also keenly aware of how much Iowa still does not reflect the demographics of America, and what a challenge that could pose for any African-American candidate.

"I want to see someone who can win," emphasized Ruth, a health benefits counselor. "I don't know how they'll play in rural America."

True, Obama won Iowa by 8 points, but, she notes "they're not as charismatic as Obama, and, I'm just going to say it, they're black."

Even in parts of Iowa -- which is 91 percent white -- and where it appears progress in racial integration has been made, racism still lurks just out of view, sort of like Nickelback fans.

Last September, for example, in tiny Creston, in southwest Iowa, furor erupted after photo surfaced of five high school student football players wearing white hoods that evoked the Ku Klux Klan standing next to a burning cross, brandishing a gun and a Confederate flag. They were all members of a school football team with a black quarterback.

The Thompsons' fears were echoed by another woman, two days later, at a rally in Cedar Rapids, two hours east of Des Moines.

Rebecca Jordan, 41, a mother of two and a systems executive at TransAmerica, said that if Harris or Booker ran in 2020 "I would worry they wouldn't get a fair shake."

Or as Ed Kilgore put it in New York magazine shortly after Trump's victory, "Iowa is so white, it's turning red."

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'Let's talk about me!' becomes impossible...

Booker had agreed to headline the Iowa Democratic Party's annual fall gala weeks ago -- long before the explosive and caustic confirmation hearings for Brett Kavanaugh and the bitter, spirit-crushing defeat of Democratic senators opposition to it.

The final 50-48 vote made it impossible to for Booker to simply bound on stage with a "How's everybody doin' tonight!?" and then launch into any self-aggrandizing stories of how he was born in a log cabin in New Jersey.

Instead, Booker had to pivot, and fast.

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The Butterfly Effect

But instead of talking about his move to inner-city Newark after college, Booker told the Iowa gala of how his recently widowed African-American grandmother arrived in the coal-mining town of Buxton, Iowa, seeking a better life for her nine children -- and how she found it among immigrant Swedes and Slovaks who looked after each other, regardless of race.

And then he closed by telling the story of how his parents successfully fought to gain access to the then almost all-white town of Harrington Park in Bergen County thanks to the efforts of a civil rights crusading attorney who'd been inspired to act locally in New Jersey after the brutal attack on Martin Luther King's march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala. Proof that a minute localized change can have huge effects far, far away.

"This is the part of we, not the party of me," said Booker, to fervent applause and cheers during his address to the Iowa Democratic Party's fall gala on Saturday night.

But of course, the subtext was clear, too: It was also the party of "he."

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On Monday, Oct. 8th, U.S. Sen. Cory Booker D, N.J., greeted supporters at a round table about the harm consolidation among agricultural conglomerates is doing to family farms in Iowa at the Boone County Democratic headquarters in Boone. (Claude Brodesser-Akner)

We're not so different, you and I...

You might think the former mayor of a benighted and impoverished inner city like Newark might have little that's relatable to rural Iowa farmers, but this week proved otherwise.

When Booker appeared in rural Boone, Iowa, he immediately connected with a message of corporate consolidation squeezing the little guy farmer: The prices paid for farmers' crops have hit a 14-year low, and incomes have hit a net negative.

So too, in Newark, where residents eek out a living at $14,000 a year working jobs that once did but no longer pay a living wage.

"It offends me that Americans are getting screwed," said Booker, to loud cheers and shouts of approval.

Ellen Fairchild, who appeared at Booker's event wearing a "DO NO HARM BUT TAKE NO SHIT" T-shirt, came away favorably impressed.

"I was born on a dairy farm, and I think his answers were right on,"" said Fairchild, "I think he should run!"

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Can love trump hate if you love to hate Trump?

Moving forward, Booker has a tightrope to walk in Iowa. Many Democrats here are frustrated to the point of being boiling mad. Gretchen Aschoff, 55, a nurse in Cedar Rapids, is one of them.

"I am enraged, and I am looking for someone to channel my rage," Aschoff said, just before Booker arrived at a rally in Cedar Rapids.

At the same time, Aschoff said she was worried that Booker couldn't, or wouldn't, be able to give voice to the very real anger that Democrats were feeling without alienating voters.

"This is not a 'Kumbaya' moment. But nobody likes an 'angry black man' or an 'angry woman,'" said Aschoff.

After hearing Booker's speech a few minutes later in which he posited that "the lines that divide us are nowhere near those that unite us," Aschoff looked askance.

"It was an effective speech," said Aschoff, sounding not wholly convinced. "It just doesn't capture my feelings at the moment."

Asked if she thought Booker might become her choice for president, she was diplomatic.

"I think he'd make a really great....senator," she answered.

Iowa nice!

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The 'Spartacus' problem

As the owner of

Raygun

, a Democratic fashion paradise of progressive T-shirts and the self-proclaimed "official outfitter of crybaby snowflakes" in Iowa, Mike Draper said he liked Booker's speech, but said he still suffers from a kind of humble-bragging that's off-putting.

"Booker's biggest problem will be there's just like

sooooomething

about him that you're like, 'He does almost everything just for the optics of it,'" said Draper. "And it's probably not fair to him, but it kind of undercuts every good deed about him, a little bit."

The "I

am Spartacus

"

moment

at the Kavanaugh hearings. The living in public housing by choice. And yes, that burning building rescue.

"You save somebody from a fire and on its face, you're like, 'My God! Wow! We gotta make this guy president!' But when it's

him

doing it you're like, 'Hmmm. Interesting....

How

was he there?'" Draper asked.

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Bonding over Brett

Democrats may be so livid over Brett Kavanaugh's assent to the Supreme Court that they are screaming at "Rachel Maddow" from their barcaloungers.

But Booker let it be known in Iowa that he isn't willing to join them in what he terms "sedentary agitation."

Instead, Booker came across more mournful than wrathful, but also, more motivated than enervated.

"If America hasn't broken your heart, you don't love her enough," said Booker, to a roomful of female "Mmm-hmms" in North Liberty, Iowa on Monday afternoon.

And yet, Booker said, Democrats in Iowa might be "in pain, but they're persevering. And most importantly they're going to let their outrage get them out working."

At this, the three hundred -- mostly women -- assembled before Booker burst into applause.

Afterwards, Linda Foens, a librarian and mother of 5 from Marion, Iowa, told me she was sold on the senator from New Jersey.

"I'd be all-in if he runs," said Foens. "He has that relatability. He'll stick up for us; he sticks up for all people. He'll help us heal, quickly."

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(Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images)

He's not 75 years old

Tracy Petersen, 54, from Waukee, Iowa, stood in the rain to watch Booker hold forth at a rally in Adel. After hugging Booker and getting him to shoot a video greeting for her family on her smartphone, she, too, was bullish on Booker.

"I'm still shopping, but I'm interested," said Petersen. "We need some younger blood."

As Iowans take stock of who might be best suited to run against Trump, part of their calculus is who's in any shape to fight him.

While former Vice President Joe Biden, might have the highest name recognition of any potential 2020 candidate, at 75, he'd be running for president at 77 in a country where the average male lives to 76.

"The old guard has got to go," said Carol Huisman, 71, an art teacher from Adel, Iowa. "As much as I love Joe Biden, he's the past."

In Iowa, where politeness rules, this is almost tantamount to saying, "Don't buy any green bananas, Joe."

Meanwhile, other Iowans said that the experience of Biden and the youth of Booker would be a formidable ticket.

"Biden/Booker, or Booker/Biden," said Rebecca Jordan, the insurance executive from Cedar Rapids. "Either one would be outstanding."

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(Warner Bros. Pictures)

Democratic bachelor party?

Booker does have one distinct advantage: He told New York magazine last month that "the title I seek the most is probably husband and father."

Matt Paul, the longtime aide to Iowa's former Gov. Tom Vilsack and the Iowa state director for Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign said in a sprawling state like this, that may be a huge plus.

"You know who a presidential campaign is hardest on?" asked Paul. "The spouse. That isn't an issue here."

Booker told New York's Jonathan Van Meter that he's still single because "it’s tough to date as a senator."

Sort of like running as a vegan in a state with 20 million pigs.

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Booker poses for a "sefie" video with Vickey Adams, of Urbandale, Iowa, at a get-out-the-vote rally in nearby Adel, Iowa to rally Democrats to the polls for midterm elections. The video selfie is fast becoming a Booker calling card.

Senator Selfie?

While taking selfies has been de rigeur on the trail has been commonplace among pols for years, Booker took it one better in Iowa.

Wherever he went, instead of simply snapping a selfie, he shot personalized videos for supporters he posed with. The brilliance of this is obvious: A selfie might be posted on Facebook, but a video shot for someone's mom or cousin or roommate will be shared and likely makes the rounds among dozens of people.

"That was sweet!" enthused Vickie Adams, a resident of Urbanville, Iowa after posing for a video with Booker at a rally in Adel.

It was a scene that would repeat itself dozens of times more over the next few days in Ames, North Liberty, Cedar Rapids.

Even as the hour grew late in Davenport, and I walked to my car, I looked inside the performing arts center window, and sure enough: There was Booker, still standing on stage with a remaining half-dozen or so supporters, shooting video after video.

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The Senator claps back

In an interview with NJ Advance Media, Booker insisted that his message to Iowa wasn't about 2020, but a critique of Iowa -- and America -- under President Donald Trump.

"This is about getting back to working Americans and their quality of life," said Booker. "Farmers, school teachers, laborers -- they're all struggling, and we could be doing so much better."

Claude Brodesser-Akner may be reached at cbrodesser@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @ClaudeBrodesser. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.