UNION BEACH – Cory Booker’s name was on the pipe bomber’s list. The purported bomb was intercepted long before it got to New Jersey, but that really isn’t the point.

Booker talked about the experience at a Monday press conference in a local firehouse that was officially about more help for Sandy victims (Monday is the sixth anniversary of the storm).

The senator often speaks emotionally – think Spartacus.

And his passion was rising as he talked about how anti-Semitic incidents and bias attacks in general are on the rise not only in New Jersey, but across the nation.

“It’s not enough to say, ‘I’m not a racist,’ ” Booker told the audience of about 50. “We must be anti-racist.

“It’s not enough to say, ‘I’m not anti-Semitic.’ We must be anti-anti-Semitism.”

It was an impressive performance; one that overshadowed some legitimate good news – a two-fold announcement by Gov. Phil Murphy that the state will offer interest-free loans to families still rebuilding after Sandy and also end the practice of asking some
families to pay back grant money previously awarded.

Murphy and many in the crowd lauded Bob Menendez, who was also on hand and who is in a tough reelection fight, for working hard to help Sandy victims by securing grants and stopping huge increases in flood insurance bills.

Doug Quinn, a spokesman for area Sandy victims, said residents needed assistance to fight “crooked contractors” and “predatory banks.”

Sandy recovery long has been a source of pride for former Governor Chris Christie, but Menendez and others said that in time, the state bureaucracy became very hard to deal with. Christie, obviously, was not there, but he had a presence.

A Hazlet man by the name of Steve Foose stood across the street from the firehouse yelling through a bullhorn that Christie should be elected president in 2020. He told me that no one gives a speech as well as Christie and that the former governor is as smart as Einstein.

Back on planet earth, Booker was asked how he felt being a target.

“I try not to personalize things,” he said.

It is common – almost expected – for Democrats to blame the divisiveness of Donald Trump’s agenda for the rise in hate. After all, the van of the man who addressed the pipe bomb to Booker was filled with pro-Trump and anti-Democratic messages and stickers.
Booker took pains not to go there.

“We are all responsible,” he said. “All of us who have been elevated to office.”

The senator contended it’s the responsibility of all elected officials to turn down the volume of hate.  A possible Democratic candidate for president in 2020, Booker has been doing a lot of travelling of late.

He said he has met Americans across the country who work hard every day and who are removed from the daily grind of political partisanship. He suggested that politicians – himself included – can learn something from them.

He used a Martin Luther King quote to buttress his point about civility: “Hate cannot drive out hate.”

One must also recall a famous quote along those lines by a man quite different from King – Richard Nixon.

The day after resigning the presidency in 1974, Nixon said in a farewell address to the White House staff, “Others may hate you, but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.”

There is no shortage of famous quotes about civility. Maybe that’s a start.