She talked about her love of RVs and her family vacation last summer to see a NASCAR race — and suggested she could make an RV trip in Iowa this year. She spoke of her faith and finding common ground with Republicans. And she harked back repeatedly to her first run for Congress, in 2006, when she ousted a Republican incumbent in a seat that her pollster warned she couldn’t win because there were “more cows than Democrats.”

“I grew up in upstate New York, a community not unlike this one,” Gillibrand said as she introduced herself at a house party in Sioux City on Friday evening. Of her first race, she said, “It was a 2-to-1 Republican district, a lot like the district we’re in today.”

The next morning, inside a cafe in Boone, she told the dozen or so people there: “I really appreciate being in a rural place. I’m from a rural place. I grew up in a rural place. I represented a rural place for Congress.”

At a political moment when many Democratic voters are desperate to find a winner who can beat President Donald Trump, Gillibrand’s emphasis on her past representing a conservative House seat seemed an effort to ensure she is not pigeonholed as just another blue-state Democrat or someone who does not understand rural America.

To that end, Gillibrand has placed her campaign headquarters in Troy, New York, near where she grew up and in her old House district but relatively far from an urban center (although a short drive to New Hampshire). She made her first campaign appearance at a diner there, too.

“The thing she really reiterates is she isn’t from New York. She’s from upstate,” said J.D. Scholten, a Democrat who lost his 2018 House race to Rep. Steve King, the Iowa Republican who has come under fire for his remarks on white supremacy and white nationalism.

Scholten, who attended two of Gillibrand’s events, said the problem with the current Democratic Party is that it’s “more and more a Whole Foods party, and we’re in a Dollar General district.”

“She’s able to have that experience,” Scholten said of Gillibrand, “and that’s important for Democrats.”

The challenge for Gillibrand is that the candidate she was, ideologically, in 2006 to win that upstate district is no longer the candidate she is now. In the House, she had an A-rating from the National Rifle Association; now she has an F. Her stances on immigration have flipped, as well. She has said she is now embarrassed by her old positions.

Gillibrand, who appears especially comfortable meeting voters in small and more intimate settings, was generally well-received on her first Iowa trip, which included a mix of coffee-shop stops and business tours, a house party and a speech to the Women’s March at the state Capitol.

“If we change who’s at the decision-making table, we change everything,” she told the crowd at the march. (Gillibrand also said there was “no room for anti-Semitism” in the Women’s March movement, a reference to the controversy involving one of the original march organizers that has caused fewer national Democrats to attend this year.)

Unlike Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., another contender, who has mostly avoided mentioning Trump on the campaign trail, Gillibrand offered plenty of direct attacks on the president, saying he had brought a “darkness” on the nation, using words like “heartless,” “immoral,” “inhumane” and “beyond disgraceful,” and citing his “racist message.”

Of the federal shutdown under Trump, she said, “He’s doing it all for himself and his own ego.”

But almost as often as she mentioned her voting record against Trump’s agenda or appointments, Gillibrand cited her across-the-aisle work with Republicans, including how she bonded with Sen. Joni Ernst, an Iowa Republican, at Bible study and name-dropping her alliance with Sen. Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican reviled by many Democrats, in her legislative battles on sexual assault in the military.

“I can work with anybody,” she said to laughs after mentioning Cruz.

In Boone, a town of about 12,500 people, a 43-year-old Iowan, Chris Bennett, asked Gillibrand to say what separated her most from what could be a sprawling field of two dozen or more Democratic candidates in 2020.

“I really believe that I can bring this country together,” she began her answer.

Voters mostly responded positively.

“We’ve had enough divisiveness over the last couple years,” said Amy Young, a college professor, whom Gillibrand pitched about finding common ground at a coffee shop in Ames. “We are one country. We need to remember that.”

Linda Santi, who met Gillibrand in Sioux City, said: “She talked about running in a red congressional district. That was important to me. How do we talk? How do we engage Trump voters in civil discourse?”

Santi saw Warren on her recent visit — Iowans famously love to size up their presidential candidates in person before making a decision — and said Gillibrand’s arrival was far more “downscale”: no street vendors hawking goods, no organized selfie line.

“Warren was pressing the populist button in more of an us-them kind of way,” Santi said.

In Sioux City, Gillibrand did get a question about her decision to become the first Democratic senator to call for the resignation of former Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., in late 2017 following multiple allegations of sexual misconduct. Some Democratic donors and activists had lamented his departure and her role in it.

“Enough was enough,” Gillibrand said of the final allegation.

“Al Franken was entitled to whatever process he wanted,” she said. “If he wanted to stay and wait six months for his ethics hearing, he was entitled to whatever he wanted. His decision was to resign. My decision was not to remain silent.”

Several people at her events said they learned much of what they knew about her from television appearances last week, including on Rachel Maddow’s show on MSNBC, where Gillibrand was a guest. Maddow opened the interview by dissecting Gillibrand’s shifting stances.

“Tell me about that transformation,” Maddow pointedly began her questioning.

“I understand her policy positions have evolved,” said Rick Mullin, 65, who attended the house party with Gillibrand in Sioux City. He was sympathetic. His positions have shifted, too. “Not as much as hers have,” he added.

Gillibrand remains widely unknown. People quietly asked each other who the blond woman with the media entourage was at a coffee shop in Des Moines. And as she entered the state Capitol for the Women’s March speech, the security guard asked her, “So when are you running for president?”

“Right now!” she replied.