Harris made the remark during conversations with voters in Concord as she began her debut as a presidential candidate in the state, which holds the nation’s first primary in 2020 shortly after the Iowa caucuses. The California senator planned to hold a town hall-style event in Portsmouth later Monday afternoon.

The exchange involving Sanders, the Independent senator from neighboring Vermont who won the 2016 primary here with 60 percent of the vote, came after a question about whether Harris would have to tack left like Sanders to do well in the New Hampshire primary next year.

“The people of New Hampshire will tell me what’s required to compete in New Hampshire, but I will tell you I am not a democratic socialist,” she said. Sanders describes himself as a democratic socialist, a label that some prominent Democrats have also embraced, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.

“I believe that what voters do want is they want to know that whoever is going to lead, understands that in America today not everyone has an equal opportunity and access to a path to success,” she added.

Harris holds a mix of liberal and more moderate policy positions, and she has been criticized by some on the left for her criminal justice record as a prosecutor and attorney general in California.

Sanders, who was the runner-up in the Democratic presidential primaries in 2016 to Hillary Clinton, is preparing to announce soon that he will enter the 2020 race and compete against Harris and several other candidates for the party’s presidential nomination.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.