Kamala Harris takes her time.

Weaving between guests at an early morning meet up of the Dorchester county Democratic party, the US senator pauses for chats, selfies and handshakes with whoever waits to meet her. The line is long.

No one here can remember the last time a candidate for president of the United States visited this part of rural South Carolina, sandwiched between the state’s more populous urban centres, and home to only 10,000 Democratic voters in the last primary season.

But, with an increasingly cluttered field of candidates lining up to try to take the Democratic presidential nomination ahead of the next US election in 2020, every ballot in this early voting state will be keenly fought for.

As the 54-year-old junior senator from California finally takes to the stage in front of around 200 people – many senior citizens – in an auditorium two thirds full, there’s a sense that many in the crowd are unfamiliar and waiting to be convinced.

She is introduced by state senator John Matthews, a local Democratic power broker who has represented this region for 35 years. In a haphazard speech he begins by admitting he has lost his notes, then erroneously describes Harris as the first African American elected to the US Senate (she is the country’s second black female senator).

He invites Harris to the lectern by describing her as “the next president of the United States”, but minutes earlier had told the Guardian he had not yet endorsed her campaign as he weighed up another candidate he did not want to name.

It perhaps underscores this campaign’s biggest early dilemma: Harris’s time in the national spotlight has arguably been the shortest of any of her declared competitors.

She was elected to federal office only two years ago after serving six years as California’s attorney general and eight as the district attorney of San Francisco before that. Nonetheless, after a closely watched campaign launch in January, early polls have routinely placed her among the party’s top four candidates.

State senator John Matthews, who described Harris as ‘the next president’, has not yet endorsed her campaign. Photograph: Oliver Laughland

“Most people here would put her in the top two or top three”, Matthews says before the speech. “But the question I get most of all, is they [my constituents] want a candidate who they think can go all the way, and… we’re not too sure about that.”

Harris rolls through her stump speech, without notes or teleprompter, pledging a tax cut for the middle class, action on climate change and investment in a green economy, implementation of universal background checks on gun purchases and a bid to address racial inequities in the criminal justice system.

She doesn’t address Donald Trump by name but describes the next election as “an inflection moment” in American history.

“It is requiring us to look in the mirror and ask a question. That question being: who are we?” she says. “Part of the answer that we all know is we are better than this.”

The talking points are similar to many of the Democratic frontrunners in an early primary season where appealing to the progressive base has become the dominant approach. The delivery is perhaps a little rough around the edges – she almost forgets to ask the crowd for their support at the end. But the speech is heartfelt and personal, and that resonates here.

“She’s honest. She’s for the people. And she’s strong. And that’s what we need,” said Priscilla Hall, 68, who says she knew little about Harris before the speech and is still yet to decide who she will back.

“I came from a household where we had positive ladies in our family. I know all we have to do is give them an opportunity and they can make a big difference in this country. I believe she can show people that even though she’s a female, an African American female, she is right for the job,” says pastor Jack Lewis Jr, 71, who has already decided to vote for her.

This was the third trip Harris has made to South Carolina since launching her campaign, making it her most visited of the first four primary states in next year’s election.

There is now established thought in Democratic circles that winning South Carolina, with its diverse voting constituency, provides the real gateway to the party’s nomination rather than the starting states of New Hampshire and Iowa with their overwhelmingly white electorate. Senior campaign aides say Harris will give equal time to all four early states throughout the race.

Priscilla Hall, 68, is still yet to decide who she will back. Photograph: Oliver Laughland

Recent public polls place the senator third here at 13%, behind the more familiar names of Joe Biden, who has yet to declare a bid, and Bernie Sanders, who ran against Hillary Clinton in 2016 but failed to win the state. She placed fourth in a recent poll among caucus goers in Iowa. The campaign expects her numbers to rise as the first Democratic TV debates get under way in June this year and is also understood not to have conducted any internal polling since launch.

The early numbers are still undoubtedly impressive as Harris bids to become the first African American female presidential nominee of either major party. She raised $1.5m from 38,000 small donors within 24 hours of declaring, and like many other candidates has not accepted corporate Pac donations. But aides will not divulge further details on how much money has been taken in since, with one senior staffer suggesting they hoped for a surge after June.

There is, however, no escaping that the former prosecutor has little legislative record to showcase. Instead, she has faced criticism on her record as a law enforcement officer in California and in particular her mixed positions on the death penalty, which strike a chord here in South Carolina where two thirds of African Americans oppose capital punishment as opposed to a third of white people.

Harris says she always been an opponent of the death penalty. As a prosecutor in San Francisco she declined to pursue it in a 2004 case against a gang member convicted of murdering a city police officer. But later, as the state’s attorney general, she declined to take a position on the matter in two state referendums that could have abolished the practice. In 2014 she defended capital punishment in a federal case against the state.

Some in the crowd at Dorchester county seem wary of this and Harris is asked directly about her record during a Q&A after the speech.

“I am and always have been opposed to the death penalty, and that has not changed,” she responds. It is a position that distinguishes her from the establishment voices of an older generation. Hillary Clinton was a reluctant supporter of capital punishment in 2016 and, perhaps crucially, so too is Joe Biden.

Kamala Harris, meets with supporters in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, 8 March. Photograph: Jason Lee/AP

But it remains unclear how Harris’s stance would materialise into policy. As president Harris she would have the power to commute the death sentences of the 62 federal inmates currently on death row, including that of 24-year-old Dylann Roof who in 2015 murdered nine black churchgoers in a racist hate crime just 50 miles down the road in Charleston.

Her campaign decline to answer whether she would use this power, and would not provide specific comment on whether a justice department under a Harris administration would pursue death penalty sentencing in domestic terror and hate crime cases such as the Charleston church massacre.

“She opposes the death penalty, particularly given the racial disparities in its use,” said the press secretary Ian Sams in an emailed statement. “As president, she would restore an independent DOJ and look for an attorney general committed to addressing the glaring disparities in our justice system.”

Shortly before this article was due to be published Harris clarified she would impose a moratorium on federal executions.

As the event wraps up, Harris once again takes her time, posing for more photos and chatting to attendees as a group of aides loiter in the background checking the time.

Many people who watched on were still undecided. But there was little doubt that what they had just seen was a sincere, credible candidate that deserved serious consideration.

“She was down to earth. It was plain talk for plain people and it wasn’t difficult to understand,” says 69-year-old Pat Morris. “I’d consider voting for her but right now I’m waiting for Joe Biden to decide if he’s going to run.”