Troy, New York, is a city of fifty thousand people with a strong, if self-deprecating, sense of pride. The Times once called it “a living textbook of the rise and fall of the Industrial Revolution in the Northeast.” Residents are fond of recalling when the old City Hall had a “FOR SALE BY OWNER” sign hanging in front, a grasping response to fiscal insolvency. A company called Enjoy Troy produces wooden bathroom signs that say “troylet,” an attempt to reclaim a decades-old pejorative nickname. Last month, Tom Reynolds, one of the company’s founders, and his daughter Nora delivered a gift to Senator Kirsten Gillibrand’s Presidential campaign headquarters, in downtown Troy. (The senator lives just east of the city limits, in Brunswick Hills.) The gift was an oval plaque with the phrase “enjoy troy”—the lowercase styling is meant to project humility—superimposed over an image of the White House. Nora, now a collegiate swimmer, used to be a lifeguard at the Troy Country Club and remembers being impressed by the politeness of Gillibrand’s young sons in an atmosphere that sometimes reeked of entitlement. Tom appreciated the fact that Gillibrand herself wasn’t like some “terrible people” in the club who disrespect the help.

After seeing the news, earlier this year, that Gillibrand was renting office space in Troy, I paid a visit. In the past couple of decades, the city has undergone a revival—comparisons to Brooklyn are so commonplace that they elicit obligatory groans—and I was curious about what that might portend for New York’s junior senator, who was considered, at one point, a top-tier challenger in the Presidential race. Troy is the kind of place that, because of its size and in spite of its onetime role as a leading steel producer, tends to get ignored nationally. The Electoral College bears some responsibility: we know that New York will go blue, thanks to Manhattan and other downstate precincts, so the fact that consumer marketers regard the region surrounding Albany as a kind of latter-day Peoria—a demographic ideal, offering the distillation of mainstream sentiment—is often overlooked by political analysts. Troy is the seat of Rensselaer County, which voted for Democrats in every Presidential election from 1992 to 2012. In 2016, it went for Donald Trump. There is a case to be made that upstate New York—or “upper New York State,” as the President sometimes puts it—has become a political bellwether. Trump has described the region as “an area that just isn’t working” economically. “You can leave,” he said, offering his advice to upstate residents, whom he likes to call “my voters,” in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, in 2017. “It’s O.K.,” he added. “Don’t worry about your house.”

Gillibrand emerged on the national political scene, in 2006, as an upstate Blue Dog Democrat, touting her familiarity with guns in a largely rural congressional district. Since becoming a senator—she was appointed, in 2009, by Governor David Paterson, to replace Hillary Clinton—she has pivoted toward more consistently progressive positions, in line with the state’s more urban base. But, in her Presidential campaign, she has sought to identify, sometimes awkwardly, with her native region. Appearing on an episode of Showtime’s “Desus & Mero,” a late-night talk show whose hosts are from the Bronx, Gillibrand positioned herself as a scrappy candidate of the northern Rust Belt. She had invited the hosts to visit her in Troy, which she called “a microcosm for a lot of the country,” while showing them a statue of Samuel Wilson, a local meat packer during the War of 1812, who the city has claimed, semi-credibly, was the progenitor of Uncle Sam. “A city that had really amazing beginnings, enormous growth at the turn of the century, but decline,” she said. “And Troy’s been certainly kicked down before, but it always gets up.” Later, while raising a shot glass with the hosts at her favorite bar, she said, “I’m from Troy! Well, I’m from Albany, but I now live in Troy. And I’m a fighter.”

Albany, the state capital, which has twice as many residents, is across the Hudson River from Troy, and if it’s not in direct competition, it’s a rival in spirit. An old Trojan joke—there are many Trojan jokes—goes that Albany makes laws whereas Troy makes what people want. (It landed better during the industrial age, when Troy, also known as Collar City, manufactured detachable shirt collars by the millions.) Gillibrand comes from one of Albany’s major political families: her grandmother Polly Noonan was a longtime confidant of Erastus Corning II, who was Albany’s mayor from the early days of the Second World War through most of Ronald Reagan’s first term as President. (Noonan was played by Edie Falco, last fall, in “The True,” an Off Broadway play about her relationship with Corning.) Gillibrand’s father was that swampiest of things: a lobbyist. Given Albany’s association with political dysfunction and graft, the adoption of Troy as a staging ground makes a certain amount of sense.

“There are so many opportunities to have this city be part of her branding,” a local publicist, podcaster, and self-described “Troy supremacist” named Duncan Crary said, while leading me on a tour. The headquarters of the Gillibrand campaign are on the second floor of the historic Frear Building, which faces the Uncle Sam Parking Garage. It’s named for a nineteenth-century merchant, William Frear, who coined the slogan “Satisfaction guaranteed or money cheerfully refunded.” (“Wouldn’t it be amazing if Gillibrand’s campaign came with a satisfaction guarantee?” Crary asked.) On the first floor, we met Kathleen Tesnakis, an eco-sustainable-clothing designer, who moved to Troy from Portland, Oregon, in 2003. Portland, which had felt “so exciting in the late eighties and nineties,” seemed “done,” she said. She chose Troy partly because of its farmers’ market, which can draw weekend crowds exceeding fifteen thousand, and because of its “rich history of women in the textile industry.” She mentioned Hannah Montague, the inventor of the detachable collar, and Kate Mullany, a labor pioneer, who is credited with the refrain “Don’t iron while the strike is hot.” Ekologic, Tesnakis’s company, sells garments made from repurposed cashmere to customers all over the world. With her leftover scraps, she has made rags for tugboat workers on the Erie Canal, which locks into the Hudson near the north end of town. “From what I understand of Gillibrand’s campaign, she is really interested in the women’s movement,” Tesnakis said. “She’s really interested in family issues and work issues, and it just makes complete sense that she should be here.”

“That’s all she talks about: women, women, women,” the Rensselaer County executive, Steven McLaughlin, a Republican and a former airline pilot, complained of Gillibrand, when I visited him in his office a few hours later. “If you look at what they’re doing right now, and not just Kirsten—all of them are trotting along behind Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who knows absolutely nothing. And they’re following her like she’s the Pied Piper. She is going to lead them right over a cliff.” A framed Politico article hung on the wall behind his desk: “McLaughlin scores another blow against GOP establishment.” The caption below the photograph described him as a “Trumpian figure,” and the story itself cited his penchant for heckling opponents, along with an episode in which he called a female staffer fat and ugly. “I have my beliefs, and I deliver the way I deliver,” he told me. “It seems to work for me. If that’s Trump-like, fine.” He added that he’d been using the phrase “drain the swamp” in his previous role, as a state assemblyman, long before Trump made it one of his campaign slogans. (Further grist for the microcosm theory: a McLaughlin aide, Rich Crist, who sat in the office with us, has since been placed on administrative leave, following reports that he was the subject of an F.B.I. investigation into his work as a campaign consultant. Crist did not respond to a request for comment.)