The Democratic senator has been raising her profile in the first caucus state after announcing her run for the presidency

Kirsten Gillibrand has made her first pitch to Iowa voters since announcing her bid for president, promising in a whirlwind weekend visit to the caucus state that she will “fight” for everyday Americans against Donald Trump and broken government in Washington.

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Speaking on Saturday at a coffee shop in Ames, Iowa, a college town of nearly 70,000 about half an hour north of Des Moines, the New York senator acknowledged that she does not have the same national name recognition as some other 2020 hopefuls, such as Senator Elizabeth Warren who visited the state this month. But, she told a crowd on a frigid morning, she thinks she is the best candidate to help “reclaim our democracy” from Trump and corporate interests.

“I’m going to run for president because I really believe that I will fight for your children as hard as I fight for my own,” Gillibrand said in an impassioned address. “I’m here for you.”

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Gillibrand told the crowd, which included a number of students from Iowa State University, the American dream has been “lost” because of “corruption in Washington”.

“We no longer have a direct democracy,” Gillibrand said, promising to confront the “systems of power in this country that control everything” as well as the “complicit politicians” who represent special interests, not constituents.

“We the people have to take back this democracy,” the senator said. “We the people have to fight for it.

“[The government] you have today is not good enough.”

Gillibrand made little direct reference to Trump in her initial eight-minute pitch. But she railed against him during a 20-minute question-and-answer session that touched on issues including gun control, climate change, education, foreign policy and the increasingly conservative judiciary.

Trump, she said in some of her most spirited comments, has “taken on the tenets of our democracy”.

“He’s literally trying to unwind the basic structure of what keeps this country strong,” she said.

Her remarks appeared to resonate with many attendees, including Rob Bingham, a senior studying political science and public relations at ISU. He said he had seen Warren and John Delaney, the Maryland Democrat who retired from the House of Representatives to campaign for president, in the early going of the 2020 campaign, but that Gillibrand stood out.

“There’s something about Gillibrand that feels authentic and raw,” Bingham said. “You see that in very few candidates.”

The 52-year-old announced her run on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Tuesday. She has served in the Senate since 2009, when she took over the seat her mentor, Hillary Clinton, gave up to serve as Barack Obama’s first secretary of state.

Her national profile has risen in the #MeToo era. She was the first senator to call on fellow Democrat Al Franken to resign his Senate seat amid sexual misconduct allegations in 2017. That same year she remarked that Bill Clinton should have been forced to resign over his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. She has also called for Trump to resign over his sexual assault allegations.

In Ames, she appeared to allude to her calls for Franken’s ouster, which has led to criticism and sexist attacks.

“I have never backed down from a fight,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s inconvenient. It doesn’t matter if it’s not politically expedient. If it’s the right thing to do, I will do it.”

Gillibrand has emerged as one of the leading progressives in the Senate, becoming the first senator to call for the elimination of Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Ice, the agency that has been central to the enforcement of Trump’s hardline immigration policies and which many in the Democratic party’s progressive wing want to abolish.

Some, however, have raised questions about her liberal bona fides, given some of the more conservative positions she has taken in the past on issues including immigration and gun control.

“She’s evolved on so many issues,” said Dylan Meyer, an ISU senior who has followed Gillibrand’s career since she entered the Senate. “Time will tell [what she really believes].”

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The senator’s most immediate challenge will be to build the kind of name recognition she will need to stand out in what’s expected to be a crowded field – especially if heavy-hitters like Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders jump in.

Strong early appearances in Iowa, which holds the first contest of the Democratic primary in February 2020, will be essential to proving to voters here that “she has the chops to be a serious candidate for the Democratic nomination”, Joe Shanahan, a veteran Democratic strategist in Des Moines, told the Guardian in an email.

Gillibrand’s Iowa schedule also included visits to Sioux City, Boone and Des Moines, where she spoke at the Women’s March on Saturday afternoon.

Many in the crowd in Ames who spoke to the Guardian said they went into the event not knowing a huge amount about the New York Democrat, but liked what they heard.

“I really like her style,” said Tom Emmerson, a resident of Ames. “It looks like she’s speaking from the heart.”

“I’m very impressed with her,” said his wife, Linda Emmerson. “I think it’s a good start.”