U.S. Senator and presidential candidate Kirsten Gillibrand was in her old stomping grounds on Wednesday, the morning after she announced her presidential bid on national television. The New York Democrat fielded questions from reporters outside the Country View diner in Troy, N.Y. surrounded by her husband, two sons and her mother.

“I'm running for president of the United States because as a young mom, I'm going to fight for your children as hard as I would fight for my own,” Gillibrand said using a line that is becoming part of her stump speech.

Gillibrand has never been shy talking about the challenges she faces as a working mom — and she’s making motherhood a defining characteristic of her candidacy.

On the weekend before her campaign launch, Gillibrand stood before a roaring fireplace in a well-appointed living room on the Upper West Side. Over sparkling water, wine and hors d'oeuvres, Gillibrand fielded questions from a group of roughly 20 women for more than two hours. There were writers, nonprofit leaders, academics, activists of different ages and ethnic backgrounds. As Buzzfeed first reported, Gloria Steinem was there.

 “The event really was billed as a listening event,” said the host Letty Cottin Pogrebin, a feminist author and activist.

Gillibrand has spent a lot of time in recent years in this type of setting listening to small groups of voters, particularly since Donald Trump was elected to the White House. It is a strategy well-honed by her predecessor Hillary Clinton, who wrote the forward of Gillibrand's memoir.

As she stood on the edge of declaring her own candidacy, Gillibrand was spending time with her most natural constituency  — other women. Pogrebin said the Senator said she felt “called” to run and she fielded questions about her controversial stands, like calling her for colleague's resignation over sexual harassment charges.

“Obviously we talked about the Al Franken thing because, as I said, it was a listening event and she listened. She listened and she also took notes. How many times do you see that?” said Pogrebin.

Dr. Debbie Almontaser was also at the event. She's a leading Muslim activist who runs the Muslim Community Network and is the author of the forthcoming book, Leading While Muslim. Almontaser said she needed to know how Gillibrand viewed Trump's travel ban. Gillibrand called it a human rights violation, she said. “And she emphatically said if she were to become president the first thing that she would do was basically repeal this ban,” said Almonstaser.

Neither of the women said that they were ready to endorse Gillibrand after this meeting. But they said she made an impression.

"Her natural base is really women," said Rebecca Katz, a New York City based political consultant who worked in the U.S. Senate and for progressive Democrats like Bill de Blasio and Cynthia Nixon. She pointed to Gillibrand's Off the Sidelines campaign, which has raised more than $7 million for women candidates across the country. But she also made the point that Gillibrand avoided supporting primary challenges in two big New York races – instead backing Gov. Andrew Cuomo over Nixon and Rep. Joseph Crowley over Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

That serves as a reminder of Gillibrand's stance as the consummate political insider, someone who has been steeped in politics since her childhood, when her grandmother was a mover and shaker with the Albany Democratic machine.

Gillibrand is also a savvy fundraiser but Katz said the rules of that game are changing, too — since major Democrats, including Gillibrand, are opting to reject corporate political action committee money in lieu of small-dollar donors.

"Now she has to really spark a spark a bit of a movement," said Katz, pointing to the challenge posed by other Democrats like Senators Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris. They all have robust email programs to raise lots of money quickly. “So she has to work hard to get some buzz early around her candidacy," Katz said.

Her first step in building that buzz was a trip to CBS’s "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert," where talked about how she worked across the aisle and, once again, appealed to people as a mother.

"You have to bring Democrats and Republicans to the table on the shared values of this country," said Gillibrand adding, "We all love our children."