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With Hillary Clinton on her way to the Hawkeye State hours after making her presidential campaign official, Iowa Democrats feel that a competitive primary will help the state party and will therefore help the former secretary of state.

"The more people that get in and expand this debate, the better the party will be," Bob Meddaugh, a Democratic activist and supporter of Vice President Joe Biden's 2008 presidential bid, said at a Polk County Democrats event. "And I think it will help Hillary, too."

READ: Hillary Clinton launches second presidential bid

And even those behind the Clinton's Iowa operation are saying they'll fight for every vote and they're anticipating primary challengers.

"We expect the caucus to be competitive," said Matt Paul, Clinton's 2016 Iowa campaign manager. "Hillary's committed to working hard to earn the support of every Iowan."

Democrats in the first-in-the-nation caucus state are hungry for an exciting, competitive contest, one where multiple candidates are asking for their vote by showing up on their doorstep. They are jealous of Republicans who have had regular cattle-call events in the Hawkeye State and will likely have a dozen candidates to choose from.

"Iowa, we are really spoiled, we are used to that pressing the flesh and talking to these people," said Monica McCarthy, the Union County Democratic Party chairwoman in 2008. "We expect that."

Clinton's ever-growing world of campaign staffers has watched Democrats like former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley and former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb and along with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders tease presidential runs in Iowa. Though it may seem counterintuitive, Team Clinton's hope is that one candidate will emerge as Clinton's foil, someone who will push her to compete and run a competitive caucus campaign.

RELATED: Clinton's Democratic foes say voters need choices

Despite low poll numbers, O'Malley has emerged, in the eyes of Clinton supporters, as the most likely person to be her foil. He has been a repeat visitor to the state and received plaudits from a wide array of Iowa Democrats for the time he has put in. What's more, O'Malley's super PAC shipped a dozen staffers to Iowa to work on different campaigns during the 2014 midterm elections.

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Hillary Clinton's 2008 run lingers over her 2016

Hillary Rodham Clinton put on some dark glasses and slipped quietly into an Ohio Chipotle restaurant on Monday but nobody noticed.

The presidential candidate, joined by aide Huma Abedin, ordered the chicken burrito bowl with guacamole at the Mexican-food eatery just outside Toledo, where she stayed for about 45 minutes, according to WTVG-TV.

Manager Charles Wright told ABC News that no one recognized Clinton in her dark shades. He only released a security video of Hillarys nosh stop after he was contacted by journalists.

She got great food, the manager said. Everybody loves Chipotle.

Clinton has been trying to appeal to working-class voters as she campaigns for the 2016 Democratic nomination. On Sunday, she stopped at a Pennsylvania gas station, where she tweeted an image posing with a a family from Michigan.

Road trip! Hillary tweeted, Loaded the van & set off for IA.

The former New York senator ditched the private jet and rode in a van that pays homage to the popular riddle-solving TV cartoon Scooby-Doo. Although the 70s-inspired van from the show is called the Mystery Machine, Hillarys campaign opted for the less secretive nickname of Scooby.

Shes been really excited about it since she came up with it, Abedin said.

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Hillary Clinton goes incognito to grab some Chipotle

Hillary Clinton is very deliberately going small in Iowa, her first stop since announcing in an online video Sunday that she's running for president again.

First, she'll do a roundtable with some community college students, and then she'll visit a local fruit business, reports CBS News correspondent Nancy Cordes.

Her campaign is trying to convey that she's not expecting a coronation -- that she plans to work for every vote -- which was clearly the idea behind her announcement video.

Clinton doesn't appear in her own announcement video until it's almost over.

51 Photos

The remarkable career of a former first lady, U.S. Senator, secretary of state and presidential candidate

"My daughter is about to start kindergarten," one person says.

"I'm getting married this summer to someone I really care about," says another.

She's preceded by a diverse group of Americans, sharing big and small plans for the future.

"My brother and I are starting a new business," one person says, in Spanish.

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Hillary Clinton campaign's target: Everyday folks

She's ahead in the polls but where does Clinton stand on climate change

Over the past year, she has toughened her rhetoric against climate science-denying Republicans and recently brought on former White House adviser John Podesta, architect of Obama's climate strategy, to run her campaign. Credit: United States Senate/Wikipedia

Early in Hillary Clinton's term as secretary of State, climate change expert Nigel Purvis approached her with a wonky request.

It was about using a particular slice of development aid to help communities in Indonesia stop cutting their forestsfilled with the kind of technical jargon that makes some political celebrities yawn. Purvis said he wasn't at all that sure Clintonwho at the time was grappling with a popular revolt in Libya, tensions in Sudan and the burgeoning brutality of Syria's Bashar Assadwould be familiar with this in-the-weeds issue, but she was.

"Most public officials at that level, when they are interacting with people that they're expecting to interact with, are very well-briefed by their staff and able to draw on facts and talking points to say the right things," said Purvis, who served as a climate change negotiator in Bill Clinton's administration and now leads a consulting company.

"What was impressive to me about that experience was that I caught her out in the middle of the country, at a time when she wasn't speaking about climate change and wasn't expecting climate change issues," he said. "She showed a real grasp of not just the problem at the high level but the very concrete solutions the State Department was pursuing."

Clinton, who officially launched her second presidential campaign in a video released yesterday, never developed a reputation for holding climate change dear to her heart like Secretary of State John Kerry, who has championed the issue since the early 1990s. Yet supporters of a 2016 Clinton presidency point out that she campaigned on major energy goals, including dramatically reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by midcentury.

As secretary of State, she appointed Todd Stern as America's first-ever special envoy in charge of climate change, pointedly bringing him along on her first trip to Beijing where they made energy a top focus. And when negotiations at the 2009 U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, hit their lowest point, Clinton swooped in with a game-changing pledge to mobilize $100 billion annually in global climate aid by 2020 that helped bring about a voluntary global agreement.

Over the past year, she has toughened her rhetoric against climate science-denying Republicans and recently brought on former White House adviser John Podesta, architect of Obama's climate strategy, to run her campaign.

Some greens are skeptical But that might not be enough for the green base of voters who might view Clinton with a dose of skepticism for taking a neutral stand on the Keystone XL pipeline. They argue that with Republicans sharpening their knives against President Obama's power plant emissions cuts, the United States needs a president who can be counted on to defend and advance U.S. climate policy.

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Hillary Clinton May Take Strong Stance on Global Warming

It is said that the 2016 race to become the next President of the United States is Hillary Clintons to lose. And just as it was in 2008 during the primaries, she may end up doing just that.

If that were the outcome, quite a few Democrats would be shocked. Much in the spirit of Obamas election, they feel that having a woman as president is the next box to be checked in U.S. history. In that endeavor and hope, they are helped by the fact that the electoral odds in Presidential races tend to favor Democrats.

It is certainly an anomaly that the very country that led the global march for equal rights for women in the 1970s still has not had a woman as head of state or of government. That puts the United States in a league with the likes of China and Russia, two very paternalistic nations and solidly behind nations such as Brazil, Indonesia, Pakistan and Bangladesh, not to mention Germany, the UK and France.

Unperturbed, Republicans are getting ready, guns blazing. Their Stop Hillary campaign aims at reawakening old fears. But they must also guard against coming across as patronizing, if not misogynistic, which is a real danger for them. While they proclaim to stay away from her gender and age, one can rest assured that this will be at the center of their whispering campaign.

Image makers will play a key role. A big effort will get underway to turn every wrinkle in every close-up shot of Clintons face into an extra doubt about her getting to the White House. Digital cameras and HDTV are not Clintons ally.

To overcome the woman issue once and for all, Hillary Clinton decided after the 2008 race to serve as U.S. Secretary of State. However, her service in that post did nothing to allay the concerns of doubters. Clinton haters keep hating her and, via Benghazi and the reset with Russia, find further cannon fodder in her time at Foggy Bottom.

She is certainly a divisive figure. Described by some as a proven militarist and corporatist (as Ralph Nader has characterized her, professing his puzzlement over how she could possibly become the Democrats presidential candidate), Republican operatives like to cast her as part of a liberal-progressive cabal.

If nothing else, this underscores how deeply divided U.S. society really is. And how confused or careless people are about throwing around political labels.

Despite all that, Hillary Clinton is widely described as well prepared for the job and she may very well be. Still, the list of doubtful questions is long indeed:

How much in tune with the American people can a candidate be who has lived in a bubble of deference and behind a very strict U.S. Secret Service curtain at least since early 1991 a full quarter century by the time of the election?

Link:
Hillary Clintons Arduous Road to the White House in 2016