Iowans recognized many of the themes from Kamala Harris’ Democratic National Convention speech on Wednesday, but her biographical details took precedence over the more specific policy details she highlighted as a presidential hopeful across Iowa.

Harris, a U.S. senator from California, spent a good portion of her speech at the convention Wednesday night talking about her family, her upbringing, and her background. Harris is the first Black and South Asian woman to be nominated for vice president from a major party in the U.S.

“Family is my husband Doug, who I met on a blind date set up by my best friend,” Harris said. “Family is our beautiful children, Cole and Ella, who as you just heard, call me Momala. Family is my sister. Family is my best friend, my nieces, and my godchildren.”

While it wasn’t a theme absent from her events in Iowa, Harris spent more of her speech Wednesday night talking about her background than she did in many stops around Iowa. In Iowa City, in October 2019, Harris told a story about her family reacting to her graduation from law school.

“My family gathered around, and my mother asked me ‘well Kamala, what are you going to do in your fight for justice?’” Kamala said at the event. “And I told her, ‘I’ve decided I was going to be a prosecutor,’ because I want to be in a place where I can be a voice for the most voiceless and vulnerable.”

Ben Nelson, a recent University of Iowa graduate who worked as a field organizer for Harris’ presidential campaign, said her focus on family during the speech wasn’t new to those who had been following her on the trail, but it helped voters who had not heard from Harris get familiar with her.

“I thought a lot of her emphasis on family, showcasing her parents as immigrants…really came off as being relatable to our voters, both here in Iowa and across the country,” he said.

Sue Dvorsky, a former Iowa Democratic Party chair who endorsed Harris during the primary, said Harris telling her story was a helpful way to introduce her to Americans.

“It’s a blended family that is very familiar to most real Americans,” she said. “It looks like many Americans’ families, with the kids’ mom and the stepmom, and the dad, and how you navigate the Thanksgiving dinner.”

Harris made 83 stops in the state between 2018 and 2019, according to the Des Moines Register candidate tracker.

Meghann Foster, a Coralville City Councilor who was the first elected official in Iowa to endorse Harris, said she didn’t see many differences between the content of Harris’ speech Wednesday and her appearances in Iowa. Foster said Harris’ focus on being “for the people” was a common theme between her appearances in Iowa and at the convention.

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“The woman we saw on that stage tonight is the woman that we saw on the campaign trail, and that genuineness, that consistency, is why she is the perfect woman for this job,” Foster said.

Issues of racial justice were also a major part of Harris’ speeches in Iowa, but her comments at the convention took on a new sense of urgency in the wake of the killing of George Floyd in May and the coronavirus pandemic.

“Justice is on the ballot” was a ubiquitous phrase in Harris’ stops in Iowa, and she often made the case for addressing racial inequalities in areas of economic mobility, criminal justice, and health care.

“Criminal justice is on the ballot,” she said at an NAACP forum in Des Moines in November 2019. “The system of mass incarceration that has led to Black and Brown men being incarcerated at levels that confound, and have really been about institutional racism in the criminal justice system.”

During her convention speech, Harris made a similar case, saying the coronavirus pandemic has disproportionately affected Black, Latino, and Indigenous people. She blamed structural racism for disparities in health care, housing, transportation, and police brutality.

“And let’s be clear—there is no vaccine for racism. We’ve gotta do the work,” she said. “For George Floyd. For Breonna Taylor. For the lives of too many others to name. For our children. For all of us.”

Harris made less of a focus on policy Wednesday than she often did at Iowa events, especially policy that separated her from Joe Biden as a presidential candidate.

Harris was one of several presidential hopefuls that supported Medicare for All, but she stopped short of eliminating private insurance companies. Biden’s current health care plan involves expanding the Affordable Care Act and offering a public option for insurance.

“We will put in place a Medicare for All plan, which I have proposed, which will offer everyone health care without regard to cost, put the insurance companies in check so there will be no deductibles, no copays,” Harris said at the Iowa State Fair in August 2019. “You will still have access to either a public or private plan and expand services and benefits.”

On Wednesday, Harris avoided mentioning specific policies, but spoke about increasing wages, addressing the pandemic, and expanding health care.

“And we’ve shown that, when we vote, we expand access to health care, expand access to the ballot box, and ensure that more working families can make a decent living,” she said.

Dvorsky said what policy differences Harris and Biden had during the primary will take a back seat to the central goal of removing Trump from office. She said since Biden is the presidential candidate, he will make the deciding move on policy, and working out the details is a job for after the election.

“In a primary, it made sense to be talking about the fine points of policy difference and how you would prosecute the case, all of that,” she said. “But that’s not where we are now, nobody in the party is and nobody in the country is. Because now, we have to figure out how to beat him.”