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Hillary Rodham Clinton will officially announce shes a candidate for the presidency on Sunday, but shes been running in place for the better part of two years.

Clinton was only out of the State Department a few months in the late spring of 2013, a period shes often described as one of apolitical reflection, relaxation and recharging, when friends began fielding interesting phone calls from her D.C. mansion, known as Whitehaven. One person in Clintons orbit at the time recalls picking up the phone and hearing Hello! Its Hillary! followed by a barrage of detailed queries about the organizational health of state parties in two key presidential battleground states Florida (bad) and Ohio (much, much worse).

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Thats when I knew she was going to do it, said the person, who also recalled sitting through one Im-never-doing-this-again conversation with Clinton after the 2008 election. To me she was always basically a yes, and wanted people to make the case for no. But the case for yes was always stronger.

Former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, who served as national party chairman during Bill Clintons second term, had a similar experience this time the topic was African-American politics a couple of months later at the June 2013 funeral of longtime Philadelphia congressman Bill Gray.

She asked me a lot of questions about people who attended that would only have been relevant for someone who would make use of those connections in the future as a candidate for office, he said. It was a surprise to me that she had made up her mind so early.

Around the same time, Clinton joined Twitter, and made her intentions tantalizingly unclear, describing herself as Wife, mom, lawyer, women & kids advocate, FLOAR, FLOTUS, US Senator, SecState, author, dog owner, hair icon, pantsuit aficionado, glass ceiling cracker, TBD

Even if most people around Clinton knew she would run, the candidate-to-be left that TBD deliberately open for months leaving herself latitude to ditch the entire enterprise if she got cold feet or faced a serious Democratic challenger. Its axiomatic to the point of clich to say that Clinton, the instant Democratic frontrunner, has wanted to be the first woman president since earliest girlhood in Chicago. The idea that she is unquenchably ambitious has embedded itself in the American consciousness, in part because she has been less artful about cloaking it in part because its true. In its 2016 Clinton kickoff skit, Saturday Night Live fabricated a 1940s sonogram of in-utero Hillary Rodham waving a campaign sign.

The truth is considerably more complicated. Clinton is dead-set on avoiding the mistakes of 08, and approved a series of secret reports studying the 2008 campaign in minute detail, friends and advisers say. But for all her calculation, shes been surprisingly noncommittal and reluctant to leave her comfortable double-mansion life for the grinding, grubby, lacerating realities of another campaign, fully exposed to the media horde she fears, loathes and fights.

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Hillary Clinton's slow walk to 'yes'

TIME Politics Hillary Clinton Brooks KraftCorbis Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton takes part in a Center for American Progress roundtable discussion on "Expanding Opportunities in America's Urban Areas" in Washington on March 23, 2015.

In February 2013, Hillary Clinton became a private citizen for the first time in two decades. The former First Lady, U.S. Senator and Secretary of State said she was retiring from public view to spend more time at home with Bill to watch stupid movies and laugh at our dogs. But her foray into private life was brief, and it wouldnt be long before Clinton returned to politics with the grandest of goals: to become president.

Today, as she launches her second campaign for the White House, Clinton has definitively re-entered public life. But her time off was far from a vacation. Instead, Clinton was busy honing her stump speech, developing a campaign platform and carefully laying the groundwork for a massive campaign operation.

Here are some of the things Clinton did during the last two years.

She distanced herself from President Obama

One of Clintons greatest difficulties as a former Secretary of State in the Obama administration will be to differentiate herself from the current president, even as she expresses support for some of his policies. In an interview last year with The Atlantic, Clinton did just that: The president, she said, didnt do enough to assist Syrian rebels early in the bloody conflict. The failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who were the originators of the protests against Assad, Clinton said at the time, left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled.

She publicly supported gay marriage

Support for gay marriage is now a central part of the Democratic platform, and the candidate who wins the nomination will have to have same-sex marriage credentials. Clinton announced her support for gay marriage in a six-minute video released in March 2013. LGBT Americans are our colleagues, our teachers, our soldiers, our friends, our loved ones, telling viewers that she supported marriage equality personally, and as a matter of policy and law.

Some questioned her tardiness, though: Clintons proclamation came nearly a year after President Obamas, and by 2013, support of gay marriage was a mainstream view. In a testy interview on NPR, interviewer Terry Gross pushed her on whether her views on gay marriage had evolved, or Clinton had concealed her true views for political reasons. You are playing with my words, Clinton said. I did not grow up even imagining gay marriage and I dont think you did either. As Secretary of State, however, Clinton would have been breaking a longstanding tradition of keeping mum on domestic policy if she had voiced support of gay marriage.

She offered qualified praise for Obamacare

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What Hillary Clinton Did Before Her Campaign

Hillary Clinton is all set to announce Sunday her candidacy for the American presidency in 2016, finally putting to rest speculation that the former U.S. secretary of state, senator and first lady would again make a run for the White House. Pursuing the presidency isnt all fun and games, however. It brings with it an extremely high level of public scrutiny and criticism. Clinton has seen her fair share of scandals in her 32 years in the political spotlight. Here are five of them.

1. Whitewater. Clintons earliest political scandal played out over two decades, from 1978 to 1998. It began when Bill and Hillary Clinton partnered with James and Susan McDougal to buy a 230-acre parcel of land in Arkansas Ozark Mountains for the development of vacation homes through the Whitewater Development Corp. A 1992 report by the New York Times on the demise of the venture launched investigations into the Clintons connections with James McDougals Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan business, which was being investigated by the Resolution Trust Corp. for its own failure.

Among other allegations, it was claimed that Bill Clinton used his position as Arkansas governor to pressure David Hale to lend $300,000 to Susan McDougal. Hillary Clintons work with the Rose Law Firm, which represented Madison Guaranty, implicated her in the scandal. A federal investigation eventually led to both Clintons being subpoenaed, making Hillary Clinton the only sitting U.S. first lady to ever appear before a grand jury. Both Clintons were cleared of wrongdoing. For an in-depth look at the Whitewater scandal, see the Washington Posts archive.

2. Benghazi. Clintons tenure as U.S. secretary of state under President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013 was marred by the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya. Conservative pundits seized on the attack as evidence that the Obama administration in general and Clintons State Department in particular were incompetent and unable to protect the countrys interests abroad. Susan Rice, then the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and now the national security adviser, initially insisted the attack was spontaneous and grew out of local demonstrations, but once it became evident that the attack was the result of a coordinated terrorist action, pundits alleged a cover-up was in play.

Clinton ultimately took responsibility for the security failures in Benghazi, but the cover-up allegations remain unproven.

3. Her private email account. Clintons latest scandal also involves her time as secretary of state. The New York Times broke the story last month that Clinton employed a private email account for official business during her tenure at the State Department. According to the Times, this use could violate federal requirements centered on the status of those emails as public records. With Clinton a prime 2016 presidential candidate, a media firestorm erupted. Clinton hasnt been charged with breaking any laws, but that doesnt mean she didnt do anything wrong, critics say.

As a federal employee, Clinton had the right to delete any emails she deemed personal and therefore inappropriate as public records. After receiving a State Department request for her emails last October, Clinton deleted 30,000 of them and handed over another 30,000 as public records. She then wiped her personal server, meaning nobody could access the 30,000 emails she personally decided to keep off the public record, the New York Times reported.

4. The Clinton Foundations questionable finances. The Clinton Foundation, founded by Bill Clinton shortly after he left the White House in January 2001, has become a massive multimillion-dollar organization known for high-profile partnerships, events and initiatives. Much of the foundations funding comes from longtime backers of the Clinton family -- and, in some instances, foreign governments on which Hillary Clinton had to take policy stancesas secretary of state. One example: Despite lambasting Colombia for its human-rights record in 2008, her foreign-policy stance on the country became noticably more favorable in 2011 after a large contribution to the Clinton Foundation by the Pacific Rubiales Energy Corp., an oil and gas company active in Colombia and based in Toronto.

Recently, the Clinton Foundation accepted a donation from a Moroccan government-owned company, despite the Clinton-run State Departments 2011 criticism of that government, Politicoreported.

Where all that money winds up is also a subject of criticism. For one thing, there have been allegations of waste. Ira Magaziner, who runs multiple efforts at the foundation, spent thousands of dollars to send a team around the world for months to build up a climate-change proposal, but it fell flat, as the New York Timesreported.

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Hillary Clinton Scandals: Five Times She Caught Heat

NEW YORK --

Clinton, the former first lady and secretary of state who lost the 2008 nomination to Barack Obama, will begin this time by courting voters in living rooms and cafes in early voting states. If victorious in 2016, she would become the nation's first female president.

The first official word of her candidacy will come in a video posted on social media and to supporters online, according to two people familiar with her plans. She will then turn to states such as Iowa and New Hampshire, looking to connect directly with voters in small, intimate settings.

The people familiar with her plans spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss them publicly.

Members of the political group Ready for Hillary held one last rally in New York on Saturday. They're urging former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to run for president.

Dozens of supporters, elected officials and Democratic leaders gathered at a fundraiser the day before Clinton is expected to officially announce her presidential campaign.

They packed a lower Manhattan restaurant and frequently chanted the would-be candidate's first name. U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney led the cheers.

The group has raised more than $15 million over the last two years and held events in all 50 states.

In response, the Republican National Committee has launched a #StopHillary campaign. It posted a new video to YouTube:

Clinton has offered glimpses in recent speeches of why she will again seek the White House. Another preview came Friday in the epilogue to the paperback version of her 2014 book, "Hard Choices."

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Hillary Clinton to launch 2016 presidential campaign on Sunday

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) Hillary Rodham Clinton is expected to officially announce Sunday that she is running for president.

The former first lady, New York senator and secretary of state is slatedto launch her campaignaround noon with anonline announcement.

Advisers told The Associated Press that Clintons second bid for the White House will start with small personal events in early-voting states, such as Iowa and New Hampshire. They say they dont want it to appear that she is taking the nomination for granted, which some critics have chargedwas her mistake eight years ago.

The campaign launch will also put Brooklyn back in the spotlight. The borough lost out to hosting the Democratic National Convention in 2016 to Philadelphia. But Clinton is setting up her headquarters in Brooklyn Heights.

Staffers and volunteers began working there last week, WCBS 880s Jim Smith reported.

Clinton will be the first Democrat to announce her candidacy. On the Republican side, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky have already entered the race.

CBS News correspondent Steve Portnoy said that while Clinton is a favorite among Democratic voters, that may change whenmore people enter the race.

It will be interesting to see. Our new CBS News poll in the last couple of weeks showed that eight in 10 Democrats say that they would gladly support a Hillary Clinton candidacy, but six in 10 said they would also like to see a robust debate within the Democratic Party, see someone other than Hillary Clinton run, Portnoy told WCBS 880. For now, she faces no substantial competition.

Clintons advisers say that key issues in her campaign will include boosting economic security for the middle class and expanding opportunities for working families.

Clinton intends to sell herself as being able to work with Congress, businesses and world leaders, the advisers said. That approach could be perceived as a critique of President Barack Obama, who has largely been unable to fulfill his pledge to end Washingtons intense partisanship and found much of his presidency stymied by gridlock with Congress.

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Hillary Clinton Expected To Make Presidential Run Official Today