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MONTICELLO, UNITED STATES: Hillary Clinton arrives in Iowa on Tuesday during an overland road trip to begin a series of low-key meetings with ordinary voters and set the tone for her campaign.

It is in Monticello, a small town of 4,000 inhabitants in the key Midwestern state that the former top US diplomat will hold her first small roundtables with middle-class voters after crowding into a van traveling from New York.

Clinton finally announced her bid to join the race to succeed President Barack Obama and give Democrats a third-straight presidential term for the first time in more than half a century.

The announcement unleashed a fierce, highly-coordinated Republican attacks on her "failed policies of the past" and what they call an uneven performance at some of the highest levels of US government.

The 2008 campaign veteran struck a note of humility this time with her pledge to champion "everyday Americans" -- a departure from her hard-as-nails approach when she lost her party's nomination to Obama seven years ago.

She traveled via a modest mini-van with a small team, rather than a private jet, with much of her itinerary shrouded in secrecy.

So intentionally subdued was her trip that she managed to order food at a restaurant unnoticed in a Toledo, Ohio suburb.

The restaurant manager only recognized her after receiving a call from a New York Times reporter and watching surveillance camera footage.

An agricultural state of a little more than three million residents, Iowa plays an outsized role in US geography and political history.

It is the first electoral battleground for White House candidates, where voters make their preferences known before any other state in party primaries and caucuses.

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Hillary Clinton arrives in Iowa on low-key campaign tour