Harold Ford Jr. was digging into chicken, black-eyed peas and glazed yams a few days ago at Gigi’s, the East Ferry Street gathering spot that has become his new favorite stomping grounds in Buffalo.

“This would make mama proud,” he pronounced over the heaping helping of Southern- style food.

The former Tennessee congressman, who has all but declared his candidacy against appointed Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand in the September Democratic primary, is trying his darndest to become a New Yorker these days — even if he still likes back-home cooking.

And one strategy is to present himself as champion of the financial industry — the primarily New York City business that contributes about 21 percent of revenues to state coffers.

“I will stand up for the financial services industry,” he said.

And it’s significant that he made the statement not at Manhattan’s Regency Hotel where he often joins the power breakfast crowd, but at the big back table at Gigi’s.

“I’m for getting the bad apples out and reforming the system,” he added. “But I’m not interested in taxing them. If you don’t [assist] them in New York City, then you’re hurting Buffalo, Rochester, Albany and all of New York State.”

Just a few days later, Gillibrand dropped by Sr. Mary Johnice Rzadkiewicz’s Response to Love Center on Kosciuszko Street. On this poor excuse for a street, nobody worries about a power breakfast—just breakfast.

Here, it was clear that the campaign has begun.

“His record does not reflect core New York values,” Gillibrand said. “He advocates tax cuts for the top 1 percent of taxpayers, I advocate that for the middle class.

“He has voted twice for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage,” she added. “There’s just a big difference about who we’re fighting for.”

Harold Ford and Kirsten Gillibrand find themselves in a unique — maybe unprecedented — situation in New York politics.

Though Ford comes from Tennessee, he faces a daunting task in convincing voters he is not just another carpetbagger. And while Gillibrand is a lifelong New Yorker, the polls show a vast amount of voters fail to even recognize her name.

Ford knows it. “I may only have been here [since 2006], but you don’t have to live here 25 years to know that upstate needs attention,” he said.

In their new roles as Senate candidates, Ford and Gillibrand are accused of reinventing themselves. Ford passionately describes himself these days as a supporter of abortion rights, while his critics say he called himself pro-life in Tennessee.

Gillibrand, meanwhile, has also been morphing toward the left, especially on issues like gun control.

Now they must fend off charges of molding their principles to fit the campaign.

And while both covet the party endorsement for the nomination, they send different messages.

Gillibrand proudly points to the endorsements by committees or chairmen from 58 of the state’s 62 counties, contending that says lots about her roots in New York and the party’s confidence in her.

Ford says Mayor Byron Brown has been “unbelievably good to me” in helping him get started, but doesn’t have much else to do with the state’s Democratic hierarchy. He calls the state “complex.”

“In Democratic politics, it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before,” he said. “I’m old-fashioned. I thought voters made those decisions.”

It looks like there will be a primary for the Senate this year.

It also looks like voters will face a clear choice between two very different candidates.