By Joyce Kryszak
Buffalo, NY – H. Carl McCall was in Buffalo Tuesday, pledging to end the region's eight years of stagnation and decline. The state comptroller and gubernatorial hopeful began a four day campaign sweep through the state to announce his plan for creating 400,000 new manufacturing jobs.
Choosing the vacated Trico plant on Washington as a back-drop, McCall says he has a plan to bring jobs back to the region. About 4,000 people once worked for manufacturing company that long ago moved operations to the southwest. McCall says his four-point plan would create new high paying jobs by establishing a center that would unite industry with higher education.
"This is an entity that will bring together our higher education resources and help them develop a multi-faceted, long range plan, to use the resources of our higher education institutions to help create new business opportunities in manufacturing," said McCall.
But McCall's announcement was literally overshadowed by the site where Governor George Pataki's proposed multi-million dollar Bioinformatics center will stand. McCall says it's too little too late.
"The Governor has been governor for about seven-and-half-a- years, so finally he's coming up with some ideas about what he's going to do," said McCall. "And if he hasn't produced anything for upstate New York in seven-and-a-half-years, why do we think he's going to do it now?"
During the press conference, where about a dozen local supporters gathered, fliers from County Executive Joel Giambra were circulated that touted Pataki's record. The early political battle promises to heat up this summer.
McCall is also fending off a challenge from former Housing Secretary Andrew Cuomo, who is also vying for the Democratic nomination.