Clinton touts Buffalo’s job growth as model for U.S.

With just over a week to go before the New York primaries, Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton is making the rounds across the state in an effort to solidify her position and win the party’s nomination.

Just days after her husband, former President Bill Clinton, was in town, Clinton spent the afternoon in Buffalo, starting her day with a roundtable on the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus, where she and a panel discussed the expansion of the research, education and clinical hub and the ways that it might serve as a model for creating quality employment across the country.

The former secretary of state said that the innovation and job growth in the Buffalo medical community could be duplicated if federal leaders, along with the business and philanthropic communities, are willing invest in research and technology the way that the state and the city have in Buffalo.

“I am a great believer that our best years can be ahead of us in our country if we have, not just the confidence and optimism and recognize what lies ahead and pull together and collaborate, but also if we tend to the steps necessary to get us there,” Clinton said.

Clinton and her primary opponent, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, who both have New York connections, have similar messages on middle-class jobs, with each vowing to expand and improve employment opportunities for average Americans. In Buffalo, Clinton hit hard on that message as she tries to keep her comfortable, but shrinking, lead in the polls.

As New York’s junior U.S. Senator, Clinton helped secure funding to lay the groundwork for the medical campus, which has nearly doubled in size since she left Congress, growing from 7,000 to 12,000 jobs.

Mayor Byron Brown, who worked with Clinton to help make the medical campus a reality, praised her for her attention to Buffalo as a senator, saying that he believes the city and state have created a model for what can happen when government, the private sector and nonprofits coordinate their efforts in a way that helps everyone involved.

“We have been able to use municipal resources, working in concert with the leadership of the medical campus to make smart infrastructure investments that are helpful in attracting businesses,” Brown said.

Derrick Parson, a founder of the tech company AppleTree Agency, which provides online classes and training for businesses, was also on the panel. He is working at a tech-hub on the medical campus, with support from staff, as he aims to get his start-up off the ground.

Parsons, who is African-American, said that when he goes out into the community to work with inner-city youth, kids are often perplexed when he tells them that he works in technology.

He told Clinton that he would like to see more resources allocated to helping people like him enter those fields. Without the help of the medical campus staff and the access they provide to funders and other entrepreneurs, he would not be able to even think about starting his own business.

“I would love to see more support, increases in resources, increases in funding,” Parsons said. “That would definitely open the door for a lot of people.”

Clinton agreed, saying it would be a priority of her administration, were she elected president, to support efforts to grant more access to resources for those that have traditionally been shut out.

When the Great Recession hit and opportunities became more scarce, minorities and women were the first people to be let go and the least likely to find access to work and resources, she said.

“We’ve got to reverse that,” Clinton said.

Still, Clinton acknowledged, not all people in the city have gotten a leg up from the significant investments in planning and building that have gone on at the medical campus over the last 15 years.

“We know that there are a lot of people who are not yet realizing the benefits of this economic development,” Clinton said.

To ensure that everyone is able to see their lives improve as a result of the coordination and investment in Buffalo, and around the country, more needs to be done to prevent people from being excluded because of their gender or race, she said.

“I want to tear down all the barriers that stand in the way of people getting ahead and staying ahead,” Clinton said. “There are a lot of institutional barriers and there also are a lot of out-of-date conventional thinking barriers about what is and isn’t possible in certain places with certain people.”