New York’s attorney general and Democratic candidate for governor visited a Buffalo tech company Tuesday morning to promote his plan to “put this state back to work.”
Andrew Cuomo arrived at the offices of Synacor Inc., shortly before 11:30 as a small crowd of protesters — including one dressed in a duck suit — proclaimed Buffalo to be, “Carl’s Country.”
Chanting “Don’t duck the issues,” and “Debate Carl now,” the group, numbering roughly a dozen people, were kept far from the entrance to the global technology company, located on the waterfront, though they drew the attention of the throng of television media on hand for the event.
Once inside, the Democratic nominee for governor toured the facilities, met privately with employees, then stepped to the podium to outline his plan to boost the sagging New York economy through aggressive job creation.
“We have to be all about the creation of jobs, jobs, jobs,” Cuomo said. “Good, high-paying jobs.”
Sticking to a theme of the importance of small businesses such as his host Synacor, Cuomo didn’t pull any punches when talking about the current situation in Albany.
“I can’t tell you how many business leaders have come up to me and said they are very nervous because the state government seems dysfunctional, incompetent. Sometimes they’re even more graphic,” he said. “They are always right.”
Among the points Cuomo hammered home in his nearly 20-minute address, was his position of not implementing any tax increases.
“You have to make the government work, you have to make it work competently, you have to make it work with integrity and oh by the way, you have to do this with no new taxes,” he said.
Asked about the possibility of taking that one step further and calling for a tax reductions, Cuomo suggested it was an issue to be taken “one step at a time.”
Though he focused his message on his plan to create jobs across the state, toward the end of his remarks, Cuomo addressed his Republican opponent, Buffalo developer Carl Paladino, calling the upstart nominee “an extreme Republican.”
He highlighted what he called Paladino’s “extreme agenda,” and asked voters to decide for themselves.
“His platform says he is against a woman’s right to choose, even in the case of rape or incest, I think that’s an extreme position,” he said. “He says he would take welfare families and send them to work camps in retrofitted prisons. I think that is an extreme position.”
Cuomo said he believes when the two platforms are placed side by side, the choice will be clear. Asked if that might happen in the form of a debate between himself and Paladino, Cuomo said both campaigns are working to make a debate happen, though he gave no time frame.
“I think election are about choices,” he said. “This (election) is one of the most stark choices I’ve seen in many, many years.”
In a written statement following Cuomo’s address, Paladino dismissed the AG’s job creation plan as more Albany politics.
“Andrew Cuomo’s newest plan to create jobs is more of the same big talk, big money and big failures New Yorkers have come to expect from career politicians,” Paladino said. “New York businesses will grow and hire more employees only if we cut taxes — not slow the rate of tax growth — and cut spending, not slow the rate of spending growth.”
To the latter point, Paladino said he will cut taxes by 10 percent within his first year in office.
Paladino called Cuomo, “another career politician who has never created a job in his life.”
Read more: Cuomo ducks protesters, pushes jobs plan - Business First of Buffalo