Buffalo, NY -- When President Barack Obama announced last week that he would visit Buffalo in his second trip as president to Upstate New York, the White House made sure Syracuse would not feel left out. Obama’s staff extended an invitation for one Syracuse elected official to attend the president’s “White House to Main Street” tour stop Thursday in...
Jean KessnerBuffalo, NY -- When President Barack Obama announced last week that he would visit Buffalo in his second trip as president to Upstate New York, the White House made sure Syracuse would not feel left out. Obama’s staff extended an invitation for one Syracuse elected official to attend the president’s “White House to Main Street” tour stop Thursday in Western New York.
Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner, fresh from a visit to the White House, declined the opportunity. But she asked Councilor-at-Large Jean Kessner to represent the city.
As it turned out, Kessner was in the right place at the right time Thursday to talk with the president. She had a brief exchange with Obama after his speech at Industrial Support Inc., a small manufacturing plant in Buffalo.
“When I shook hands with him afterward, I asked him why he was wearing a red bracelet,” said Kessner, a former Syracuse television reporter who was never shy about asking questions to elected officials. “The president said he met earlier in the day with families who lost people in the Buffalo plane crash (in 2009) and they had given it to him.”
Kessner said she did not have a chance to ask the president another question as his staff whisked him away.
Minutes earlier Kessner had sat in the third row of the audience, next to a Baptist minister, as Obama spoke and later took questions from the audience. Kessner, a first-term Democrat, raised her hand to ask a question but was not called on by the president.
“Everything I was going to say to him I didn’t get to say,” Kessner said, adding she wanted to ask about the lack of money for education in Upstate’s cash-strapped local communities.
Kessner said she still walked away pleased to hear the president talk about the economy, his plans to help small businesses grow and to see him paying attention to Upstate New York and its economic challenges.
“Buffalo and Syracuse are very similar,” she said. “They lost a lot of manufacturing and population. So whatever would work in Buffalo should work for us. It’s good to know that at least for today, Upstate communities are on the national radar.”
Contact Washington correspondent Mark Weiner at mweiner@syracuse.com or 571-970-3751.