As Donald Trump considers a gubernatorial campaign, he will be in Buffalo this Friday for a much anticipated fundraiser held by the Erie County Republican Committee. Trump is likely to level criticisms against Cuomo; and he commands the attention of the national media such that he can aggressively elevate regional issues to the national discourse.
Political observers will be watching to see which regional issue Trump will chose to elevate. His choice of which issues to make relevant will be telling and will be among his first policy statements while considering his gubernatorial contention. Some political observers wonder if Trump will make the offensive mistake of coming here to stump on downstate issues, which could quickly change the dynamics of a Republican primary.
Westside residents allege that the Cuomo Administration has been violating environmental laws and manipulated state administered air monitoring for political purposes. Trump should stand with residents at Front Park, who are calling for federal investigations into the various violations of environmental laws.
Trump should also do the residents a genuine favor: he should leverage his media contacts to call attention to this environmental justice issue that a poor and largely minority neighborhood has had to contended with since the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement in the mid-1990s. He should make the point that he cares about the little guy, and will fight to protect neighborhoods from big-government run amuck and rouge bureaucrats.
An anti-NAFTA protest at the Peace Bridge, circa 1993. Since the passage of NAFTA under the Clinton Administration, Buffalo’s industrial collapse accelerated and freight traffic at the Peace Bridge has grown rapidly, imposing harsh environmental impacts on a section of the city already devastated by a 53 year decline.
If Trump shows up at Front Park and engages with the residents, the photo-op alone would be priceless: communicating that this guy has what it takes to do retail politics; someone who can attract a crowd and energy in a minority neighborhood of a poor city; a Republican who is willing to fight the government on the little guy’s behalf.
The issue has the added political advantage of calling out the national media’s liberal bias, as Chris Christie gets beat up for a month because he closed down a couple lanes of traffic for an afternoon – meanwhile Cuomo can get away with damning generations of residents with epidemic rates of asthma and cancer across broad swaths of Buffalo — with no national media scrutiny.
Whatever Trump does and says in Buffalo will be watched closely and analyzed deeply. He should do it up, and really put on a show. If he makes the trip about NAFTA, Hillary will be afraid of running for President in 2016 — and Trump might have a shot at beating an entrenched Democrat-In-Name-Only, Governor Andrew Cuomo, in a deep blue state.
He could be the candidate for whom the Tea Party has been waiting.
Or he could be just stoking his ego. We’ll find out on Friday.