Hillary Clinton did not deliver the 200,000 jobs she promised upstate New York

When Hillary Clinton ran for an open U.S. Senate seat in New York in 2000, she focused much of her campaign on economically challenged upstate New York, promising more than $500 million for the regional economy and, in an ad that ran right before her successful election, setting a goal of creating 200,000 upstate jobs. She is touting her experience as a job-creating senator in her presidential campaign, says Jerry Markon at The Washington Post, "but nearly eight years after Clinton's Senate exit, there is little evidence that her economic development programs had a substantial impact on upstate employment."

The Clinton campaign declined to estimate how many jobs Sen. Clinton helped create, but they did point Markon to a line from a New York Department of Labor chart showing "upstate New York" gaining 117,000 jobs from 2001 to 2007; The Washington Post "was unable to confirm that number," Markon writes, and the more widely used federal Bureau of Labor Statistics data show that upstate New York actually lost jobs during Clinton's first term (and gained just 0.2 percent during her entire tenure, from 2001 until she stepped down to become secretary of state in 2009).

"To her credit, she really did focus on economic development upstate as a focus and as a purpose," says David Shaffer, former president of the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute, which compiles New York jobs data. But her promise of 200,000 jobs was ill-advised, he told The Post: "As soon as I heard that, I thought, 'Okay, some D.C. consultant sat around with focus groups to figure out what would sound good. You wouldn't make a promise like that if you had seriously looked into it." You can read more about what Sen. Clinton did and didn't accomplish in New York at The Washington Post.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up