Jon Campbell

@JonCampbellGAN

COLONIE — President Bill Clinton kicked off an upstate swing Saturday morning ahead of New York's Tuesday presidential primary, pitching his wife's major campaign themes to a gathering of rural Democratic officials.

Clinton was joined by Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand in suburban Albany to speak to the state Democratic Rural Conference, a collection of upstate county Democratic chairs and supporters led by longtime Tompkins County Chair Irene Stein.

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The surrogates for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's campaign rallied a crowd of several hundred at The Desmond hotel.

"New York has a big challenge," Bill Clinton said during his 28-minute speech. "She has always had your back. There is hardly a place you go upstate where she can't cite some specific thing she did for somebody."

Bill Clinton and Gillibrand were scheduled to travel the state Saturday, with get-out-the-vote rallies set for Syracuse, Watertown and the Binghamton University campus.

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Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont are squaring off for the Democratic presidential nomination. A total of 291 Democratic delegates are on the line in New York, though 44 are so-called "superdelegates" free to support whomever they choose.

Sanders returned to New York on Saturday after a one-day trip to the Vatican, where he spoke at a conference about income inequality. He was scheduled to speak at a roundtable on faith and social justice with the Rev. Al Sharpton and activist Cornel West before holding rallies Sunday and Monday in Brooklyn and Queens, respectively.

Cuomo, a Democrat who served as housing secretary under Bill Clinton, touted Hillary Clinton's time as a senator from New York.

He pointed to her advocacy for the state's small business and farm-to-table initiatives, as well as her push for the Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, which became law after she became secretary of State. The law gave 75 years of health benefits to people with problems related to their work at Ground Zero after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001.

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"What do we do to improve people's lives?" said Cuomo, a superdelegate. "That's what Hillary is all about. You saw it when she was a senator."

Gillibrand, also a superdelegate, called Hillary Clinton her "greatest mentor." She recalled listening to a speech by then-first lady Clinton, who was encouraging more citizens to get involved in government.

“That was a life-changing event for me," said Gillibrand, who took over Clinton's Senate seat when she became secretary of State in 2009. "I knew at that moment I needed to follow Hillary and get off the sideline and into public service.”

Bill Clinton praised Stein, the chair of the Democratic Rural Conference, thanking her for the conference's support of Clinton's Senate runs.

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He also pointed to the $3.9 billion Tappan Zee Bridge replacement project as a symbol of government success, saying he flew over it en route to the Albany International Airport on Saturday.

"It just makes you perk up," Bill Clinton said of the bridge project connecting Westchester and Rockland counties. "First, you know jobs are being created, and then you know our country can get things done."

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