It was her first major rally of the campaign season. Congresswoman Louise Slaughter, flanked by more than 100 area union members and middle class workers, called for the return of American jobs and a level playing field for American manufacturing.

"We cannot continue to be the world's superpower if we are dependent on other nations for everything that we need. We have to take care of rebuilding the manufacturing and once again make it in the USA," said Slaughter, (D).

Doug Williams is the CEO of the HMX Group, Hickey Freeman's parent company. Williams said 84 percent, or more than 780,000 U.S. manufacturing jobs in apparel have been lost since 1990. Williams says bringing those jobs back home will help jump start the American economy.

"One manufacturing job supports four new jobs in our economy. If we don't manufacture here, we're not going to have an economy. We need to support it," said Williams.

Slaughter called on Congressional Republicans to pass her Bring American Jobs Home Act. It would end tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas and instead use those tax breaks to reward companies bringing those jobs back to the U.S.

"We need to put an end to the ideology that has hurt American manufacturing and American middle class. And I've said in the years that I've been in Congress, 25 years, I have never seen a trade agreement with another country that advantaged in anyway or supported the American manufacturer or the American worker and we have to change that and we've got the bill to do it," Slaughter said.

Monroe County Executive Maggie Brooks, Slaughter's Republican opponent in the 25th Congressional District race, called Slaughter's rally a good visual. Brooks said that's of little comfort for those who are out of work.

"Talk is cheap. Mrs. Slaughter can stand there and talk about support for American workers, but at the end of the day she can't walk away from a 25 year record where she has taken vote after vote after vote that is anti-business, anti-job and anti-American worker and anti-middle class. That is her record," said Brooks, (R).

Brooks says this is a campaign about records and that she has worked with business to retain 85,000 jobs in Monroe County.

Slaughter maintains she is a champion of the American worker and her bill would bring outsourced jobs back to America.