BY JIMMY LAWTONNorth Country This Week

Democrat Paula Collins is challenging Elise Stefanik for the 21st Congressional District and says it's time for a change.

Collins faces an uphill battle against the incumbent who has defended the seat for the last four consecutive terms, but Collins said she felt obligated to run when she found out Stefanik was not facing a challenger.

“I'm a cannabis tax attorney, which in New York, means that since about 2021 I've spent much of my time traveling the state, talking to licensed hopefuls and entrepreneurs to build their businesses in the regulated cannabis space in New York,” she said.

Collins said that while she hailed from down state she began to see through the eyes of her clients, what some of the challenges were and what some of the delights were of living outside of the city. 

“I began to settle in and think, okay, I'd really like to build a life here, I asked who will my congressional representative be? And I was told, Elise Stefanik. And I said, Well, who's running against Elise? So that I could support that candidate, and I was told that's the thing, Paula, nobody's running against Elise. Stefanik,” she said.

Collins decided to change that.Collins says her views are very much in line with that of Presidential hopeful Kamala Harris.

Collins says she’s learned a lot, and even if she’s late for this race, she’s early for the midterms.

“I believe that building a campaign is a lot like building a business. And I've built a couple of different businesses in my life, and so I would be disappointed to have gathered all of this knowledge and put into place these operations and these processes and built up these networks of volunteers and staff members, and then to simply drop it Nov. 5 would be frustrating,” she said.

Collins says if she fails this time she may try again, or through her knowledge behind another Democrat.

“I think that what is really different about New York 21 is that we don't have some of this institutional knowledge to pass on from one candidate to another, at least on the Democratic side.

On Border

In St. Lawrence County illegal border crossings have raised concerns among some voters as the Northern border has seen an exponential increase in apprehensions.

Although Republicans have blamed the Biden-Harris administration and Hochul’s Greenlight laws for the problem, Collins pointed her finger directly at Stefanik on this issue.

“It is squarely on the shoulders of Elise Stefanik that we did not pass the immigration bill that would have created more jobs for enforcement agents at the border. It would have immediately put more judges in place at the border to process those applications, so that that five-year wait time could be reduced, and it would have also allowed a pathway for people to come in to get temporary work visas and therefore contribute. What we know from the data is that the immigrants who come in and who are able to get jobs contribute to the tax base at a far greater rate than their citizen peers, and yet they're not a they don't qualify for Social Security or some of the other benefits that many of us work to pay into many of those systems that we try to pay into,” she said.

“My solution would be that we look at that bipartisan bill and revisit it. Because you know what, it was a good bill. It gave us more border agents.”

On healthcare

Many St. Lawrence County voters say healthcare is a major concern for them. Costs for insurance continue to climb, coverage continues to decline and wait times for procedures continues to increase.

Collins says it’s clear that things need to change and she credits the Biden-Harris administration with some big wins this year. She says renegotiating prescription drug prices was a good start and she is hopeful that trend will continue.

“She also said the cap on certain drugs for Medicare patients is a step in the right direction,

She says the United States has lagged behind other modernized nations in regard to health care coverage and the country would benefit from expanding Medicare or adopting a single-payer option.

She said it’s time to break up large trusts and make sure more Americans can afford to get treatments for mental and physical ailments.

“I would love to see our nation move, you know, at the behest of Congress, move towards a single-payer system, “Medicare for All” is something I've been a proponent of for decades,” she said.

“ I would rather see us think positively and be more pro consumer and say we capped these drug prices. Can't we cap more drug prices? And can't we expand that qualifier to more families, rather than those just rather than limiting it to Medicare patients.”

On guns

The debate on guns and Second Amendment issues has always played a crucial role in the 21st Congressional District, that’s likely to be no different this year. That’s despite the fact that New York has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation and is in near constant litigation regarding their constitutional legality.

Collins says her views on guns follow very closely to those of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.

“Yes, have your gun. You can have your personal protection weapon. You can have your recreational weapon, but let's keep the kids safe,” she said.

 She said anyone who has been a teacher or parent knows that active shooter drills have become the norm at schools, which she says highlights the problem.

“I think, in New York City, we had to do them six times a year, the kids are traumatized just by the drills. And yet, could we imagine not having the drills be when we have this reality that school shootings happen and the results are devastating, so I very closely follow their the wall, the Harris walls position, which is we need to really find a responsible way to address the assault rifles and the semi-automatic weapons that are causing such devastation,” she said. “We wouldn't put the keys in the hand of somebody whom we knew had debilitating mental health issues, and yet we're somehow, over and over and over, we're finding that people are getting access to weapons or types of weapons, when they really should not have been allowed to do s,” she said.

She said she believes New York’s more restrictive approach appears to be working, but says more studies are needed to see if that’s simply correlation or causation.

On abortion rights

A controversial decision by the The Supreme Court overturned Roe V Wade, a ruling that had long guaranteed women’s right to terminate pregnancies. Stefanik says she believes it was the right decision.

“I would like to see us fight back against this abortion ban movement that is rolling from state to state. Republicans have made clear they would like to see it imposed at a federal level,” she said.

While New Yorker’s have been largely insulated from restrictive abortion laws, Collins said there is no guarantee that will continue.

“Since the abortion bans have gone into place in some states like Texas, we've actually seen more women die because they're told that they have to go out to the parking lot and bleed out, or go out to the parking lot until they are sufficiently ill to get medical treatment that is so torturous for a woman, or for any of those people around that woman,” she said. “Let's also look at women's health care as a family issue.

Collins said that those who say they are pro-life only seem to be concerned with the birth, but not what happens after.

“Let's also look at the fact that once a baby is born, there isn't the system in place to address child care at the national level, or family leave at the national level, or really a child's education at the national level. So this doesn't seem to be so much pro life as it is forcing someone to bring a child into the world when there is a medical situation or a social or financial issue that would cause that person to say no this is not something that we can do.”

She offered praise for New York’s proposition 1, which she says would help protect women’s right to terminate a pregnancy.

I am very much in support of prop one. And so I encourage all voters to remember to flip the ballot and vote for prop one. It's on the back of the ballot, so I hope it doesn't get forgotten,” she said.

Cost of living

While wages have increased across the board in recent years, for many they have failed to keep up with the high-cost of everyday items like gasoline and groceries.

Collins says that while Americans are feeling the pinch, we aren’t alone. She said the U.S. is bouncing back from the economic devastation brought on by the pandemic better than most countries..

“The United States has addressed inflation far more aggressively and to the benefit of the consumer far more quickly than our global peers,” she said. 

Collin says that while that’s good news, it does little to help those struggling to make ends meet.

“So now let's look at the other driving factors. Don't talk to me about inflation when we're talking about record corporate profits and record corporate compensation levels and bonus packages. So it's very, very difficult for me to blame the President of the United States or the US Congress for the price of gas at the pump when I'm looking at the profits of the oil and gas corporations,” she said.

Collins said that Kamala Harris is proposing legislation regarding price gouging, while her opponent has that task squarely on her shoulders. So if you're talking about Congress and what could Congress do, or what should Congress have done, that's on Elise,” she said.

Collins said that one major problem she believes adds to the North Country’s struggling economy is a lack of broadband access and lackluster cellular service. 

She said that she’s been surprised in her travels of the North Country to see how many people simply aren’t connected. She said this puts people at a disadvantage in educational opportunities and makes telehealth, which is rapidly expanding, unavoidable to some of the people who could benefit most from it.

She said that if she is elected she would prioritize ensuring that service is expanded.

Collins said Stefanik has had five terms to improve the lives of North Country residents and it’s time to give someone else a chance.