Paula Collins announces her campaign to represent New York’s 21st Congressional District in front of a cannabis dispensary in Saranac Lake in February. (Enterprise photo — Andy Flynn)

ALBANY — Paula Collins thinks this is the year a Democrat can take the 21st Congressional District, and she’s banking on support from independent voters to help her achieve that.

“It’s time to make Stefanik panic, because I don’t think this is a done deal, I don’t think this is an easy race for her,” she said.

Collins, a cannabis attorney from New York City who has property in Rensselaer County and rents an apartment in Canton, St. Lawrence County, is the only challenger to Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-Schuylerville, to successfully submit petitions to appear on the ballot, although one independent candidate has said he plans to file petitions in the coming weeks.

Collins said that as she tours the North Country and Capital Region covered by NY-21, she’s hearing fatigue from voters who say they are tired of Stefanik’s rhetoric and prominence in divisive national debate.

“They’re tired of having a representative in Congress for New York 21 whom they rarely see, and whose interests seem to be far beyond the district,” she said.

Stefanik, now the fourth most senior Republican in the House of Representatives, has been a major voice on a number of prominent conservative issues this year, including antisemitism and pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses, immigration and the border.

Collins said she thinks north country voters want their representative to speak on issues closer to home, like health care accessibility, heating costs, jobs and broadband internet access.

She said that despite Stefanik’s significant national profile and her serious fundraising edge, she doesn’t think those translate directly to voters in the district.

“That doesn’t do anything for the family or for the individual in the north country, their day-to-day life,” she said.

Collins describes herself as a moderate Democrat. She says she supports immigration reform aimed at creating a clear pathway to U.S. residency without forcing people to declare asylum, supports congressional action to create a federal standard for child safety on the internet, marijuana decriminalization and banking for cannabis businesses, and wants to see progress on raising the federal minimum wage.

She’s Catholic, but said she differs from the church on a few issues, namely abortion.

“I believe in a woman’s right to choose, and I believe that the time has come for us to really look more at women’s issues from a holistic health care point of view than to get really focused on the politics of abortion,” she said.

“I am a very proud member of the LGBT community,” she added. “And so I obviously believe in the dignity of each human being, and should not confuse my spiritual life with gender or sexual issues.”

If elected, Collins said she believes her role in Congress would be to facilitate collaboration between the various branches of the national Democratic party, which she describes as a “great big tree,” with “a lot of little birds on its branches, each one tweeting their own little tune.”

She said her goal would be to champion rural issues, and bring a Democratic voice back to the rural realm that has not seen much attention from the party for many years.

Collins’s approach, to appeal to the center and try to bring in the independent vote, isn’t necessarily new to NY-21. In 2022, Democrat Matthew Castelli ran for NY-21 on a self-created “Moderate Party,” line, playing up his centrist views in the hopes that he could pull the independent vote.

The 21st Congressional District has about 519,000 registered voters as of November, with nearly 161,000 people registered with no party or a third party that no longer has a standing ballot line in New York. Those voters account for more than the registered Democrats, 144,500, but fewer than the nearly 200,000 registered Republicans.

Collins said there’s a big difference this November from last year’s “off year,” election that did not have the presidential race at the top of the ticket.

She said Stefanik’s close alliance with former President Donald J. Trump is likely to be a drag on support from independents and moderate Republicans who don’t want to see Trump returned to office and are tired of the divisiveness at the top of the government.

“I believe that people are more wiling to put themselves out, to disrupt their day and show up at the ballot box than they might have been two years ago, or even four years ago,” she said.

Collins said that she thinks Stefanik’s position has radically shifted in the last few years, in a way that may convince more people to come out against her. Since 2019, Stefanik has shifted ever closer to Trump. Where in 2016 she declined to specifically support Trump’s presidential bid, this cycle she was the first elected official to endorse him for a second term in office, before he had even formally declared his candidacy.

“What concerns the voters more is this transformation where she really was a moderate conservative, and that was 2014, 2016, Trump comes along,” Collins said. “2018, we see how the midterms went for the Republicans, and it didn’t go well.”

In 2014, Stefanik won her first election with 55% of the vote, and in 2016, Stefanik was elected with 65% of the vote in a three-way race, her highest-ever vote share. In 2018, she picked up 56% of the vote, again in a three-way race, the only time her voter share dropped year-over-year. In 2020, Stefanik carried 58% of the vote in a two-way race, and in 2022 she increased her voter share to 59%.

Stefanik declined to be interviewed by the Watertown Daily Times. Her adviser, Alex DeGrasse, shared a statement in which he said the congresswoman is proud of the results she has brought to the district.

“Voters in upstate NY and the North Country are fed up with the Biden administration’s open border policies, soft-on-crime approach, and the skyrocketing inflation that has devastated hardworking families,” he said.

DeGrasse also criticized Collins for her lack of firm roots in the north country.

“She is registered at a bed and breakfast and is more concerned with advertising her New York City business than anything else,” DeGrasse said. “Elise looks forward to earning the votes of those in NY-21 this November and continuing to represent NY-21 at the highest levels of government successfully.”

Collins said the criticisms about her residency are hypocritical coming from Stefanik, who has not lived in NY-21 since the district lines were redrawn to no longer include her Schuylerville address, and from 2014 to 2018 listed her primary residence as her family vacation home in Willsboro.

“Elise has not really lived here,” Collins said. “She hasn’t had to do things like drive 50 miles to an appointment, or even drive 30 miles to pick up a prescription.”

Property records show Stefanik bought her house in Schuylerville in 2018, paying taxes in NY-21 from then to 2022, when the district was redrawn. Stefanik told the Glens Falls Post-Star she intended to relocate her primary residence back into NY-21, but has not done so. The law does not require a Congress member to live in the district they represent in the House, only that they reside primarily in the state.