Collins campaigns with former Trump associate in Harlem | News, Sports, Jobs

Paula Collins, the Democratic candidate in New York’s 21st Congressional District race, speaks alongside Lev Parnas, the former ally and now critic of former President Donald Trump and NY-21 Rep. Elise M. Stefanik, R-Schuylerville. (Provided photo — Alex Gault/Johnson Newspapers)

The race to represent the North Country in Congress was the topic of discussion in the back room of a Harlem restaurant on Wednesday, and it brought together some unlikely characters including Lev Parnas, the former ally of Rudolph Giuliani, who went to prison for funneling Russian money into American election campaigns.

Paula Collins was hosting a fundraiser and campaign event in the city. In a small, red-wallpapered room of a restaurant just north of Central Park, Collins was joined by Democrats from the city and the North Country. The initial event invitation had included other Trump associates who have since turned their backs on the former president, including the short-lived White House Press Secretary Anthony Scaramucci and infamous former Trump attorney Michael Cohen. Neither Cohen nor Scaramucci were at the event, however, and the final invitation didn’t include Scaramucci.

The whole room was focused on one goal — electing Collins and unseating Rep. Elise M. Stefanik, R-Schuylerville, a prominent Republican who has drawn closer and closer to forming President Donald J. Trump over the years.

Collins’s message for the night was simple.

“A vote for Stefanik is a proxy vote for Donald Trump,” Collins said as she introduced herself.

And that was why Parnas was invited. Despite the former president pledging that he had not met Parnas, the man, a Soviet Ukraine-born businessman, has become a vocal critic of Trump and has pointed the finger at Trump as the mastermind of the crimes Parnas was sent to prison for in 2021 .

“I’ve been around Trump world a lot,” Parnas said.

Parnas is the focus of the just-released documentary “From Russia With Lev,” where MSNBC headline anchor Rachel Maddow covers the story of how Trump, through Giuliani and Parnas, tried to paint President Joseph R. Biden as corrupt by drawing a line between Biden and his son Hunter’s involvement with the now-defunct Ukrainian state oil company Burisma.

The crimes Parnas was convicted of in 2021 include collaborating with Russian oligarchs to funnel Russian money into election campaigns in the US, and obscure the foreign money by falsifying thousands of small individual donations.

Federal officials said the money was funneled to candidates Parnas thought could help him secure cannabis and marijuana sales licenses. The feds also say that Parnas defrauded investors in his business, named Fraud Guarantee, of $2 million.

Parnas was sentenced to 20 months in prison and three years of supervised release, and was ordered to pay $2.32 million in restitution. their political connections, it’s the cannabis industry that brought Collins and Parnas together.

Parnas’ attorney for his federal trial, Joseph A. Bondy, knows Collins through their mutual work as cannabis lawyers. They worked on a handful of cases together, and after Bondy represented Parnas in his federal trial, he continued to push to get Parnas the right to consume medical marijuana after his release from prison. Parnas is the first and only person to obtain court approval to consume marijuana after being released from federal prison.

Bondy emceed the event while Collins and Parnas took turns speaking to the roughly 25-person crowd and taking questions.

Collins, pitching her message to a friendly crowd of people who mostly don’t live or vote in NY-21, asked the crowd to get the word out about her campaign and donate money to help her operations.

“We have a very grassroots campaign, a small footprint in the media, we’re trying to get the word out throughout the state that at least Stefanik has an opponent,” Collins said.

Collins, who doesn’t have a permanent residence in the district, said she decided to run after learning from the district’s Democratic leadership that there was no identified Democrat running against Stefanik this year.

“I approached the county chairs in February and asked who’s running against Stefanik,” she said. “And the answer came back, ‘That’s the thing, Paula, nobody has the courage to run against Elise Stefanik.’”

Collins reacted: “I am going to run against Elise Stefanik, because I could not bear the thought of her running unchallenged.”

But Collins admitted her race is a difficult one to win.

NY-21 has not been identified as a winnable race by the state Democratic Party, and has not seen attention in the state party’s blitz to retake the congressional seats that Republicans flipped across New York in 2022. Stefanik has increased her vote share in nearly every election since her first race in 2014, and Republicans are the largest voting block in the district by far.

But Collins said she plans to stick things out, and has seen a change in the electorate after the candidate at the top of the Democratic ticket changed.

“Since Kamala Harris stepped into the race, it’s been a whole lot different,” she said.

With a Democrat who has more enthusiasm running for president, Kirsten E. Gillibrand on the ticket for senator in a race she’s heavily favored to win, and Collins as the next name on the ballot, she said she’s hoping a strong showing up-ballot will spell victory for her as well.

Win or lose in November, Collins said she plans to run again in 2026. She said she sees the race, win or lose, as an effort to build up the Democratic Party in northern New York and build a base that can win the district for Democrats moving forward.

“We need this infrastructure, we need to build it up,” she said.

Parnas, the former Giuliani associate, said he’ll be helping Paula and other Democrats build up that infrastructure and build the case for why people should vote for Democrats up and down the ballot this year. He said that while he’s been happy to see Harris doing so well in the presidential races, it’s imperative that Democrats regain control of the House.

“For the next 40 days, we’re going to go from swing state to swing state, to go everywhere possible, wherever we have those crazy Trump supporting people in Congress,” Parnas said. “We’re going to get the truth out.”

Collins said she is hoping to plan a tour with Parnas in the North Country, to show “From Russia with Lev,” and discuss the Trump administration, in the coming weeks.

When reached for comment, Stefanik’s adviser Alex deGrasse said Collins is the result of a “desperate, sick and corrupt” state Democratic Party that couldn’t find a candidate in their district. He didn’t reference the presence and support of Parnas, a former Trump official, or Parnas’s claims about Trump or Stefanik.

“Paula Collins will be crushed at the ballot box just like every other NYC Democrat candidate they have desperately imported to upstate,” he said.