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By Melanie Lekocevic

Capital Region Independent Media

With state Senate district lines redrawn earlier this year, longtime state Sen. Neil Breslin, a Democrat, is running for re-election in the 46th state Senate District, which now covers Ravena and Coeymans.

“The district was changed — it adds to my district, obviously Ravena and Coeymans, the four Hilltowns, the town of Guilderland and New Scotland, and then it moves west to Schenectady. I represent all of Montgomery County, which includes Amsterdam,” Breslin explained. “It’s a tremendously enlarged district, a little over 50% that I have never represented before.”

Breslin did represent Ravena and Coeymans about 10 years ago in a previous configuration of the district lines.

“A lot of the people in Ravena I went to high school with and I know, and it was familiar to me and I felt very comfortable,” Breslin said.

He has been in the state Senate for 25 years, but said he did not originally intend to go into politics.

“I swore I would never be an elected official or be in any political jobs,” Breslin said. “I come from a middle-class family in Albany that turned out three lawyers, an engineer, a schoolteacher and a nurse, so a traditional family.”

Breslin opened a law practice with his two brothers, Michael and Tom — Tom Breslin ultimately went on to become a state Supreme Court judge and Michael became county executive. When Neil Breslin was asked to run for state Senate over two decades ago, it wasn’t an easy decision, he said.

“I labored over it and finally decided that if I could make a difference in people’s lives, it would be worthwhile,” he said. “It was the first public job I ever had or ever sought. That took place 25 years ago.”

During his years in the state Senate, Breslin said he is most proud of some of the laws he sponsored as a member of the Insurance Committee.

“Take one from last year — a lot of people are searching for health plans that would cover a particular problem that they have. So they go to a health plan that had that medicine that they want,” he said. “But if they go into that plan, the next day the plan could say ‘no, we are getting rid of that particular drug’ and the patient is left without a position. That is unfair — they shouldn’t do that.

Under the bill Breslin sponsored, a health care plan must wait until a customer has had the plan for at least a year in order to make a change to what it will cover.

Another bill he sponsored dealt with insurance rates.

“When I first got on the Insurance Committee, I noticed that if a health plan wanted to raise the price of the plan or the drugs, they could just unilaterally file a piece of paper and raise them. That, to me, was absolutely repugnant, bizarre and many other things,” he said. “So I introduced legislation to make it not just to file, but you go through prior approval, you go through a process and it is to protect the patient, and to make sure that you protect the insurance company so they don’t go out of business.”

Those seemingly small issues can have a big impact on people’s lives, Breslin said.

“A lot of people in my conference are more interested in changing the murder law or changing this or that because it’s high-volume press and you see it every day,” he noted. “Insurance is not warm and fuzzy, but I think it is critically important.”

If re-elected, Breslin is looking to work on improving public schools.

“I always think that the issues of schools being up to date and providing equality among all the residents, regardless of where they live in the district, (is important),” he said. “We still haven’t achieved having pre-K and kindergarten as mandatory and I think that leaves kids behind and it isn’t a question of wealth in the district, it’s a question of just exercising it.”

Several years ago, two school districts in the area came to Breslin with an issue — they had made the decision to offer full-day kindergarten “and they were finding that only one-third of the kids eligible were going,” Breslin said. “Yet there was a classroom, a teacher, so I immediately introduced legislation to mandate they had to go to kindergarten.”

Those small issues can have an impact, he said.

“Don’t pass laws because you want your picture in the paper tomorrow morning,” Breslin said of his colleagues in the Legislature. “Look at those little nuanced situations that make your district a better place, and I think I have done that over the years.”

With inflation and gas prices remaining high, Breslin said many of the decisions that will impact that are federal and global.

“Inflation right now is worldwide due to a number of things, including the pandemic, including the war in the Ukraine, the inability to move products successfully, and so one of the steps the president made — a lot of the steps are not local, they are national in nature — is to make more oil available by opening up the reserves a little, by trying to negotiate with other countries to say it’s a crisis and try to negotiate to reduce the price of oil,” Breslin said, adding that infrastructure projects can also help.

“That generates income to the individuals because this is a peculiar recession — the unemployment rate has remained at an all-time low but there is not enough money in people’s pockets to cover the increase in the cost of products,” he said. “I think there are some good signs coming out that the inflation rate has come down in the last couple of months and hopefully it will come down more, but this is an international problem.”

With areas of the 46th state Senate District still lacking broadband access, Breslin believes the state has to make a financial commitment to solve the problem and ensure full broadband coverage for all communities.

“Money, money, money,” he said. “An also, if you have the will to win, you will win. If you have the will to say broadband will be corrected in the Hilltowns, in the Ravena area and throughout the district, generally excluding the cities, we have to say no, that is our responsibility.”

Reproductive rights and abortion are national issues at this time, and Breslin said he supports those rights.

“I am favorably disposed to support Roe v. Wade,” he said. “I remember a long time ago getting up on the floor of the Senate and saying I was not a woman when I got here, I was not a clergyman, and I wasn’t a doctor. Those three, and others, should join in to protect the rights of women and that is not my decision.”

Watch the full interview with Democratic candidate Neil Breslin, running for re-election to the 46th State Senate District, on TheUpstater.com.

Election Day will be Nov. 8.