Coll targets affordability, bail reform in run

James Coll has never held a political office before, but everything inside him makes him feel he’s in it for all the right reasons.

“I’m running because I’m concerned about the direction of the state,” Coll told reporters during a recent Herald Roundtable event. “I have two kids in high school, and I want them to grow up in Nassau County. I want them to raise their families here, the same way that I did. Young people aren’t doing that anymore. They’re leaving where they were raised — and now their parents are following them — and we need to figure out a way to reverse that.”

The 49-year-old Republican candidate is a retired New York Police Department detective from Seaford who spent 21 years on the force. Today, he teaches constitutional law at Nassau Community College.

While Coll has yet to find political office, it’s not that he hasn’t sought it before, running previously for the Assembly seat now held by John Mikulin, and before that, for a seat as a Nassau County legislator. This time, with the support of the Republican Party, Coll is looking to topple an incumbent to become a state senator.

Coll believes state lawmakers like his opponent violated their oath to uphold the state constitution when they voted to gerrymander district lines in a way benefitting Democrats earlier this year.

“They broke the law when it came to redistricting,” he said. “Every level of the court system in New York state said that they broke the law.”

Thanks to a lawsuit led by the GOP, an independent third party was called in to redraw the lines based on 2020 census data. As a result, the boundaries of this particular senate district were shifted to include South Shore communities like Baldwin, Freeport and Rockville Centre.

It also shifted to not only exclude where Coll lives, but the incumbent he’s running against as well. They were both given a one-time exemption, meaning that by next election, the winner will either have to move, or find a new senate district.

While the demographics making up the constituency of the senate district have changed, the message — at least as far as Coll is concerned — has not.

“Wherever you come from in this county, you want your kids to be safe,” Coll said. “You want them to have a good education. You want them to have opportunity. And mostly, you want them to be treated equally in the eyes of the law.”

In addition to addressing the affordability crisis on Long Island — which he says has chased hundreds of thousands of people away from New York — Coll is ready to take on bail reform laws, which he believes set a dangerous precedent for the state justice system.

“The first thing we need to do is with any piece of legislation, we should be listening to multiple voices in order to pass laws,” Coll said. “When it came to criminal justice reform in our state over the past few years — all of which was supported by my opponent — there were voices left out. Certainly, law enforcement was not part of the equation. Who should we have listened to? The cops, the prosecutors, lawyers. We should be listening to people that are critics of the police. We should be listening to victims. Everybody should have a seat at the table.”

In order fix the problems with bail reform, Coll would grant judges more discretion to determine who can be granted “cashless bail” based on the level of the offense.

Yet, Coll doesn’t see eye-to-eye with his fellow Republicans on every issue. For instance, he describes abortion as a settled issue, which he has no intention to alter. 

“For me, it’s an issue for women and their doctors,” Coll said.

He is also in support of renewable and affordable energy alternatives, reasonable background checks for gun owners, and working to shut down the pipeline of illegal guns flowing into the state.