Patricia “Pat” Fahy has represented some piece of Albany in the New York State Legislature for the better part of fourteen years, spending twelve of them in the Assembly before moving over to the State Senate in 2025.
Along the way she’s become one of the Capital Region’s most prolific bill sponsors, and this year she’s also become the center of an unusually public fight with disability advocates over a bill she herself was supposed to be championing.
So who is Pat Fahy, what has she built across more than a decade in Albany, and what’s behind the dispute now shadowing her bid for a second term in the State Senate?
Quick Facts
- Party
- Democrat, Working Families
- Born
- 1955, Chicago, Ill.
- Hometown
- Albany, N.Y. (raised in Chicago)
- Current Position
- New York State Senator, 46th District; Chair, Senate Disabilities Committee
- Background
- Former NYS Assemblymember, 109th District (2013 to 2024). Former Albany Board of Education President. NYS Dept. of Labor
- In Office Since
- 2013 (Assembly); 2025 (Senate)
- Current Term Through
- January 2027 (seeking reelection in November 2026)
EARLY LIFE AND PATH TO ALBANY
Fahy was born in 1955 and raised in Chicago, Illinois, earning a bachelor’s degree in political science from Northern Illinois University in 1980 and a master’s in public administration from the University of Illinois at Chicago five years later.
She spent the mid 1990s as executive director of the business led Chicago Workforce Board, then moved to Albany in 1997, where her children went on to attend the city’s public schools.
That local school connection became her entry point into politics. Fahy and three future Albany officials, including eventual Mayor Kathy Sheehan, all got their start volunteering at the PTA of New Scotland Elementary School.
That network of relationships helped launch each of their political careers. Fahy was elected to Albany’s Board of Education in 2001 and was unanimously chosen by her fellow board members to serve as its president in 2003, a post she held until 2005.
She spent the years that followed as an associate commissioner at the New York State Department of Labor, work that kept her close to the education and workforce issues that would define her later legislative career.
ENTERING THE STATE LEGISLATURE
When 20 year Assemblyman Jack McEneny announced his retirement, Fahy entered a crowded 2012 Democratic primary for the 109th District, which covers Albany and parts of Bethlehem, Guilderland and New Scotland.
“I’m a voice often for the voiceless,” she said of her candidacy a decade later, in an Altamont Enterprise interview describing a platform built on education, jobs and, over time, the environment.
She won the seat and was sworn in on Jan. 1, 2013, going on to win reelection five more times, including several unopposed primaries along the way, before leaving the Assembly twelve years later.
TWELVE YEARS IN THE ASSEMBLY
Over her Assembly tenure, Fahy became one of the Legislature’s more prolific sponsors. According to her official biography, she was prime sponsor of more than 300 bills, over 110 of which became law.
PATRICIA FAHY'S ASSEMBLY RECORD, 2013 TO 2024
Over twelve years in the Assembly, Fahy introduced more than 300 bills and saw more than 110 signed into law, according to her official Senate biography.
Her office credits her with the nation’s first Gun Industry Liability Law holding manufacturers accountable for their role in gun violence, the nation’s first Right to Repair law, and the first statewide expansion of college tuition assistance in more than two decades.
She also introduced the state’s first Short-Term Rental Registry, secured $5 million in 2022 for a feasibility study to reimagine the I-787 highway along Albany’s waterfront, and helped establish a statewide 30×30 goal to conserve 30 percent of New York’s land and water by 2030.
Her other priorities included expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit and restricting toxic PFAS chemicals in food packaging. In her first term she was named Freshman Legislator of the Year by the state School Boards Association and later received Upper Hudson Planned Parenthood’s Advocate for Choice award.
She also chaired the Assembly Majority’s steering committee from 2021 to 2023, a position that put her close to leadership decisions on which bills reached the floor for a vote each session.
A PERSONAL LOSS
In February 2022, Fahy’s son, Brendan Fahy Bequette, a 25 year old cinematographer, died after a 20 month battle with a rare, aggressive mediastinal cancer, according to NEWS10.
“He was a kid who really wanted to live,” Fahy told the Times Union at the time. “We’re just devastated.” Two years later, on the night she won her Senate race, she told supporters, “I am missing my son tonight.”
“Everything I do is in his name,” she added that night, a phrase she has repeated often since as she has continued to sponsor legislation touching on health care, disability rights and cancer research funding.
Fahy with interns and staff at Historic Cherry Hill, July 2026, announcing state funding for a new interpretive plan. (NYS Senate)
MOVE TO THE STATE SENATE
When 14 term Senator Neil Breslin announced in 2024 that he would not seek reelection, Fahy ran to succeed him in the 46th District, which covers all of Montgomery County and parts of Albany and Schenectady counties.
She defeated Republican Ted Danz Jr. with just under 56 percent of the vote, according to Ballotpedia, and was sworn in on Jan. 1, 2025, becoming one of the Senate’s newer members with over a decade of legislative experience already behind her.
In the Senate, she chairs the Disabilities Committee and also sits on the Agriculture, Environmental Conservation, Higher Education and Local Government committees, giving her a hand in several of the chamber’s most active policy areas.
In May 2026, the Senate passed her bill directing the state Department of Transportation to study transforming Albany’s Uptown Parking Lot District, home to the Harriman State Office Campus, as part of the $1.7 billion relocation of the Wadsworth Laboratory there. Gov. Hochul signed it into law.
She has also pushed to unmask ICE agents statewide through her MELT and RADAR Acts, pressed for a larger inflationary increase for disability service workers as Disabilities Committee chair, and sought tougher penalties for the misuse of flare guns after a violent incident in Albany.
CONTROVERSIES AND CRITICISM
The Communication Bill of Rights dispute
In early 2026, Fahy found herself at the center of a fight over legislation meant to protect the communication rights of nonspeaking people with disabilities, serving as both the bill’s Senate sponsor and, as committee chair, its gatekeeper.
After the state’s Office for People With Developmental Disabilities raised concerns, she amended her version to add “validated” communication and “autonomous authorship” requirements, language that had not been in the Assembly’s version, which had already passed unanimously.
The change caused what City & State New York described as a rift between Fahy and the Assembly’s sponsor, Angelo Santabarbara, who argued the amendments would hand the state “complete control over everyone’s communication device.”
Advocates, including relatives of Helen Keller, wrote to Fahy arguing the changes “weaken protections for the very people this bill was meant to support.” Fahy has said she was acting on OPWDD’s advice, which holds that her version is likelier to survive a legal challenge.
The dispute drew wider attention in June 2026, when NBC News reported that nonspeaking advocates were questioning campaign donations to Fahy’s reelection effort in the wake of the amendment. As of this writing, the bill remains stalled in her own committee.
RUNNING FOR REELECTION
Fahy launched her 2026 reelection campaign in late July and is on the ballot again this November against Republican and Conservative Party nominee Martha McHugh, in a race that is one of 63 Senate seats up statewide this cycle.
LOOKING AHEAD
With her seat back before voters this November and the communication rights fight still unresolved in her committee, Fahy heads into the fall balancing a long record of sponsored legislation against a rare, public break with allies in the disability advocacy community.
For more on Albany’s legislative delegation, see PagPol’s profile of her successor in the Assembly, Gabriella Romero, and PagPol’s Albany County page. Sign up for PagPol’s Albany County newsletter to follow this story.
