NY Sen. James Skoufis joins race to lead Democratic Party as it regroups after Trump win
State Sen. James Skoufis has vaulted himself into national politics by seeking to lead the Democratic Party as it regroups after Donald Trump's victory and signs of a rightward shift by voters even in blue states like New York.
The 37-year-old senator, who represents much of Orange County and just won a fourth term, announced his campaign for Democratic National Committee chairman on Saturday with a video that touted his 14-point winning margin on Nov. 5 in a district Trump handily won. His message: he knows how to connect with voters in places where his party has lost ground, and can help Democrats do the same nationally.
He's considered a longshot in a field of well-connected contenders that includes former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley and the state Democratic leaders of Wisconsin and Minnesota. But Skoufis is casting himself as an outsider with a fresh perspective that Democrats need to recover from a bruising defeat that will leave Washington fully in Republican control.
"It's time to try something new," Skoufis told the USA Today Network on Monday, in the midst of a flurry of interviews about his run. "So I come to this race as absolutely the outsider, but more importantly as someone who just knows how to win. And that's what we have to exclusively get back to focusing on as the Democratic Party."
Skoufis got his start in politics as a Woodbury town councilman right after college, and he won an Assembly seat at age 24, making him the state Legislature's youngest member at that time. He then prevailed in a 2018 race to succeed retiring Republican Sen. Bill Larkin, and has been re-elected three times since.
Now he's scrambling to introduce himself to Democratic National Committee members in all 50 states and in U.S. territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam. Some 448 members in all are set to vote on Feb. 1 at a gathering in Maryland to elect a successor to Jaime Harrison, who has been party chairman for four years and isn't seeking a second term.
Skoufis said he had called about 100 committee members so far in his first two days as a candidate, and plans to travel around the U.S. to drum up support.
Skoufis, a state senator, hopes to rebuild national Democratic party after big GOP gains
His mission is to restore a "big tent party" that dominates elections again, Skoufis said. And he argued Democrats must start by listening to voters instead of lecturing them, and by "showing up everywhere" — including heavily Republican areas — and speaking to "less-than-friendly media outlets."
"We as a party and we as candidates have to show up in all of those places to bring our message, even if those places are traditionally uncomfortable," Skoufis said. "And that's something that I've lived and breathed every day for 12 years. And so I'm willing to do it, I'm able to do it and I have done it."
He rolled to re-election last month by 54.5%-40.5% against Republican Dorey Houle, a Monroe town councilwoman he narrowly beat two years earlier. That put him a full 26 points ahead of Kamala Harris, who lost to Trump by 12 points in New York's 42nd Senate District.
Two unique factors contributed to that huge spread. One was bloc-voting by Kiryas Joel, which voted overwhelmingly for both Skoufis and Trump with the endorsement of leaders in the Satmar Hasidic community. Another was a third candidate in the Skoufis-Houle race who won 5% of the votes on the Conservative Party line.
If elected to lead the Democratic Party, Skoufis said, he'll continue serving as a senator until lawmakers finish negotiating the next state budget, which is due by April 1. Then he would give up his seat in Albany to work full-time as Democratic chairman.
Chris McKenna covers government and politics for The Journal News and USA Today Network. Reach him at cmckenna@gannett.com.