New York State Sen. James Skoufis Wants To Lead The DNC. His Anonymity Is A Selling Point.

Of all of the Democrats who have announced bids to chair the Democratic National Committee, New York state Sen. James Skoufis might be the most unexpected.

Skoufis, 37, is not exactly a household name with a traditional DNC chair’s curriculum vitae. Among announced candidates to lead Democrats’ central governing body, he boasts neither the party management experience of Ben Wikler, chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, or Ken Martin, chair of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, nor the national profile of Martin O’Malley, who governed Maryland and ran for president before becoming commissioner of the Social Security Administration.

But Skoufis believes that his experience winning a fourth term to a Hudson Valley state Senate seat in a district Donald Trump won handily makes him the best contender to lead Democrats back to power.

“For 12 years, I have lived and breathed going out into communities, into meeting halls, and speaking to media outlets that are, let’s say, less than traditionally friendly to Democrats,” Skoufis told HuffPost, referring to his first state Assembly win in 2012. “That’s the skillset that is most important here as we look to elect a new DNC chair.”

And at a time when many Democrats think it’s time for an extreme makeover, Skoufis is pitching his lack of a national profile or experience not as a liability but as an asset. He spoke to HuffPost by phone on Tuesday from a Holiday Inn in Scottsdale, Arizona, where he was camping out to introduce himself to state party chairs and other officers attending the Association of State Democratic Committees’ winter meeting.

“As the outsider candidate, I’m the one that is best equipped to rebuild the DNC from the ground up,” Skoufis said. “No more tinkering around the edges, no more reforming around the margins.”

Skoufis will get his chance to test that proposition on Feb. 1, when the DNC’s 448-person roster of consummate party insiders – state party chairs, veteran consultants, activists, and elected officials – decide who will succeed outgoing chair Jaime Harrison.

There may be more appetite from Democrats this year for a relative outsider – Skoufis is, after all, still a seasoned politician – following the decisive victory by Trump, a businessman who held no public office before first winning the presidency in 2016. Skoufis’ candidacy calls to mind Pete Buttigieg’s DNC run in 2017. Then the unknown mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Buttigieg dropped out shortly before voting began in the chair’s race, but used the bid as a springboard for a presidential run that he parlayed into national name recognition and a job as Biden’s transportation secretary.

Skoufis, of course, insists he is only focused on the job in front of him. But if Skoufis succeeds, just what kind of renovation does the New York lawmaker have in mind for the DNC?

He wants a party that is more forthcoming, more financially transparent, more open to constructive feedback, more receptive to constituencies who feel left out of the Democratic tent and more present on hostile or nontraditional media platforms.

“Because I will not owe anything to the consultant class in Washington or the cocktail circuit in Washington, one of the things I will do is I will let every single vendor contract expire,” Skoufis said. “Many of these contracts are friends of a friend of a congressman. They’re getting seven, eight-figure contracts because they’re well connected with the DNC leadership. That ends on day 1.”

Once those contracts are re-bid, Skoufis would explore ways to “shift an enormous amount of resources” from the DNC to state and local parties, labor groups and other partners operating outside of Washington.

Letting every vendor contract expire might be easier said than done, especially as the DNC prepares to help Democrats to win competitive gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia in November 2025. Skoufis is consulting an array of insiders and said he plans to hire an experienced executive director to help him manage the party, a massive organization with which he has no experience.

By the time I spoke to him, Skoufis had already said that President Joe Biden’s decision to stay in the 2024 presidential race as long as he did hurt Vice President Kamala Harris’s chances (something Skoufis did not say publicly prior to Biden’s withdrawal, but claims that he would have admitted, had he been asked to weigh in on-record).

He also thinks that South Carolina should be given a chance to go first in the 2028 presidential primary, after holding the inaugural spot for the first time in this year’s non-competitive primary. Such a move that would put the DNC on yet another collision course with New Hampshire, where being the first primary in the nation is enshrined in state law, and dismay many Democrats who would like to see a less conservative state go first. Biden’s decision to have the DNC move the Palmetto State up on the primary schedule was controversial; the DNC’s rules committee is set to take the matter up once again later this month.

When asked, Martin and O’Malley have not said whether they support changes to the primary schedule. Wikler’s campaign told HuffPost that it is the chair’s job to ensure a fair nominating process without putting a thumb on the scale before the rules committee and the broader DNC membership make their decision.

Without mentioning anyone by name, Skoufis has blasted rivals who have not said whether Biden should have withdrawn earlier, or articulated a position on the primary calendar.

“If you can’t answer those questions from traditionally friendly media outlets, you’re not going on Joe Rogan’s podcast. If you do, you’re getting eaten alive,” Skoufis said. “We need a DNC chair who can answer questions. Obfuscating is obvious to voters.”

Skoufis is the son of a Greek immigrant and got started in state politics shortly after graduating college. He has a light but audible New Yorker accent and an unassuming demeanor — a reflection of both his birthplace in Flushing, Queens, and his upbringing in exurban-to-rural Orange County, just north of the city’s suburban rings.

Skoufis is putting a positive spin on his electoral achievements: He defeated his Republican opponent by more than 13 percentage points in a state Senate district that his campaign says went for Trump by 12 points. (Detailed estimates are not yet publicly available, but Trump carried Orange County as a whole, which includes some areas not in Skoufis’ district, by eight points.)

What Skoufis neglects to mention is that his Republican opponent, Dorey Houle, was likely hindered by the vote-splitting presence of a Conservative Party candidate on the ticket, Timothy Mitts, who received nearly 5% of the vote. Harris and Trump, by contrast, were the only two candidates at the top of the ticket in New York. (In a follow-up exchange with HuffPost, Skoufis argued that he would also have picked up some of Mitts’ voters, had Mitts not been on the ballot.)

Regardless, the Democratic Party as a whole might stand to learn something from the sheer breadth and diversity of the coalition Skoufis has assembled, with his mixture of moderate and progressive stances and his focus on local relationships.

Skoufis has distinguished himself from more progressive colleagues by opposing New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s proposed tax increase to close a public transportation funding gap, as well as supporting her successful effort to give judges greater discretion to set cash bail amid a fight over bail reform. He is proud of securing the endorsements of the local firefighters union — whose parent organization declined to endorse a presidential candidate — and that of a number of law enforcement unions that mainly backed Republicans.

At the same time, Skoufis has managed to retain the support of the left-wing Working Families Party, along with that of key environmental, abortion rights and animal welfare groups, thanks to a progressive streak on a host of other issues. He has, for example, advocated for higher pay for home health care workers and introduced legislation that would allow New York to import cheaper prescription drugs from Canada.

Skoufis’ prescription for Democrats now is not that they abandon their progressive positions on social and cultural issues, but that they prioritize kitchen-table economic policies that have broader public appeal.

“American voters know where we stand on abortion. The diminishing returns are complete, if we’re sending out the 700th glossy mailer in a battleground state on abortion,” Skoufis said.“We need to focus far more heavily on bread-and-butter economic issues of affordability, working-class roots, talk about why we’re the party of unions. We do not emphasize those types of priorities nearly enough, and so there needs to be a reorientation on policy emphasis.”

Skoufis also wants to signal patience and respect for people who have been alienated by some of the party’s progressive positions on public safety, immigration and transgender rights.

“We need to keep in mind, for example, that it was just 20 years ago that by a 60% to 40% margin the American electorate opposed marriage equality,” Skoufis continued. “We had to have an intense and public conversation with the American electorate to get them to the place where they are now, which is 70% support, 30% oppose. And we are the party that did that, because we engaged on the issue.”

Asked how he would handle anti-trans rhetoric from Republicans, Skoufis said he would go on offense, pointing out how the GOP has made the rights of a tiny minority group an issue. As an example, he pointed to the House GOP Conference’s mean-spirited response to the arrival of Rep.-elect Sarah McBride (D-Del.), Congress’ first openly transgender member, which included a decision to require everyone in the U.S. Capitol complex to use bathrooms typical of their assigned sex at birth.

“In Congress, the incoming [GOP] majority – I didn’t hear one word for weeks about affordability, one word for weeks about having a government that makes us safer, and securing the border. All we heard about for the first couple of weeks after the election was talk about bathroom access,” he said. “So we have to point out that it’s the Republican Party that is needlessly obsessed with this issue.”

As for permitting transgender girls and women to compete in women’s sports, Skoufis said, “Let school districts decide.”

At the same time, Skoufis said he believes constituencies on the left, or that don’t fit neatly into ideological boxes, have also been neglected by the Democratic Party. He would prioritize meeting with Arab Americans, progressives and college campus activists dissatisfied with the Biden administration’s decision to continue arming Israel amid the country’s devastating invasion of Gaza.

Asked whether he planned to endorse different policies to mollify the latter groups, Skoufis said only that he would begin by meeting with them.

“Let me answer that question with a question: When was the last time a DNC member, DNC chair, met with any of those stakeholders? When has a DNC chair ever given them the respect that they deserve, and have met with them? I’m willing to bet a lot of money, it’s probably never.”