James Skoufis was 24 when he was first elected to an open red-leaning Assembly seat in Orange County, NY. He was the youngest member of the legislature. His voting record is progressive. In 2018 longtime state Senator William Larkin (R) retired and Skoufis flipped the seat and helped flip the Senate itself. On Saturday he used Twitter to announce he’s running to be chair of the DNC, a real long shot bid since no one knows him outside of New York politics. His Twitter thread:
“Announcement: I’m running to be the next chair of the DNC. I’m an outsider, but I know how to win. We’re losing on politics, messaging, organizing and policy. And we’ve been running the same stale, inside-the-Beltway playbook driven by the same, tired, inside-the-Beltway voices. No more. We’re doing it differently. That changes the day I am elected.
“We have stopped competing. And we need to compete, and we need to win, and win big, again. I do it every two years in a type of district that’s become out of reach for most Democrats. In fact, I outrun our own party and the GOP by double-digits each cycle in my red district in New York. And if I can do it, thousands of Democrats from the presidential level to county legislatures and school boards can do it, too.
“My victory playbook: 1) I embrace my outsider, underdog status. You want an insider, support someone else. I’m scrappy and will fight for every vote. 2) Empower state and local parties: dollars I raise as chair will not go to bolster a bloated Beltway bureaucracy. The vast majority goes to our fighters in the trenches, and that’s state and county orgs, partnerships with organized labor, and empowering our DNC groups like the Youth Council; 3) Cede not another inch of ground to Republicans; 4) Show up everywhere; 5) Stop relying on academic, politically correct language & messaging that sorts us unnecessarily by outdated, stale notions of identity and alienates voters; 6) Lead with a populist message that’s strong and includes as many Americans as possible.
“Winning is the only thing that matters, and the party needs to fight relentlessly as we look to the future after across-the-board losses, and the fracturing of what used to be a dominant coalition. Voters have spoken, and we need to listen, not lecture. A majority have stopped thinking we have their backs. Donald Trump is corrupt, incompetent, and will drive up prices and make us less safe and less competitive. Voters are in for a world of hurt. It’s on us to be the alternative who isn’t just anti-Trump but trusted again to be fighters who will deliver on behalf of all Americans.
“We must win in the off-year elections in 2025; take back the House and Senate in 2026; and roar back into power and retake the White House in 2028. Join me and let’s throw away the DNC’s stale, Beltway-centered playbook so that we rebuild, stop giving in to Republicans, and start winning again, everywhere. Not just the party, but the country depends on it.”
Yesterday, Reid Epstein interviewed him. When he brought up that he’s virtually unknown outside of Albany and Orange County, Skoufis replied that “We tried the D.C. Beltway thing, we tried the decades-long operative thing, we tried the sort of party machine thing over and over and over and over again. And here we are… We need to learn how to win again. And it’s what I do every two years. Not in a Democratic area or even a purple area. I win every two years in deep-red constituencies. This past election, Trump won my district by 12 percentage points, and I did over 20 points better than the top of the ticket. I’ve won, in fact, in a Trump district three times now. And so we need to get back to winning.”
Trump won the district against Kamala by 14% at the same time that Skoufis beat his Republican opponent by 14 points. Skoufis says if he wins at the February 1st DNC meeting in Maryland— where former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley is backed by Rahm Emanuel and his operation and is viewed as the front-runner— he will step down as a senator so he can devote himself to the job full time.
He told the Albany Times Union that “For the first time in as long as people can remember, the firefighters’ union didn’t endorse our Democratic top-of-the-ticket this year; I earned their endorsement. We lost the police unions many cycles ago; I earned 13 police union endorsements this re-election. We need to start growing our tent again. We need to bring in the moderates we’ve lost, who look at us and listen to us and sometimes we sound like we’re running more for university chancellor in the academic language that we use than we do running for public office. But we also have to bring the college campus advocates and those on the left side of our party back under the tent. Our party tent has frayed on both sides. I know how to coalition-build. I know how to grow this tent, and most importantly, I know how to win. That’s what the next DNC chair needs as an outsider. We’ve tried the D.C. Beltway approach. We’ve tried the decades-long operative approach. We need an outsider who knows how to win to step up and run the Democratic National Committee and make wholesale changes, not just tinker around the edges.”
He also said that “One of the first things I’ll do is let every single contract at the DNC expire, from the office supplies up to the seven- and eight-figure massive vendor contracts we have for paid communications. I know, and DNC members know, that for far too long, like hogs at a trough, a lot of these consultants have been ripping off our party. We need to take those savings. We need to redirect an enormous sum of money from those types of contracts to our state parties, to our county parties, to new partnerships with organized labor. Howard Dean talked about a 50-state strategy. We need a (3,144) county strategy. That’s how many counties are in the country. We need to rebuild this party block by block at the ground level in every corner of the country.”
UPDATE: This morning, Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Ben Wikler jumped into the race. Many progressives, who know of him through his work at MoveOn, and through the stupendous work he has done rebuilding the Wisconsin Democratic Party, have been urging him to do just that. One DNC member told me that if he can help the moribund Ohio and Florida parties come back to life the way the Wisconsin party has, Wikler could could down as the best DNC chair in decades.
Hopefully No. The idea that we lost 'moderates' is the logic that just lost. We gained the moderates he is talking about; people making over $100k. What candidate sounded like a university chancellor? Harris ran the most right wing campaign in years. This guy has the same assumptions as the establishment, and the same agenda, he just thinks he can do it better.