State Senator James Skoufis of New York announced on Sunday what is certain to be a long-shot bid to become chairman of the Democratic National Committee, pitching himself as an outsider candidate who has won in a part of the country where President-elect Donald J. Trump prevailed.
Mr. Skoufis, 37, has served in the New York State Legislature for a dozen years but is a virtual unknown outside Albany and his district, which covers Orange County in the Hudson Valley. He enters the race without extensive relationships with party members beyond New York State — a detriment he aims to turn into an advantage.
“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,” Mr. Skoufis said in an interview last week. “And here we are.”
Where Democrats are is locked out of power in Washington, facing decades of conservative dominance over the federal courts and seemingly more depressed about Mr. Trump’s imminent return to power than motivated to win back political control.
In this environment, a candidate like Mr. Skoufis has little to lose and much to gain should he leave D.N.C. members with a positive impression — not to mention that it will be far easier to get booked on cable television as a candidate for party chair than as just a state senator.
Mr. Skoufis, who in an announcement video declared himself both an “outsider” and an “underdog,” enters the race without a single endorsement from one of the 448 voting members of the national committee. He joins a field that includes Ken Martin, the Minnesota Democratic chairman, and Martin O’Malley, the former Maryland governor. Other potential candidates include Ben Wikler, the Wisconsin Democratic chairman; Max Rose, a former congressman from Staten Island; and Chuck Rocha, a veteran Democratic consultant.
Jaime Harrison, the current D.N.C. chairman, is not seeking a second term. The election is expected to take place on Feb. 1.
Here is a conversation with Mr. Skoufis, lightly edited and condensed.
Why are you doing this?
We need 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.
How does somebody like you who does not have deep relationships with party members expect to gain traction in this race?
The conversations I’ve been having, the overwhelming sentiment is a desire to do things differently, to do things in a way that we’re not just underscoring the definition of insanity and repeating the same old mistakes over and over again.
I know how to win. I know how to talk to folks, know how to show up everywhere. People understand that we need to try something new here. We need an outsider. We need someone who hasn’t been a part of the problem and a cog in the wheel for years, if not decades.
Why should anyone consider this more than an effort to boost your name recognition and follow in the footsteps of Pete Buttigieg, who ran for this office in 2017 and made it a springboard for his presidential campaign in 2020?
When my wife first heard this comparison about a week or so ago, comparing this run to then-Mayor Pete’s run for D.N.C. chair, she first laughed and then she turned to me and said, “Pete’s a lot smarter than you are.” And so I agree with my wife. I am not Pete Buttigieg. This is something that I’m in to win.
What state should go first in the 2028 presidential primary?
If there are other candidates in this race who cannot answer a question like this or a question about whether Biden should have stepped down sooner than he did, then certainly that candidate, if elected chair, is not going to be able to go on to Joe Rogan’s podcast, go on to Fox News and be able to answer questions in any manner in which we present to the public that the Democratic Party is fighting for them.
South Carolina deserves at least a crack at a competitive, open presidential primary. They should go first, and then let’s see how it goes.
Since you brought up President Biden, what should he have done?
It would have been helpful to the Democratic Party if he had decided to not run for re-election sooner on the calendar.
Did you think that at the time?
I thought he should have decided not to run again months prior to his making a decision.
Did you say that in public anywhere?
No one asked me publicly. So, no.
Why do you think Kamala Harris lost?
Sometimes I think the average voter looks at the Democratic Party and some Democratic candidates and thinks that we’re running for university chancellor instead of public office based on some of the language that we use.
Governor Walz was spot-on in describing JD Vance as weird. He sounds weird. He talks weird. He acts weird. But if we’re being honest with ourselves, the Democratic Party can sound weird sometimes, too. And we have to fix that. That is a fundamental issue that extends beyond the Harris campaign.
I’ll finish with this. Why do you need to be the D.N.C. chairman to push for the changes you say are necessary to help the party win?
Stakeholders in our party expect the chair to be doing what I’m describing. Anyone can do this, but at the end of the day the D.N.C. chair is the face of the party. The D.N.C. chair is the best-positioned party office in the entire country to be able to do these things and provide a model to state parties and county parties and get our message out.
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