The Young Populist Trying to Redefine the New York Democratic Party — and We Don’t Mean Mamdani

From the outside, it seems like a hard sell. Chester is in Orange County, where Republicans dominate politics. President Donald Trump won the county by 8 points in 2024, and Republicans have long controlled county government. Skoufis, meanwhile, describes himself as “center-left” and supports policies like higher taxes on the rich, free pre-K, and free tuition at public colleges.

But Skoufis, whose state Senate district nearly matches the county lines, thinks he’s cracked the code. He represents one of the reddest districts of any Democrat in Albany, and often brags that he is more popular than Governor Kathy Hochul among his constituents. During the past three presidential election cycles, he said, Orange County had a “surprising” number of homes sporting both Trump and Skoufis lawn signs. 

That Saturday, the voter who derided city Democrats assured Skoufis he planned to vote for the Democratic slate. 

“We don’t really have the commie Democrats they have down in the city,” the man said, an obvious reference to New York City’s then-Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani. Skoufis laughed and agreed. 

Skoufis does not shy away from antagonizing his Democratic Party colleagues. Last year he delivered a speech on the Senate floor accusing Hochul of running the state budget process like a “monarch.” (Later, Hochul vetoed seven of his bills on a single day in September.)

Toward the end of last year, their feud came to an end. Skoufis declined to go into detail about the resolution, but said he had a “series of conversations” with Hochul and her senior staff that calmed tensions.

“We all resolved that this fight is stupid, it’s not serving anybody well, and that we’re far better off working together,” said Skoufis, who has since reintroduced several of the bills she vetoed. His battle with the state’s most powerful politician had begun and ended unexpectedly — evidence, he said, of his philosophy that politics is often akin to “changing the tires on a moving car.”

He passed the most bills last year of any lawmaker, was appointed to the executive committee of the Democratic National Committee (after a failed long-shot bid to serve as chair), and led oversight hearings into Hochul’s overhaul of the state’s home care system. His outspoken and sometimes abrasive style has captured media attention and made him one of the most recognizable names in state politics.

Elected officials and advocates told New York Focus that Skoufis is primarily motivated by delivering for his constituents. His ability to do so on basic issues — like renovating a courthouse, putting a splash pad in Port Jervis, and helping the town of Cornwall get funding for holiday lights on Main Street — is part of why he consistently wins reelection, they said.

He’s made enemies of some local progressive groups who believe he was a key force in watering down the 2024 good cause eviction law, which Skoufis vocally opposed. But critics and allies alike said he was deeply committed to the causes he chose to dedicate himself to — even if that has sometimes led him to be petulant.

“His critics aren’t wrong when they say he’s a strident, obnoxious, pain-in-the-ass,” said John Kaehny, the executive director of Reinvent Albany, a government watchdog group.  But Kaehny called him “a tremendous advocate for his constituents,” “great for Democracy in New York,” and “a very effective politician.” 

Skoufis is seeking to use his success and platform to steer New York Democrats — and the national party — in a new direction. He believes that the future of the party lies north of the city, in a purple district that resembles the suburban and exurban areas where his party is battling to win back voters.

His most notably populist crusade has been against the approximately $10 billion in corporate subsidies that state and local entities grant each year. He’s brought corporate watchdogging to his role as chair of the state Senate investigations committee, where he’s held hearings on energy prices, live event ticketing, and pharmacy benefit managers. 

In the 2023 state budget, he convinced the state to install a first-of-its-kind independent monitor to oversee the activities of an Orange County agency tasked with attracting corporations to the area with tax agreements. Since November, Skoufis has been locked in a battle with that office, the Orange County Industrial Development Agency, after he successfully urged the monitor to veto a 15-year, $80 million package of tax breaks for Amazon to build a 3.2 million-square-foot distribution center.

The IDA sued the state to overturn the veto in January. Within weeks, though, the agency’s leaders began negotiating a possible compromise with Skoufis to wind down the monitor in exchange for  reforms, such as wage floors for workers on IDA-funded projects and more input from localities before tax breaks are granted. In the end, they were unable to reach an agreement, and Skoufis is now pushing to extend the monitor’s presence for another three years in the upcoming state budget.

Skoufis has supported Mamdani’s push to raise taxes on millionaires and big corporations. But he’s quick to note that the policy would have a limited impact on his constituents, even if the tax hike were ever applied statewide.

“I represent very few of them,” he said, “but if you are a millionaire in New York state, I am open and conceptually supportive of modest increases to personal income taxes.”

Elsewhere, he sharply diverges from Mamdani: The senator has declined to support statewide immigrant sanctuary legislation, although he says he wants to “protect” undocumented people who live their lives “peaceably.” And Skoufis was a high-profile opponent of congestion pricing, as well as good cause eviction.

Skoufis is skeptical of activists and believes that the average voter doesn’t care much about hot-button ideological debates.

“I don’t read a script from white papers when I’m communicating with constituents,” he said. “They don’t expect me to, they don’t want me to, and if I did, I wouldn’t win every couple of years in my district.”

Skoufis accused Republican County Executive Steve Neuhaus of an unethical scheme in which the county awarded a major contract to the family member of one of Neuhaus’s closest advisers. (County officials denied any wrongdoing.) 

When knocking on doors, Skoufis made sure to tell voters about an FBI investigation into the alleged corruption. 

“The average person appreciates that … when I find wrongdoing, fraud, I actually say something about it, I do something about it,” Skoufis said. 

“I don’t go along to get along,” he often says.

He won that election — against a Republican — without the support of the state’s top Democratic elected official, then-Governor Andrew Cuomo.

According to Skoufis, the Cuomo administration contacted his campaign and said they had one question for him before they could decide whether to endorse. 

“I’m thinking to myself, it’s probably a question about [reproductive] choice or taxes or the environment or something big picture,” Skoufis recalled. “You know what their question was before considering an endorsement? What my position was on rail on the new Tappan Zee Bridge.”

Cuomo opposed spending money to add a rail track to the bridge, which would have been a significant expansion of commuter transit for Orange County residents. Skoufis said he supported the rail project.