The Facts About Protect Monroe-Woodbury and their Sketchy PR Stunt

Let's take a closer look at that alleged Ethics Complaint submitted against the Village of Woodbury, and then used by James G. Skoufis's Protect Monroe-Woodbury to smear its Mayor.

We requested time to speak to the Village of Woodbury concerning an ethics complaint submitted by Mrs. Elise Cagan, of Highland Mills, on April 20th, 2025, which became the subject of a story on Mid-Hudson News.

The Mid-Hudson News story was then featured prominently on State Senator James G. Skoufis’s Protect Monroe-Woodbury website. Protect Monroe-Woodbury is an Independent Expenditure Committee set up by the State Senator and his Director of Operations, William J. Alexander. Initially, it was to be called Preserve Orange County. We want to note here the date that Preserve Orange County was first formed in New York State: April 7th, 2025.

Mr. Skoufis, Mr. Alexander, or Jorge Perez of The Parkside Group, then used the Preserve Orange County Facebook Page to attack Monroe Town Councilwoman, Maureen Richardson. A woman whom Mr. Skoufis has been sexually harassing, on and off, since December of 2022. Mr. Skoufis declined to respond to questions concerning his aggressive behavior toward Mrs. Richardson.

State Senator James G. Skoufis previously had an affair with his former Chief of Staff. Mr. Skoufis’s next Chief of Staff, Emma Fuentes, was fired or asked to resign — depending on who you believe — following the relevation that Anthony V. Jorge, the State Senator’s employee, working as an External Relations Associate, had his mother Gloria L. Delgado, challenge Monroe Town Councilwoman Maureen Richardson’s ballot signatures. Mrs. Delgado also challenged the ballot signatures for Mrs. Richardson’s running mates for the upcoming primary. Mr. Jorge and Mrs. Delgado declined to comment when asked about this activity. Mrs. Gloria L. Delgado has again challenged Mrs. Richardson’s ballot signatures, this time concerning the third-party ballot line, Preserve Monroe.

Mrs. Fuentes claims she is currently interviewing her replacement in public social media posts. (Mr. Skoufis declined to comment concerning the nature of Mrs. Fuentes’s looming departure.)

The Parkside Group is a lobbying and PR firm in Albany that Mr. Skoufis, since 2018, has utilized the services of to the tune of nearly $5M. Mr. Skoufis’s former legislative aide, Alexia Holden, is a Vice President of The Parkside Group. The Parkside Group offers lobbying services for large organizations and multinational corporations. We wrote to the New York State Commisison on Ethics and Lobbying for clarification about the multimillion dollar expenditures Mr. Skoufis has made to The Parkside Group, the role of Mrs. Alexia Holden in lobbying in terms of legislation that Mr. Skoufis could vote on, if any, and whether or not it was appropriate for an independent expenditure committee operated by a State Senator to utilize the services of an organization that would also potentially lobby him on future legislation.

Through his phone number, listed on an attack ad against Councilwoman Maureen Richardson, we can identify Mr. Jorge Perez and his activities on behalf of Mr. Skoufis’s Preserve Monroe-Woodbury. Neither Mr. Perez, Mr. Skoufis, or Mr. Alexander have replied to repeated requests for comments on this matter.

As of this writing, despite legally being required to do so, Mr. James Skoufis’s Protect Monroe-Woodbury has not disclosed any of its expenditures, including a services agreement with The Parkside Group. We have reached out to the Board of Elections to notify them of this, and reported the matter to the New York State Board of Elections Law Enforcement Division. We also have raised concerns with the Law Enforcement Division concerning potential coordination between the State Senator and Brandon Calore in Woodbury, and the State Senator and David Rabbitts in Monroe.

After the use of the name Preserve Orange County was brought to the attention of the real Preserve Orange County, located an hour east of my home city of Los Angeles, Mr. Skoufis and Mr. Alexander changed the name of the organization to Protect Monroe-Woodbury.

Ten days from when Preserve Orange County / Protect Monroe-Woodbury was formed as an independent expenditure committee, The Monroe Gazette received a threatening and gaslighting email on behalf of someone who identified themselves as an associate of the State Senator. That was April 17th, 2025. Ten days following the formation of Preserve Orange County / Protect Monroe-Woodbury.

Three days later, on April 20th, Mrs. Elise Cagan submitted an Ethics Complaint to the Village of Woodbury. According to an IT professional, who helped fulfill The Monroe Gazette’s FOIL request, Mrs. Cagan’s email disappeared into a spam folder, and it was not seen or viewed by anyone until Mid-Hudson News posted a blurry screenshot of it on June 6th, 2025. Over a full month following their original report on Mrs. Cagan’s Ethics Complaint.

The original story, as reported by Mid-Hudson News did not include Mrs. Cagan’s letter. Just a screenshot that she had submitted along with it. Mid-Hudson News only provided the screenshot of Mrs. Cagan’s email after we wrote to investigate its legitimacy. (We have called and emailed Mrs. Elise Cagan to inform her that her Ethics complaint was lost in a Spam filter, and whether or not she still wished to pursue the Ethics Complaint as filed with the Village of Woodbury. We also asked her a number of questions concerning whether or not the screenshot submitted to Mid-Hudson News, and the Village of Woodbury, was altered. An EXIF search on the exact photo Mrs. Cagan provided the Village indicated that it had been in some fashion. Both Mrs. Elise Cagan and Hank Gross, the Editor of Mid-Hudson News, have not responded to emails requesting comment for this story.)

Upon finding the marker to indicate Mrs. Cagan’s screenshot was altered — highlighted above using two different EXIF tools identifying markers in the screenshot indicating the use of Photoshop — we began our investigation.

It’s that investigation that we wish to share with Woodbury residents. The story of Mr. Cagan’s Ethics Complaint, on its own, would not be newsworthy; however, as we informed Mrs. Cagan, the timing of her letter, the shoddy reporting of Mid-Hudson News, and the letter’s immediate utilization of it by Senator Skoufis’s Protect Monroe-Woodbury website raise concerns both about the legitimacy of her complaint, the coverage provided by it from Mid-Hudson News, and whether or not this letter was part of a coordinated PR and marketing campaign perpetrated on behalf of State Senator Skoufis.

With the exception of PAC money, there is no limit on the amount of money an Independent Expenditure Committee, such as Protect Monroe-Woodbury, can receive and utilize, according to Kathleen McGrath of the New York State Board of Elections. Whom we spoke with in researching this story. Mr. Skoufis, at the time of this writing, has north of $6M in his campaign accounts according to data available on the NYS BOE website. If you are as concerned as we are about the use of big money in local politics, then this is a story that is worth sharing with the larger community. Hence our desire to request time to address the people of Woodbury concerning what Mr. Skoufis is up to here.

This request became more urgent when many Woodbury residents received a mailer last week calling the Woodbury Mayor “Greedy Giacomazza.” Without any background information, they would be forgiven for thinking Protect Monroe-Woodbury was an arm of Brandon Calore’s campaign. And not something being sent to them on behalf of State Senator James G. Skoufis.

Mr. Calore has claimed his campaign for mayor is self-funded, but also told The Monroe Gazette he won’t file any paperwork concerning his campaign finances until after the election is over. This, we found, was incredibly questionable. (We also have many other questions for Mr. Calore, which he refuses to answer. You can find those here. We’ll note to our readers that Mr. Calore has ignored 99% of the emails we’ve sent to him. The fact that he chose to respond to the email about his campaign expenditures and income tells us there’s more to the story than he claims. We also want to note that, following our publication of news involving Mr. Calore’s relationship with CIOFFI and South Blooming Grove, the CIOFFI vehicle that had been spotted in his driveway by Woodbury residents has since vanished.

If you look at the candidates that Preserve Orange County / Protect Monroe-Woodbury opposes, you’ll find Woodbury’s Mayor Andrew Giacomazza listed under those opposed. But Mr. Calore is not listed under those that the committee supports. We will monitor this in the event another addendum is filed, if — and likely when — the Committee to Elect Woodbury Democrats endorses Brandon Calore for the November election. At this time, there is no Democratic candidate for mayor. When asked point blank if the Woodbury Democrats were going to cross-endorse Mr. Calore, David Yoffe, a Democrat running for a seat on the Town Board, immediately stopped responding to inquiries from The Monroe Gazette.

The Facts About Elise Cagan’s Village of Woodbury Ethics Complaint

Mrs. Elise Cagan claimed to “recently” come across a Like, left by the Village of Woodbury, from a September 27th, 2024 Dorey Houle for State Senate post. You can find the original post here. We’ll get back to that in a second. We asked Mrs. Elise Cagan to explain how she only “recently” came across a six-month-old Facebook Post, but she did not reply to our email. We also want to state here that we reached out to Mrs. Houle to clarify if the Village or the Mayor ever formally endorsed her. The Mayor told us in a statement that he had not endorsed Mrs. Houle’s campaign for State Senate. It’s also worth noting here that Mrs. Houle was running against … You guessed it, State Senator James G. Skoufis.

Upon examining the Facebook Post, we found no evidence that The Village of Woodbury’s official Facebook presence “liked” this post, as claimed by Mrs. Cagan. We did find evidence that demonstrates both Woodbury Town Supervisor Kathryn Luciani, and Mayor Andrew Giacomazza, liked the post in their personal capacity. We asked Mid-Hudson News whether or not they bothered to look at the original post before publishing their story. But their editor Hank Gross declined to respond when asked. We also want to note here that Mr. Gross declined to comment as to whether or not he investigated Mrs. Cagan’s claim, investigated the credibility of the screenshot included in her email, or spoke to Village of Woodbury employees, Ethics Board members, and Village officials. We spoke to multiple Village officials, Ethics Board members, and the Mayor himself for this story. They all stated that they never once heard from anyone at Mid-Hudson News to investigate the claims made by Mrs. Elise Cagan.

So we took a closer look at Mrs. Cagan’s screenshot that was submitted to the Village of Woodbury. (Mid-Hudson New’s Hank Gross declined to comment, at the time of this writing, whether or not it was Mrs. Cagan who sent him this email, or if it was sent by another party. We suspect, if it was submitted by another party that wasn’t Mrs. Cagan, that lends credence to the hypothesis that her Ethics Complaint was part of a coordinated PR stunt orchestrated by Protect Monroe-Woodbury as a way to libel Mayor Giacomazza. We have also shared our concerns with Village Attorney Kelly Naughton, and requested that she contact Mid-Hudson News to ask for either an addendum, or a full retraction, of their story. We’ll explain why we did this at the end of today’s story.

Above is the screenshot as submitted by Mrs. Cagan to the Village of Woodbury. Presumbaly also, to Mid-Hudson News for its May 5th story.

As many of you know, Facebook will often show you if your friends or family like a Facebook Post. So, since Mrs. Cagan’s Facebook Friends are publicly available to search, we conducted a search for Mr. Jim Kane. Mr. Kane is identified in the picture above submitted by Mrs. Cagan. Here’s what we found:

There were additional flaws in the Mid-Hudson News story to be found. We informed Mr. Hank Gross that his article stated, "Giacomazza, who controls the Village’s official Facebook account" which we have investigated as well and found that multiple parties have access to the Village's Facebook account. Not just the Mayor.

Mr. Gross, or the person who wrote the story — you’ll note that this story does not have an identifiable author attached to it — went on to state, "It is unclear if Giacomazza was in control of the account at the time the post was “liked” and to date, it is unknown if the committee has taken up an investigation." We asked Mr. Gross directly if either he, or Mid-Hudson News, contacted Village Officials, the mayor, or members of the Ethic Committee, which they did not reply.

So, why did we ask the Village Attorney contact Hank Gross at Mid-Hudson News to retract their story? A request we also made to Mr. Gross.

As we said to Mr. Hank Gross:

[…] I think a retraction is in order for your article, or at the very least, an addendum. After all, it is labeled an investigation, but it seems like only The Monroe Gazette is doing the work here on behalf of your readers.

And you might be wondering why I care at all: It's very simple. We have a State Senator operating an independent expenditure committee, […] which he can spend an unlimited amount of money on.

Despite this, he's currently violating two NYS election laws (coordination with candidates, not disclosing expenditures.) Your article is linked on Mr. Skoufis's website. We believe you were sent this story, either by Mrs. [Elise] Cagan or another party, as part of a PR campaign done on behalf of the State Senator.

Since 2018, Mr. Skoufis has spent almost $5M on services by The Parkside Group (you can also look this up for yourself), and we connected the Parkside Group to Protect Monroe-Woodbury's attack ads and mailers.

Now, you may not know a lot about me, and that's fine, but I'm an old school reporter. If someone told me I got played? I'd be pretty pissed. I'd also want to know by whom. Well, here's your answer. It's up to you as to whether or not you're going to act on it.

The subject line of the email we sent Mr. Gross? It said “You Got Played.”

I shared the findings that you have now all read with Mrs. Naughton. Then I added the following:

It's my belief that we're living through a national emergency. And one of the root causes of that national emergency is the failure of advertising supported media outlets such as Mid-Hudson News and The Photo-News to fact check, and verify, what they're publishing. A key difference between The Monroe Gazette and these outlets is that we don't pretend to be a neutral, Associated Press style news website. We have our opinion and our attitude, and people can decide whether they like it or not by subscribing.

But Mid-Hudson News has a higher burden to carry here, because it's supported by advertisers, and because it's presented as a more traditional media outlet. (And despite what some may claim, The Monroe Gazette ALWAYS does its fact checking prior to publication. We can't say the same happened here with this story.)

In fact, I want to point out to you that elsewhere on the Mid-Hudson News website, when they do update their stories, they have added the words UPDATED to the headline, and otherwise marked their post to inform readers of the change.

That did NOT happen with this story on Woodbury, which they labeled as an investigation. And they did NOT alert readers that they altered the original story by adding a blurry screenshot of Mrs. Cagan's letter. This is a long way of saying, I believe the Village of Woodbury was libeled by Mid-Hudson News.

They did not fact check the claims made by Mrs. Cagan. They did not investigate the veracity of the screenshot she submitted with her ethics complaint. They did not reach out to speak to anyone at the Village about them. Those are pretty serious lapses of ethical journalism, and we believe the Village should write and request a retraction of their story. The simple fact is: This ethics complaint is not legitimate.

In order for something to be libelous, as I'm sure you know, the statement has to be false, it has to be damaging and it has to be done with negligence.

There's a case here to be made concerning the negligence of Mid-Hudson News (not checking the authenticity of the screenshot, not investigating the original Houle post, which would have demonstrated Mrs. Cagan's allegations were false, not speaking to any representatives of the Village prior to publication).

There's a case here to be made that the statement is false, given that there is no evidence of an ethics violation, as claimed by Mrs. Cagan, and reported by Mid-Hudson News. A review of the original Facebook post by Mrs. Houle verifies this, and that's something Mid-Hudson News should have done in reporting on this story. It took us less than ten minutes to find the original post and look through everyone who liked it.

There's a case here to be made that the publication of this article was damaging, as it was used by Senator Skoufis's Protect Monroe-Woodbury and listed on its website to criticize the Village and the Mayor. (Mid-Hudson News published its story on May 5th. ProtectMw.com launched on or around May 23rd.)

If we are to end this national emergency, then a lot must happen. And one of those things is that our local media outlets must make sure they get their facts straight. So we encourage you to take this step and let Mid-Hudson News know. This kind of shoddy work by advertising supported media outlets, which present themselves as traditional, "neutral" media outlets is not acceptable.

Whether or not Mrs. Naughton, or Mr. Gross, act on our request for a retraction, or at least an addendum discussing the legitimacy of the screenshot and complaint emailed by Mrs. Cagan, is unknown. But as we’ve said repeatedly here at The Monroe Gazette: You may not like what we have to say. You may not like how we say it. But we always do the work first. Even when that means speaking to objectionable people (such as Dorey Houle), we do it. Because it’s the right thing to do.

Everyone in the media right now has an obligation to do the right thing, and in this specific instance, we feel Mid-Hudson News did not do that. Neither did Mrs. Cagan. And neither, especially, did Mr. Skoufis.