Itcush joined the New Democratic Party in the mid-1990s and has served on the party's federal council and Quebec executive. He was a party candidate in the 1997 and 2000 federal elections; the party was in a weak state in Quebec during this period, and Itcush has acknowledged that he only ran to ensure his party had a candidate on the ballot. At the municipal level, he was initially an organizer for the Montreal Island Citizens Union but later left that party to join Projet Montréal, for which he ran in the 2005 municipal election.