He was a Liberal member of the New South Wales Legislative Council from May 2021, when he was appointed to replace John Ajaka, until the 2023 election.
[1] In 2019, he contested the Liberal preselection for the NSW Legislative Assembly district of Hawkesbury, but lost to Robyn Preston.
In 2021, he was selected by the Liberal Party to fill the Legislative Council vacancy arising from the resignation of John Ajaka, the outgoing President, defeating three other candidates.
[2] In the lead-up to the 2023 New South Wales state election, Poulos was criticised because in 2018 (when he was a political staffer), he had shared an email containing explicit photos of Robyn Preston from a photo shoot for Penthouse Magazine she had done when she was 22 and published in 1980.
[3][4] The NSW Liberal Party subsequently suspended Poulos for six months and he was disendorsed from his winnable spot on the upper house ticket at the 2023 state election.