Last month, the nonprofit Citizens Budget Commission brought together the state comptroller Tom DiNapoli, outgoing City Comptroller Brad Lander and his incoming successor Mark Levine to discuss fiscal issues and what a comptroller does.
It fell to Bill Thompson, a former city comptroller, to introduce DiNapoli, who has served in the job for 18 years.
“If you look in the dictionary and look up ‘comptroller,’ there is Tom DiNapoli’s picture,” Thompson effused about the Democrat, who has never faced a serious primary challenge when running for reelection. “It’s not just longevity. Remember the E.F. Hutton ad? When Tom DiNapoli speaks, people listen.”
But two men don’t share Thompson’s enthusiasm for the incumbent. Drew Warshaw, an energy and housing executive, and Raj Goyle, who served in the Kansas legislature before moving to New York, are both mounting challenges to DiNapoli in June’s Democratic primary.
Their issues are virtually the same. They say DiNapoli has squandered billions of dollars on fees to Wall Street firms to manage the state’s $291 billion pension fund. And they insist he has failed to use his office to meet the state’s affordability crisis by not investing billions from the fund into affordable housing and he has been silent as soaring utility rates have squeezed New Yorkers.
“The pension fund is not managed as well as it should be,” Goyle said.
Warshaw agrees. “I am running because of this affordability crisis,” he said. “The pension fund is doing nothing to address the fact that New Yorkers cannot afford to live where they work.”
To both, DiNapoli responded, “Their talking points are not based on reality.”
All three of the above candidates talked to THE CITY late last month as the focus shifts from New York City’s headline-making mayoral race to the 2026 mid-term elections for state offices and congressional seats.
The race became even more crowded Wednesday when Adem Bunkeddeko, a two-time losing congressional candidate in Central Brooklyn, declared his candidacy.
A Democratic Assembly member from Long Island in 2007, DiNapoli was essentially handpicked by then-Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver to succeed Alan Hevesi, who resigned after pleading guilty to a felony charge related to having state employees run errands for his wife. The pension fund had also been involved in a scandal regarding payoffs to Hevesi’s key political advisor during his tenure.
Warshaw was on the Port Authority staff during the rebuilding of the World Trade Center and then worked at a community solar company before joining the housing group Enterprise Community Partners, eventually becoming co-chief executive officer.
Goyle, after serving as a Democrat in the Republican-dominated Kansas legislature, moved to New York, worked at the Rubin Foundation as a director and then founded Bodhala, a legal technology company, which was acquired in 2021.
Unlike most public pension plans, which are run by boards, the state comptroller is the sole trustee and controls investments of the fund alone. The state fund is the third largest in the country and at 95% one of the best funded among large funds — meaning they have almost all the money needed to pay promised retirement benefits. The average pension fund is only about 77% funded.
His investment strategy has been to put about 40% in domestic stocks, about 20% bonds and other kinds of debt, with the rest in private equity, real estate and hedge funds.
In all, the fees to outside money managers total about $1 billion a year, which DiNapoli says is a reasonable amount given the size of the fund. Most of the stock investments are managed in-house to merely reproduce the returns of indexes like the Standard & Poor’s 500, generally the cheapest way to invest.
Warshaw and Goyle couldn’t disagree more.
“Anything in a public traded market is going in an index,” Warshaw said. “And I am taking a hard look at alternative asset classes, and I am deeply skeptical that these private equity funds and hedge funds are worth the massive fees.”
Warshaw plans to soon release a study that he says will show that DiNapoli’s use of asset managers has meant the comptroller has failed to achieve the investment returns that match his own benchmarks.
Goyle plans a similar approach, he said, “using best-in-class software to identify potential investments and maximize returns.”
Both plan to redirect pension funds into new affordable housing projects in New York, with Warshaw promising $10 billion. City comptroller Brad Lander has begun investing pension funds in affordable housing as have other pension funds around the country. Incoming city comptroller Mark Levine has committed to increasing such investments to $2 billion.
Levin and DiNapoli’s challengers all say they can still get a high enough rate in the investments to protect the fund.
DiNapoli said he didn’t know how much the fund had invested in affordable housing in the state — and disagrees such investments are appropriate.
“The purpose of the pension fund is to secure the retirement of its members,” he said. “It is not for the goal to use for pet projects or to make up for public policy shortcomings.”
To emphasize their commitment to helping New Yorkers cope with rising costs, Warshaw and Goyle say they will aggressively audit the Public Service Commission, which sets utility rates, to bring down prices. Warshaw also commits to auditing the building codes of both the state and city to show how construction costs should be lowered.
But comptroller audits are merely recommendations, and the comptroller has no power to force changes.
Warshaw also claims that the comptroller’s office is sitting on $20 billion in New Yorkers’ money, which it has accumulated from inactive financial accounts, and says he would return the money by using AI and other means to mail out unclaimed funds checks.
Bunkeddeko pledged to use those unclaimed funds to create a trust account for every new child born in the state. It follows the creation of similar so-called “Trump accounts” for newborns in the Republican tax-and-spending bill enacted over the summer.
DiNapoli says he has greatly accelerated efforts to return money and sent out $633 million in the last fiscal year. He also transferred $900 million to the state budget in money he didn’t believe could be returned.
The issue involved complicated fiscal accounting as was detailed in an article in New York Focus and it isn’t clear if there is $20 billion or that the rightful recipients could be found.
The challengers believe DiNapoli is vulnerable because he is not well known, despite holding office for years. A recent Siena Poll shows that 65% of those polled had no opinion on DiNapoli compared with only 25% for Attorney General Letitia James.
They are also benefiting from the statewide campaign public matching funds program, which provides a 6:1 match for contributions between $5 and $250 and can generate up to $6.5 million per candidate for the comptroller race. Financial filings in mid-January could show whether the challengers are raising enough money to hit the maximum and whether their candidates will be financially viable.
DiNapoli says he is prepared to run on his record.
“I took over an office mired in scandal, needing to restore the credibility of the office,” he said.
He sees the most important issue being prepared for the fiscal storm engulfing the state because of Republican cuts to the social safety net and other actions by the Trump administration that threaten to carve multi-billion-dollar holes in the state budget.
And he has an answer for those who say he has been in office too long.
“I am who I am and I stand for authenticity, honesty, integrity,” he said. “I have not had to resign. I have not been invited to resign. That’s why I have longevity.”
