Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder
2026 NY State Comptroller Election: Who's Running
Hey New Yorkers: I'm once again researching local elections, emphasizing lesser-publicized races. This year, in New York State, the primary election will run June 13th - June 21st (early voting) with Election Day being Tuesday, June 23rd. (For many picayune details: the Board of Elections's 2026 Political Calendar.)
Candidates and their teams spent March gathering signatures for the petitions they need to file to get their names on the ballot. The dates to submit those were in early April. ("Failure to timely file documents shall be a fatal defect"!) So candidates have spent the last several weeks launching campaigns, switching what races they're running in, and so on. Yay for a vigorous democracy and sob as an indie researcher.
Today I'm focusing on the 2026 New York State Comptroller race. At the state level, this is currently the only competitive race in the Democratic primary for any executive branch positions, as incumbent Governor Kathy Hochul and incumbent Attorney General Letitia James are running unopposed to retain their seats. (As far as I know. Please tell me if I'm wrong.)
Four people are running, including the incumbent. A ton of Democratic voters don't even know this race is happening. I publish this not to say "I endorse [guy]" but to give you an overview of candidates and issues.
Comptroller???
This office invests money for the state pension fund, audits other state agencies, and does related stuff around transparency, oversight, and financial management.
What should the Comptroller's priority be when it comes to investing? Two major approaches:
a) get the best return on investment. We have to focus on stewarding this money for all the people who depend on it for their retirements.
b) invest in New York's needs and values -- divest from fossil fuel companies and Palantir, invest in local affordable housing projects, "pay transmission lines to carry hydroelectric power from Canada to the New York City region and to build high-speed rail across the state." We have huge leverage and need to use it to protect the environment and improve the lives of all New Yorkers.
Both stances make sense, but you can't do both. In this race we have one candidate who chooses (a) and three who choose (b).
Extremely incumbent
Thomas DiNapoli has served in this role since 2007. He's 72 years old. Before this role, he represented part of Nassau County in the Assembly for 20 years. He's been in state government since the Reagan Administration. He started as Comptroller under Governor Eliot Spitzer. I keep hammering this point because it boggles me.
DiNapoli's approach to managing the pension fund is (a) get the best return on investment. In the auditing role, he says he concentrates on oversight and cost savings.
The Comptroller's office is also in charge of stewarding Unclaimed Funds owed to New Yorkers: stuff like old security deposits, unused gift certificates, insurance premium refunds, class-action lawsuit settlement payouts, corrected final paychecks, and so on. As of last year, that pool was about $20 billion. New York returns a much smaller proportion of funds to their rightful owners compared to several other states, and transfers a large proportion of unclaimed funds yearly to the state's general fund for lawmakers to spend. So if the Comptroller were to get better at getting unclaimed funds back to New Yorkers, the legislature would now have to supply some of those funds.... and they might be reluctant to do that! I recommend this June 2025 piece by the nonprofit investigative outlet New York Focus to understand why people are criticizing DiNapoli's handling of unclaimed funds, and what challengers suggest doing instead.*
DiNapoli says the Comptroller is "appropriately viewed as being a less partisan role." He said last year that
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.”
In February, a Republican lobbyist hosted a fundraiser for him. His campaign had the most cash on hand, in mid-January, of any in this race: $1,354,720.52. As of mid-March: $1,320,125.92.
Campaign site, Bluesky feed full of posts announcing endorsements (he is the ultimate establishment candidate and is racking up huge numbers of establishment endorsements), Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. October 2025 interview. Podcast from several days ago in which Albany commentators basically say there is no way any of the challengers will beat him.
Challengers
These three guys all say we can do (b) invest in New York's needs and values, and have overlapping proposals.
Raj Goyle
Official campaign website, Wikipedia, Twitter, LinkedIn, Bluesky, Instagram.
Goyle is a 50-year-old lawyer who served in the Kansas legislature and unsuccessfully ran for a Congressional seat before moving to New York in 2010. He founded Bodhala, a legal technology company, and has worked at ACLU protecting immigrant rights.
Proposed policies: redirect pension funds into new affordable housing projects in New York; audit the Public Service Commission, which sets utility rates, to bring down prices; divesting from all foreign bonds (including Israel bonds) and from Palantir. Supports the Tax the Rich campaign and is thus further left than some progressive Democrats. On climate: wants to divest from fossil fuels; was arrested this year while protesting the possible rollback of NY's climate law; is endorsed by Sunrise Movement NYC.
His voting record while in the Kansas legislature raises some eyebrows for progressive Democrats in New York. For instance, he voted (caution: NY Post) to “make English the official language of Kansas, place additional restrictions on abortions after 22 weeks, allow concealed carry on government properties such as college campuses, allow Kansans to own automatic firearms and silencers and to stop undocumented immigrants from getting drivers’ licenses”. But he defends himself partly by saying that, when DiNapoli was in the NY Assembly, DiNapoli was also against drivers’ licenses for undocumented people. More generally (and I can't easily re-find where I read him saying this, but I think I'm not imagining it): look, I was trying to do harm reduction in a conservative state, ok?
He has a few prominent endorsements. I particularly notice Ali Najmi, an election attorney who previously worked on Zohran Mamdani's campaigns, and New York Communities for Change, a pretty solid organizing group.
Goyle is pretty rich and is self-funding part of this campaign. Cash on hand in mid-January: $1,246,543.04. As of mid-March: $1,252,221.31.
Drew Warshaw
Official campaign site, Bluesky, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram.
Warshaw is a 44-year-old energy and "affordable" housing executive with an MBA who has worked in solar energy, and at Port Authority helping rebuild after 9/11. (I put "affordable" in quotes because the jargon can be confusing. "Affordable" is often a specific industry term that means "targeted to future tenants earning [a particular percentage of] of the area median income, as defined by the US federal government." That does not necessarily mean you would consider it affordable!)
Warshaw criticizes the incumbent for underperforming funds: “Tom DiNapoli’s bankers, who invest the third-largest public pension fund in the United States, have underperformed his own benchmarks over the last 17 years by nearly 40%. He has cost taxpayers $55 billion for that underperformance. And he has paid these bankers $11 billion over that time in fees, taxpayer-funded fees, for them to not do their job.” He's also criticizing DiNapoli on the unclaimed funds issue and on the fund's investment in Palantir, and wants to divest from Israel bonds ("New York state holds stakes in just three other countries: Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Canada, a degree of selectivity that suggests no coherent strategy").
Policy proposals include: redirect pension funds into new affordable housing projects in New York; audit the Public Service Commission, which sets utility rates, to bring down prices; fire "Wall Street bankers" who help invest the pension fund. Warshaw came to the Feb. 25th Tax the Rich rally in Albany, and co-wrote a "tax the rich" editorial. Has been racking up some endorsements from the progressive caucus of the state Democratic committee, but his array is weaker than the incumbent's.
This is one of the wealthier campaigns in this race. Cash on hand in mid-January: $1,270,448.84. As of mid-March: $911,639.50.
A neighbor in Queens had a bad experience with someone petitioning for Warshaw in early March. The petition signature-gatherer sort of tricked her into signing the petition by only mentioning a different candidate. When the resident figured out that this petition was for multiple candidates and she didn't want to support one of them, the signature gatherer then didn’t let her cross her name out. That's pretty shady! Now, I've done this kind of signature-gathering as a volunteer, but campaigns often hire people to do it, and I've met many who aren't very well-informed (and who often know very little about the candidate). In some cases they get paid based on how many completed sheets they turn in, and many campaigns subcontract the work to other companies; campaigns ought to supervise those workers well enough to prevent fraud and respond to problems when they're reported. I don't know how the Warshaw campaign reacted to this complaint and I don't know how frequently this kind of problem crops up with other campaigns, so I don't know enough to treat this as a strong data point.
Warshaw is the only challenger who got any votes at the state nominating convention in February (DiNapoli got 90% of those votes and sailed to a spot on the primary ballot). The press seem to think Goyle and Warshaw are the only candidates likely to have enough petition signatures to get on the Democratic primary ballot. But there's one more guy trying:
Adem Bunkedekko
Bunkedekko's campaign website. YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Medium.
Adem Bunkeddeko is a 38-year-old nonprofit executive with finance experience, a former Working Families Party organizer, and a former Congressional candidate in 2018 and 2020.
A Bunkedekko campaigner at the No Kings rallies in NYC promoted him as a tax-the-rich progressive; he's endorsed by Rep. Jamaal Bowman and by a few other progressive or Democratic groups. He proposes using possibly billions in unclaimed funds to create a trust account for every new child born in the state & issue rental vouchers. (But what if those billions are not available, because the Comptroller gets better at returning them to their owners, or the legislature has already spent them?) And: “pay transmission lines to carry hydroelectric power from Canada to the New York City region and to build high-speed rail”. For more policy stances, check out his answers to an endorsement questionnaire from his 2020 Congressional run.
Given that Bunkedekko literally used to work for WFP, it's so eyebrow-raising that they haven't endorsed him -- and, given that they didn't endorse anyone in this race, nor Delgado for Governor, and didn't endorse Chuck Park for Congress, my eyebrow-raising is much more directed at WFP than at Bunkedekko. WFP, which has endorsed DiNapoli for 2 decades, might choose to endorse a comptroller candidate before Election Day. I predict it'll be DiNapoli.
Campaign’s cash on hand as of mid-March: $77,886.32.
Warshaw is challenging Bunkedekko's and Goyle's petition signatures to try to keep them off the ballot and make this a two-candidate race between him and DiNapoli. My personal bet, based on the overall strengths of the campaigns, and based on the fact that Goyle's been working with election lawyer Ali Najmi: Goyle stays on the primary ballot, Bunkedekko gets kicked off.
Picky questions you could ask candidates
Incumbent Tom DiNapoli: Why didn't your office audit Save the Michaels before it imploded? Seems like you had ample reason and opportunity. And: as of a couple years ago, you were an extremely reluctant computer user. What do you do to keep up with the ways changing technology change the Comptroller's capabilities? For example, how has your office adapted to changes in how we do financial transactions?
All challengers: A four-way race for the nomination is much more likely to favor the incumbent than a two-way or three-way race is. What would make you decide that you should drop out of this race in order to give another challenger the best shot at unseating DiNapoli?
Drew Warshaw: How did your campaign manage petition signature gatherers? Did you ever respond to the complaint about that incident in Queens in early March? And: your website says:
When Drew is State Comptroller, there won’t be any process delays to get your money. Because there won’t be any process. He's just going to automatically send you a check for the amount owed to you.
There are genuinely good reasons why the current Comptroller has not done that. You suggested we get updated mailing addresses from state tax filings, but
the state Department of Taxation and Finance won’t provide such information to the comptroller’s office, citing a state tax privacy law.
What concrete steps would you take as Comptroller to deal with the problem of missing or outdated mailing addresses for these unclaimed funds? What IT or regulatory issues stand in the way, and how would you address them? An expert quoted in the New York Focus article points out that the legislature could do what other states do, and pass a law allowing the Comptroller's office to access those addresses, but they're incentivized to keep the status quo because that means more money for the legislature to play with. How would you get the legislature to change their stance?
Raj Goyle: Is it just me or have you pretty much only been campaigning in and around New York City? What's your understanding of what upstate NY needs? And: I'd love a really detailed breakdown of all the differences between what you advocate now and the stances you took in Kansas (immigration, environment, reproductive rights, and everything else), and why.
Adem Bunkedekko: How does your plan work if most of those unclaimed funds aren't readily available as cash on hand? And: Look, I know it's the New York Post lambasting you for it, but still, filing that January campaign finance disclosure several days late is such a bad sign when you're running for such a detail-oriented role. You said the Board of Elections site went down on January 15th as Letitia James's campaign uploaded a huge filing; their candidate/committee disclosures database lists multiple filings made that night, before and after the James campaign uploaded theirs. Come on. What actually happened there?
My undecided assessment
Probably most primary voters don't have a preferred candidate yet -- not even the incumbent. A recent poll says a ton don't have any particular opinion of DiNapoli, which is amazing given that he's been Comptroller for almost twenty years. It is just barely conceivable that one of the challengers could break into widespread public consciousness in time to rise to first place, via something like physically protecting an immigrant from assault, holding popular rallies where residents find out how much money awaits them and get help requesting payments, or getting endorsed (or villainized) by a major nationally-famous politician.
Sure, I get what's useful about having a Comptroller who maintains good relationships with decisionmakers from all political parties. But when a Republican literally holds a fundraiser for you, that speaks to not just nonpartisan decorum but shaky loyalty to our party's shared values. And I'm unconvinced his office is energetically and systematically using its audit power.
I think Goyle and Warshaw could do more to distinguish themselves from each other on policy. But Goyle is getting more endorsements from groups and people whose assessments matter to me, such as New York Communities for Change (which helps assuage my concerns about his Kansas voting record).
I have two reasons that Bunkedekko isn't my fave here. One: My favorite kind of political candidate aims to make a particular change in the world, and running for this office is a particularly effective means to making that change, and they've pushed this cause as effectively as possible (via advocacy, appointed roles in government, building private-sector businesses or nonprofits, etc.), and they've pretty much run out of ways to make more of this change without holding this office or something very similar. So I am skeptical of a candidate who unsuccessfully ran for a role as a federal legislator just a few years ago, and has now switched to running for a state-level executive office; that hints at ambition disconnected from a theory of change specific to that office. In contrast, Goyle's legislative work and Congressional campaign were more than 15 years ago, and he's done a bunch of other stuff since then, so it feels more plausible that he's genuinely interested in the Comptroller role.
Second: I'd expect someone with Bunkedekko's politics to be able to get more endorsements from groups I think well of. (Maybe this will change as June gets closer.)
So right now I'm leaning Goyle. But I don't mean that as a solid endorsement, and I predict the race will change significantly between now and June 13th. If my choice solidifies, I'll edit this entry to say so.
* Last year, after reading New York Focus coverage, I got curious and searched for several people's names in the countrywide unclaimed funds search site run by a bunch of US state treasurers, both pals and public figures. I found out that Colorado lists Zohran Mamdani (and an undisclosed co-owner) as being owed $177 by the Colorado Department of Revenue. I feel like I know his bio pretty well and there's no work history in Colorado; what was he doing that would have caused this? Also, Bowdoin (his alma mater) owes him some money and he oughta collect that.
Curtis Sliwa has some Citibank fee refunds? waiting for him, and Andrew Cuomo has a bunch of money waiting for him too. Rishi Sunak has thousands of dollars awaiting him in California, including from the health insurer Anthem and the internet/cable company Time Warner.
Something like a third to half of the people I looked up had money waiting! I think in many cases the payor tried to pay, but the direct bank transfer or mailed cheque hit a snag such as a changed mailing address, so now the money's in escrow at the comptroller's office till the person thinks to wonder "is anything owed to me?" and searches. This odd snapshot demonstrates that the systems don't efficiently connect individuals with what they're owed -- but also that people are so overwhelmed and feel much learned helplessness that we don't chase down refunds, returned deposits, etc. that we ought to get.
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