Are comptrollers running for NYC mayor doomed?

Every single New York City comptroller over the last three decades has launched a bid to become mayor. So far, every single one has been unsuccessful.

From Alan Hevesi in 2001 to Scott Stringer in 2021, the citywide elected position of comptroller hasn’t proved a successful launching pad to the top job in City Hall. Former Mayor and Comptroller Abe Beame succeeded in 1973, but a string of successive wannabes have failed to emulate Beame’s success.

Stringer, who lost his Democratic mayoral primary run on his way out of the comptroller’s office in 2021, is likely to pitch a second effort against incumbent Mayor Eric Adams in 2025. With his exploratory committee, he’s already pulled in a respectable $412,000 in donations, plus an expected $1.65 million in matching funds. 

And current New York City Comptroller Brad Lander seems poised to join his predecessor in taking on Adams, though he has yet to officially announce a mayoral run.

But will Stringer, and possibly Lander, be contending with a comptroller curse in 2025? Or is it just incredibly hard to become mayor of New York City? Some observers said it might be a little bit of both. 

On the surface, the occupant of the second-most prominent citywide elected seat running for the most prominent citywide elected seat makes perfect sense. And aspects particular to the comptroller position itself would seem to lend themselves well to a mayoral run. The person in charge of reviewing city contracts and auditing performance of city agencies seems well positioned to make a case for himself as someone who is going to run the city efficiently – a potentially compelling argument at a time when other candidates are pitching themselves as the best person to manage the city. There’s also the fact that the seat of comptroller can function as a foil to the mayor – someone to check, and often criticize, how the mayor is running the city. That aspect of the job could in particular come in handy for Lander, a frequent critic of Adams, in a potential run against the incumbent.

“It would appear to be a seamless transition to the next higher level citywide seat,” Democratic political consultant Lupe Todd-Medina wrote in a text. “And honestly, what comptroller does not believe he can do the mayor’s job?”

But despite that, not every comptroller who runs for mayor will do so solely on the specific platform that the position provides. In his last campaign, Stringer emphasized his progressive positions more than his financial management bonafides as comptroller. If Lander, also a progressive, jumps in the race against Adams, he’s likely to make a play for the progressive lane too.

More importantly, while the comptroller position may give candidates the confidence that they have enough name recognition, that itself is hardly enough to win. “Having name recognition does not make you the mayor of New York, or else Andrew Yang would be the mayor of New York,” added Democratic consultant Ryan Adams.

No job is a perfect launching pad for mayor, but for those who try to use comptroller as one, it can be difficult to explain to voters who don’t have awareness of what the job is exactly why it prepares them to run the city, Ryan Adams and Todd-Medina said. “A comptroller’s race is a popularity contest, but being the comptroller is a matter of expertise and accuracy,” Adams said. “And so you get these guys who run for comptroller as a popularity contest, and then kind of get sucked into a world of contracts and numbers that they can't properly explain to the public.” When they get to the mayor’s race – another popularity contest, Adams said – “they just sound like a bunch of nerds who are out of touch with what people actually want out of the city.”

It is, however, also just difficult to become mayor, no matter what’s on your resume. “You’ve got a lot of everybody running. You got comptrollers. You used to have council presidents. You had public advocates. You have members of Congress,” Stringer said in an interview with City & State. “I mean, there haven't been 1,000 mayors, but I think people in citywide office, you know, look at City Hall and say, ‘Well, I could do that job.’ And some can and some can’t, and then we have campaigns.”