What will the NYC comptroller race come down to? (Hint: It might not be accounting acumen)

Spend enough time browsing New York City campaign websites, and you’ll land on two candidates for citywide office who, at first glance, might appear to be running for mayor. City Council Member Justin Brannan promises to create a universal child care system for the city. Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine’s listed priorities include “solving our housing crisis” and “improving public safety.”

As a little deep reading will tell you, Brannan and Levine aren’t running for mayor. They’re the leading candidates for New York City comptroller – a powerful but not widely understood citywide office that acts as a check on city government through reviews of the city’s budget, and audits of city agencies and contracts. The comptroller also serves as custodian of the city’s public pension funds and sets prevailing wage rates. 

In a race where many voters do not tend to know specifics about the duties of the comptroller’s office, the campaign trail rhetoric can get broad, the campaign pledges convoluted. “Some of the policies are a little more indirect,” Levine acknowledged in an interview. 

Whether making such proposals further confuses voters about what the comptroller actually does, it’s a political reality. “It’s hard to run on contracts,” said Democratic political consultant Ryan Adams. 

Brannan and Levine – who have so far dominated fundraising and endorsements in a field that also includes state Sen. Kevin Parker and Ismael Malave, a civil servant and former staffer in state and city comptroller offices – are aligned on some major aspects about how they’d approach the office. But they’re starting to develop distinct policy priorities. In the borough president’s office, Levine has championed policies that support the creation of new housing. While the comptroller can’t approve new construction, they could direct city pension assets to help finance affordable housing, as Levine has proposed. As chair of the City Council Finance Committee, Brannan has taken Mayor Eric Adams’ administration to task for budget cuts and a lack of transparency in forecasting. The comptroller can’t unilaterally institute universal child care, but they can identify wasteful spending through audits and use their bully pulpit in the budget process to advocate for that funding to go to that kind of program, as Brannan has proposed.

Both Levine and Brannan have also driven hard against President Donald Trump in their stump speeches, though they differ slightly on how best to prepare the city’s coffers for threatened federal funding cuts. (Levine is ready to bolster budget reserves now, while Brannan doesn’t want to signal to the Trump administration that the city has the funds to absorb cuts.)

But both see potential for using the city’s pension funds, worth more than $280 billion, to assert the city’s values, including pushing back against Trump. “It gives us power to flex our muscle with any company in America and push back against the pressure they're getting from Trump to abandon commitments to diversity or abandon bold climate goals or sacrifice worker safety,” Levine said. (Safeguarding those funds and delivering good returns for retirees is, unsurprisingly, a priority for both too.) 

Brannan recently unveiled plans to divest city pensions from Tesla, pointing to Elon Musk’s threats to the city through the Trump administration. In addition to promising to stand up to Trump, Brannan has pointed to past budget battles with Mayor Eric Adams as proof that he’d be a check on the mayor as comptroller. “I’m someone that is not afraid to speak truth to power, not afraid to call out other elected officials in my party, not afraid to do battle with the mayor if I feel they’re doing the wrong thing for New Yorkers,” he said in an interview.

Parker also earlier called on the state comptroller to divest Tesla shares, and said he would do so as city comptroller. A longtime state senator from Flatbush, Parker came in sixth in the Democratic primary for comptroller in 2021. He did not respond to requests for an interview but has said that affordability and making money for retirees will be key focuses if elected. Malave is running on his experience working for previous state and city comptrollers, and wants to launch a new transparency tool to show where city money is going. While Malave has outraised Parker so far, both are far behind Levine and Brannan in fundraising and have not qualified for matching funds.

As for what’s really going to decide the race, it’s probably not the candidates’ accounting skills. Democratic consultant Trip Yang suggested it will come down to who gets closer to spending the $5 million expenditure limit, who has better ads, and who has a broader coalition. “It’s really all about name ID and about portraying a positive, inspiring message to voters,” he said.

Several consultants not working for any campaigns in the race see the coalition Levine has developed so far – and his nearly $1 million cash on hand lead – as favoring him roughly three months out from election day. It’s far from clinched though, and Brannan – who has qualified for matching funds – has some experience with all-out campaign efforts in his purple City Council district in Southern Brooklyn. Levine has the momentum, consultant Ryan Adams said, but a surefire way to fire up Brannan is to tell him he’s the underdog in a race. 

Bolstered by his longtime affiliation with Rep. Adriano Espaillat, Levine carries his endorsement as well as the lion’s share of elected officials and clubs in Manhattan, where turnout is typically high. A “perfect” Spanish speaker by one observer’s account and a “moderately fluent” Hebrew speaker by his own estimation, Levine also hopes to mobilize Latino and Jewish communities.

Brannan sees a path to victory that relies on support from electeds in high-turnout parts of Brooklyn and other outer boroughs – establishment figures like Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie among them as well as among more left-leaning members of the party. Though he’s not a card-carrying leftist, Brannan’s surprise endorsement by the Working Families Party will certainly boost his support among progressives in the city. He’s also picked up the first union endorsements in the race, including from firefighters, transit workers and sanitation workers. Levine has since won his own labor support, including from the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union.

But each candidate has also made forays into territory outside of those strongholds. Brannan has picked up endorsements from a couple Manhattan Democratic clubs, including the Downtown Independent Democrats, while Levine nabbed Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso. Levine has also won endorsements from Asian American elected officials in Manhattan, Southern Brooklyn and Queens – including Assembly Member Grace Lee and City Council Members Susan Zhuang, Shekar Krishnan and Linda Lee –and sees that support as a pillar of his campaign. Translating endorsements to votes, Yang noted, requires on-the-ground, in-language campaigning in those communities where Democrats have fallen short in recent years. 

Other major unions have yet to pick sides, and Queens County Democratic Party boss Rep. Greg Meeks has not weighed in, though Brannan picked up endorsements in Southeast Queens.

Levine, who is giving up a glidepath to another term as borough president to run for comptroller, is putting more on the line than Brannan, who is term-limited in the City Council at the end of this year. Asked whether they’d consider running for mayor in the future, both Levine and Brannan said the same thing: They would have run for mayor this year if they wanted to. Denying that they’re running for comptroller to use it as a stepping stone to later run for mayor, both took the typical politician’s approach of declining to totally shut the door on the possibility. “I don’t rule anything out,” Brannan said. “But I’m not running for comptroller to tee me up for anything, I’m running for comptroller to be the comptroller.”

“I don’t know if I would go so far as to rule it out, but it’s certainly not currently in the plans,” Levine said, calling comptroller a “dream job.”

Despite every past comptroller in recent decades reaching for the top post in City Hall – not to mention sitting Comptroller Brad Lander – it hasn’t proven a winning strategy since Abe Beame. Still, it’s a natural progression, consultant Eugene Noh suggested. “If you’re the guy who is the criticizer-in-chief of the mayor every step of the way, you inevitably, of course, believe that you will do a better job than he is.”