ALBANY, NY — Joseph Hernandez, Republican and Conservative candidate for New York State Comptroller, released a statement on incumbent Comptroller Tom DiNapoli’s win of the Democrat primary:
“New York’s Democrats nominated a man to be their candidate for State Comptroller that most New Yorkers don’t even know. A Siena poll in March found that 65% of New Yorkers have never even heard of the person who has run their state’s finances for almost twenty years.
DiNapoli has been a creature of Albany for 40 years. As State Comptroller, he has allowed the budget to skyrocket from $120.6 billion to more than $277 billion and let over $4.5 billion in taxpayer money be lost to fraud, waste and abuse within our Medicaid program.
But, New York Democrats nominated him anyway.
DiNapoli was handed this office in 2007, not elected to it, in an Albany backroom deal after his predecessor resigned in disgrace. In the nineteen years since, he never once faced a serious challenge from his own party.
This year, for the first time in nearly two decades, two Democrats finally ran against him, and their central charge was that the most powerful watchdog office in this state has gone to waste in his hands. When the loudest case against an incumbent comes from inside his own party, New Yorkers should listen.
And about one-third of New York Democrats stepped into voting booths and chose someone different.
Voters now have a new choice on November 3rd, where they can decide whether they want 19 more years of the same results, or whether it is finally time for a Comptroller who treats this office like the fiscal watchdog it was built to be.
DiNapoli is the sole trustee of a roughly $290 billion retirement fund, yet his record has produced mediocre returns at best. Instead of focusing solely on retirees and taxpayers, he has allowed the fund to be pulled into political theater, like DEI mandates, ESG activism, geopolitical boycotts, and ideological divestment campaigns.
A pension fund is supposed to be managed for one thing: returns for the people who earned it. DiNapoli turned it into a political piggy bank.
I spent my career in the private sector holding companies accountable to the numbers, and I will do exactly that for the people of this state. It is long past time someone in the Comptroller’s office actually followed the money. When I’m elected, the silence ends and real results and real accountability will be delivered.”