Drew Warshaw, a former affordable-housing nonprofit executive, is running in the June 23 Democratic primary for New York state comptroller, an office that oversees the New York State Common Retirement Fund and the state’s unclaimed-property program. Warshaw says the pension fund has paid billions in investment fees and argues for shifting more assets toward low-cost index funds, while also proposing broader policy changes on housing, energy costs and divestment.
Drew Warshaw has left the affordable-housing nonprofit he led and is campaigning for New York state comptroller, an elected office with broad authority over state audits, unclaimed property and the investment management of the New York State Common Retirement Fund.
The comptroller’s office is currently held by Democrat Thomas P. DiNapoli, who has said he is seeking another term. The Democratic primary is scheduled for June 23, 2026.
A central plank of Warshaw’s campaign focuses on the pension fund. The fund was valued at about $297.8 billion in the state comptroller’s reporting for the 2025–26 fiscal year’s third quarter. Warshaw argues that, over roughly the past two decades, the fund has relied too heavily on outside investment managers and expensive strategies.
Warshaw’s campaign has claimed that just over 650 Wall Street bankers and investment managers have been paid more than $11 billion in fees and that pension-fund underperformance has translated into an estimated $59.1 billion in higher property and income taxes to keep the fund fully funded under state requirements. Warshaw has described this dynamic as “the largest transfer of wealth that no one knows anything about.” Those fee and tax estimates are presented by Warshaw’s campaign and were not independently confirmed in the provided source material.
Warshaw says he would reduce reliance on private equity and hedge funds and move more money into diversified, low-cost index funds. Public reporting has noted that a significant share of the fund’s public-stock portfolio is already indexed.
To bolster the case for a more passive approach, Warshaw has pointed to examples from other states’ retirement systems, including the Nevada Public Employees’ Retirement System under former executive Steve Edmundson, which he says achieved competitive results with a simpler strategy.
Warshaw has also said he would push the fund to divest from fossil fuel holdings and from companies he argues are tied to immigration enforcement and surveillance, including Palantir. He has additionally called for ending the state pension fund’s purchases of Israel bonds; New York State’s comptroller reported in 2023 that the pension fund’s Israel bond holdings totaled about $267.8 million at that time, while Warshaw’s campaign and allied commentary have cited a higher figure.
Beyond pension investing, Warshaw has proposed using pension capital to finance permanently affordable housing, describing a $20 billion commitment as a goal. He has also said he would use the comptroller’s auditing authority to scrutinize building codes, utility regulation and insurance costs.
Warshaw has also made the state’s unclaimed-funds program a campaign issue. New York’s unclaimed property pool totaled $7.2 billion in 2006, according to contemporaneous reporting, and the state comptroller’s office and other reporting have recently said the total has risen to more than $20 billion. Warshaw says he would seek to return more of that money automatically to eligible owners using data tools, rather than relying primarily on people to search for and file claims.
