Campaign finance reports show the former investment manager running for New York comptroller keeps writing big personal checks to his campaign while starting to raise more in contributions than the Democratic incumbent.
Harry Wilson during the New York State Republican Convention Tuesday, June 1, 2010 in New York. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)
The new filings show Republican Harry Wilson recently added $500,000 of his own money to his campaign and raised more than $700,000 since mid-July. After spending $1.35 million, mostly for TV ads, he had $2.6 million on hand, roughly the amount he’s given himself.
Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, appointed to the job three years ago by the Legislature, raised more than $360,000 for the reporting period, spent $750,000 and had $1.4 million on hand.
With a staff of 2,500, the comptroller audits government agencies and manages the roughly $130 billion public workers’ pension plan. The candidates meet in their first debate Monday night.
Wilson, a 39-year-old father of four from Westchester with a Harvard MBA, in 2008 left Silver Point Capital, where he was a partner. He later helped restructure General Motors in the federal bailout and says New York state has reached a similar crisis point, where it’s uncompetitive, losing population to other states, and has high taxes, big state deficits and pension underfunding.
“We need a major turnaround,” Wilson said.
The comptroller’s office should have audits that identify not only waste and fraud but inefficiency, with the major and politically sensitive state expenses of Medicaid, education and pensions examined, Wilson said.
He also criticized the way DiNapoli has been managing the pension fund. He said the fund has too much risk in equities and should have more secure fixed-income assets. He also said the fund’s 7.5 estimated annual return on investment is unrealistic, and it missed out on $8 billion in potential earnings because it reacted so slowly in the past year’s economic recovery.
DiNapoli, 56, an Assemblyman from Long Island for 20 years and former phone company employee with a master’s degree in human resources management, says he has reformed the practices that led to corruption investigations of the pension fund and criminal charges and financial settlements by individuals and companies under his predecessor Comptroller Alan Hevesi.
Reforms included a ban on so-called “pay to playpayments to intermediaries for access to pension fund business.
With professional financial managers on staff and outside investment advisers, DiNapoli said by the time investment decisions reach his desk they have been thoroughly vetted and he rarely makes contrary decisions, though he may sometimes request more information.
“Independence and integrity are probably the two most important qualifications for this office,” DiNapoli said. “We’re not back where we were before the meltdown but we’re certainly moving in the right direction.”
The fund dropped from $154 billion in spring 2008 about $110 billion a year later in the national recession, hurt especially in stock holdings. It rose to $128 million at the end of June.
DiNapoli said the fund has done well compared with similar public pension funds. The comptroller’s office also audits hundreds of state agencies and local governments annually and in his tenure he has identified more than $2 billion in wasteful government spending, DiNapoli said.
Wilson criticized DiNapoli for taking campaign contributions from law firms that make millions of dollars once they’re chosen to represent the pension fund and other shareholders in class-action lawsuits. He also faulted DiNapoli for taking donations from the state’s public worker unions, saying the comptroller’s current financial analysis obscures the true costs of the union contracts.
DiNapoli said all campaigns should be publicly financed, but it’s disingenuous for a millionaire to criticize the donations of somebody who can’t personally fund his own campaign. He said working people in a democracy are allowed to organize and make political contributions, state worker unions have a clear interest in the pension fund performance, and Wilson has little labor support because his positions aren’t consistent with what’s good for working families.
A Siena poll in mid-September showed DiNapoli leading Wilson 51 percent to 25 percent among registered voters, with 25 percent undecided. However, 79 percent overall said they no opinion of Wilson and 46 percent said the same of DiNapoli. The poll claimed a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.
By MICHAEL VIRTANEN,Associated Press Writer
Copyright 2010 The Associated Press.
