Overview
- State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli declared victory and was reported reelected to a fifth full term after early returns showed him leading Republican Joseph Hernandez by roughly 40 percentage points, according to the New York State Board of Elections.
- The result preserves DiNapoli’s role as sole trustee of one of the nation’s largest public pension funds, which reporting attributes to about $309 billion in assets under his stewardship.
- Challenger Joseph Hernandez, a Wall Street investor and entrepreneur, ran on promises to speed oversight by creating a fraud strike task force and an 'empire opportunity fund' to seek new investments, but those proposals failed to close the gap on election night.
- The comptroller’s office is responsible for auditing state agencies, public authorities, and local governments and uses those audits to expose waste and fraud, a function that shaped both DiNapoli’s pitch and Hernandez’s criticism that oversight has been too slow.
- DiNapoli was elevated to the office in 2007 after the Alan Hevesi scandal and now has one of the longest tenures as comptroller, a background that voters rewarded even as some voices call for faster reform and greater transparency.