Drew Warshaw

Drew Warshaw earned a bachelor's degree from Cornell University in 2003 and a graduate degree from Columbia Business School in 2013. Warshaw's career experience includes working as a nonprofit executive.[1]

Who are you? Tell us about yourself.

I'm not a politician, I'm a lifelong New Yorker and Democrat who has spent my career taking on entrenched problems across government, business, and the nonprofit sectors. Now I’m running for State Comptroller to take experience and bold ideas and use this office to deliver real change for working New Yorkers after 20 years of an entrenched incumbent.

For the last five years, I took on our housing crisis leading the largest affordable housing nonprofit in the country that deploys $2 billion annually in community investment and is responsible for delivering 1 million affordable homes. I started my career in the Governor’s Office, fighting the Bush Administration to get driver's licenses to immigrants. As Chief of Staff at The Port Authority of NY & NJ, I helped lead the turnaround of the rebuilding of the World Trade Center after 9/11. I then spent nearly a decade in the renewable energy sector building solar farms and democratizing access to renewable energy across the country.

I’m running with a vision to make an incredibly powerful but historically underused office actually deliver for working New Yorkers – investing in housing, holding utility monopolies and insurance companies accountable, divesting from bad bets like fossil fuels, Palantir, and foreign bonds, and lowering your costs.

I grew up in New York City with two sisters (I’m a triplet!). I now live in Manhattan with my wife Charlotte and our two sons, both of whom attend NYC public schools.

Please list below 3 key messages of your campaign. What are the main points you want voters to remember about your goals for your time in office?

I will invest in working New Yorkers, not Wall Street bankers:

The State Comptroller is the sole trustee of a $300 billion pension fund – making him the third-largest investor in the country. He chooses to invest hundreds of millions of our public dollars in Netanyahu’s wars, fossil fuels, and Palantir – the backbone of Trump’s ICE. He chooses to invest in private equity and hedge funds that deliver worse returns net of their fees and makes bankers millionaires off the backs of taxpayers. That changes when I’m comptroller – we will shift to a low-cost index strategy, divesting from those bad bets, and we will invest in solving challenges right here in New York, while getting you a higher rate of return and taking pressure off your taxes.I will take on our affordability crisis to lower your costs:

I will use the pension fund to launch the largest affordable housing investment fund in the country – $20 billion to build and preserve 200,000 permanently affordable homes statewide right here in New York. I will audit the insurance and public utility monopoly regulators that are jacking up our utility bills and I will put a moratorium on all data center investments crushing communities and adding to those utility bills. I will also automatically return $20 billion in unclaimed funds to New Yorkers which right now sit idle in an outdated system in Albany. Finally, I will hold our government agencies accountable to make sure your tax dollars are working for you.I will protect New Yorkers from Trump:

I will use every tool of this office to protect working New Yorkers from the Trump administration. Right now, counties and municipalities across New York are using our public tax dollars to collude with ICE – Trump's private militia – to terrorize our neighbors and the current Comptroller, who has full authority to audit every one of them, has done nothing. He refuses. I won’t. On Day 1, we will get to the bottom of this collusion. I will divest the pension fund from Palantir – the IT backbone of ICE's surveillance and terror machine. And I will sound the alarm on our state’s finances to ensure that we are in the best place to fight back against Trump’s funding cuts.

What areas of public policy are you personally passionate about?

I am passionate about using government power aggressively and unapologetically for people without it. Power unused is power wasted. I will fight for making public investments - housing, infrastructure, and good jobs - work for working New Yorkers. The connection between where people live and what opportunities they have access to is the through-line of my entire career – from fighting for driver's licenses for our immigrant neighbors, to building clean energy, to leading the largest affordable housing nonprofit in the country. I also care deeply about the financialization of public institutions – the way Wall Street has captured public funds, driving up costs for taxpayers and workers while enriching bankers who don't deliver.

What organizations or individuals have endorsed your campaign?

Caring Majority Rising (Working Families Party affiliate); Make the Road Action Fund (Working Families Party affiliate); Abundance NY; IATSE Local No. 4; Moms Demand Action (DISTINCTION); Divest NY; Broadway Democrats; 28 Working Families Party state committee members and affiliated organization members; 16 progressive Democratic State Committee members including Nobles Crawford, Marti Gould Cummings, Maria Kaufer, Julio Peña III, and Lydia Green; cross-endorsement with Brian Romero (Working Famillies Party-endorsed candidate for NY Assembly District 34).