We have to travel far back to 1974 to find a New York City Comptroller ascending to the office of mayor. It was Abe Beame, who managed the city during four turbulent years and then lost his re-election.

Five of the six comptrollers after him have tried the same political promotion to no avail, starting with his successor as fiscal watchdog, Harrison Goldin, and ending with the current occupant of the office, Scott Stringer.

What You Need To Know

  • Abe Beame was the last City Comptroller to become mayor of New York

  • Five of the last six city comptrollers have unsuccessfully run for mayor

  • Only Alan Hevesi managed to reach higher office after serving as city comptroller, but he ended in prison years later
  • The current city comptroller, Scott Stringer, finished fifth in the Democratic primary for mayor last month

“City jobs are tough launching platforms,” explained Elizabeth Holtzman, a former city comptroller. “Not to say impossible, but tough. I don’t think there’s a curse, but there definitely isn’t a blessing.”

Holtzman became the first female city comptroller in 1990, after having served in the U.S. Congress.

She finished last in the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate in 1992, and then lost her re-election bid in an upset in 1993 to Alan Hevesi.

City comptroller was the last elected office she held. 

“I guess you could say it’s a very tough job to reach higher office from,” Holtzman said. 

After her, every comptroller has made an unsuccessful run for mayor. 

First, Hevesi in 2001. After he failed to win the Democratic nomination, he became state comptroller a year later, actually managing to ascend to higher office. 

He won re-election in 2006, but his good fortune didn’t last. A corruption scandal forced him to resign that same year, and in 2011 he was convicted in another case and served twenty months in prison.

Then came Bill Thompson, city comptroller for eight years before challenging Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2009. He lost. 

Four years later, he even failed to win the Democratic nomination. 

“I just think it’s a question of, people look at what additional government service, what else can they do? And obviously being mayor is the top of that chain,” Thompson said. 

Then City Comptroller John Liu also ran for mayor in 2013. He finished fourth in the Democratic primary, after a fundraising scandal sank his campaign.

“It seems like it would be an office from which somebody could run for mayor, but the reality is that every mayor’s election, when there’s no incumbent, is highly competitive,” Liu said.

Liu is now a State Senator from Queens. And his successor, Stringer, finished fifth in the Democratic primary for mayor last month.


He is term-limited and will leave the office at the end of the year.