NEW YORK — Brad Lander on Thursday evening said he was confident in his roughly nine-point lead in the city comptroller Democratic primary, and vowed to ensure New Yorkers can monitor how the city is spending federal stimulus money.
“We’re feeling great. We built a really broad coalition around the city,” Lander said in an interview with political anchor Errol Louis on “Inside City Hall.”
Like other candidates, Lander called for every vote to be counted and would not declare victory.
Lander, who represents the 39th City Council district in Brooklyn, leads City Council Speaker Corey Johnson by almost nine percentage points as of this writing. No candidate in the Democratic comptroller’s race hit the 50% threshold to win the primary outright, meaning the race will be determined by ranked-choice voting calculations and absentee ballots. Only in-person first-choice votes were counted on Primary Day. The New York City Board of Elections is slated to begin calculating New Yorkers’ vote rankings starting Tuesday.
The comptroller, who manages the city’s pension funds, audits city agencies and monitors contracts, will play a critical role in New York City’s economic recovery post-pandemic.
With city coffers now flush with cash due to federal stimulus money, Lander vowed to make good on a promise many comptroller candidates laid out while campaigning: to create a type of public-facing dashboard where New Yorkers can monitor how the city is spending the federal stimulus money.
“I think that’s job one, and if I have the good fortune to have my lead hold up it’s what I will absolutely focus on in my first 100 days,” Lander said. “I’d like to do it even sooner. We’re about to pass a budget in the City Council. I don’t think we should do it unless we get that public-facing tracker.”
Lander says it’s critical for New Yorkers to know how much of the one-shot stimulus funds will be allocated for long-term recurring investments.
“It’s one-time money, but some of it’s being spent on long-term recurring obligations,” Lander said. “So it’s really critical to break it down, both so we get good outcomes from those dollars so we get our city reopened…but also — and this is especially where the comptroller is relevant — so we’re being responsible for the long term and we’re aren’t staffing up, hiring a lot of new people, with money that will evaporate when the federal funding is gone.”
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Watch the full interview above.
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