A little over a year ago, I saw what is easily my favorite election polling graphic of all time. The picture showed the results of a citywide poll on the mayoral election in New York. Conducted by Emerson College Polling, the survey measured support for three candidates, with their percentages reflected in the snapshot. At the time (May 23-26, 2025) former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo led the field, with 54% of voters. State Assemblyman (and eventual winner) Zohran Mamdani followed closely with 46%. And New York City Comptroller Brad Lander trailed with an embarrassing 0%.
Now, the hilarity of the graphic was undermined a bit by the fact that it was somewhat misleading. Those results represented the final (10th) round of the poll’s ranked-choice voting simulation, after all other candidates had been eliminated and undecided voters had been excluded. That is to say that Lander’s goose egg at that point was a foregone conclusion of the polling methodology, not a reflection of his actual support.
That said, the first round of the simulation was embarrassing enough for Lander, albeit not as embarrassing as the results showing that not even his mom would waste her vote on him. Cuomo led Mamdani 35% to 23%. Lander followed in a distant third, with just 11%.
Either way—0% or even 11%—the results of the polling (and then of the election itself) were just desserts for Lander. As the city’s comptroller, Lander was “by law the custodian of City-held trust funds and the assets of the New York City Public Pension Funds,” served “as Trustee on each of the funds,” and was “delegated to serve as investment advisor by all five pension boards.”
In other words, then, he was the guy in charge of deciding how and where the city’s public pensions funds were invested.
With a master’s degree in Anthropology and Urban Planning and a professional background as an advocate for “affordable housing,” one might wonder what made Lander think he was qualified to handle the management of the city’s nearly $300 billion in pension assets.
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The short answer is that he wasn’t qualified. He was elected. And he was elected specifically because he intended to use the comptroller’s office to make a name for himself and, if possible, to springboard himself to higher office.
Lander took office on January 1, 2022, at the height of the ESG (environmental, social, and governance investing) craze. He immediately got to work embedding ESG in the city’s pension plans and, by extension, embedding himself in high-profile, media-generating controversy.
He immediately made net-zero and decarbonization a priority, creating a climate transition plan for the pension system that was overtly and aggressively political: “Every investor,” the plan frantically (and erroneously) explained, “is exposed to climate risk, but no single investor can protect themselves from it. That’s why investors must take action together. With aligned action, we can limit global temperature rise, saving lives and investment value. Without aligned action, we will likely burn up millions of lives and trillions of dollars.”
In his first year in office, Lander demanded that the Securities and Exchange Commission create and implement a mandatory corporate climate reporting rule. He sent a letter to BlackRock CEO Larry Fink (of all people) demanding that Fink do more to honor his commitments to sustainability. And he signed a letter insisting that Republican state financial officers quit trying to undermine ESG.
In his second year in office, Lander announced that he would use the pension system’s proxy votes to demand corporate decarbonization and focus on the energy “transition.” In his third year in office, Lander announced that he would be running for mayor.
Later, after Donald Trump was reelected and while every private asset manager and bank was announcing its withdrawal from every global climate alliance it had joined, Lander moved in the opposite direction, making his opposition to Trump known by having the NYC Pension System join the Net-Zero Asset Owners Alliance.
In short, Brad Lander had a plan. He intended to run for higher office, and he decided that politicizing New York City’s pension plans was how he would make that happen.
He announced his intentions just over halfway through his term and continued to put pension funds at risk by playing political games as he campaigned for mayor. In fiscal year 2025, for example, while Lander was both the comptroller and the wannabe mayor, New York’s pension plans returned 10.3%. While that number easily beat the plans’ 7% return target, it also trailed the S&P 500’s returns by 5%.
Even accounting for the fact that pension plans are more diversified than the S&P, that raises serious questions about the opportunity cost of Lander’s political game-playing.
The good news is that the people of New York saw through Lander’s gambit. The Emerson College poll had the first-round numbers backward for Cuomo and Mamdani, but it was spot on in identifying Lander’s support. As predicted, the Comptroller won exactly 11% of the vote and was swiftly eliminated from the race.
The bad news is that Lander is not stupid. Even before he lost—sensing that he would—he threw his support behind Mamdani, cross-endorsing the eventual winner before election day. Lander knew his numbers were far from impressive on their own, but if they were added to the frontrunner’s, they would virtually guarantee a Mamdani victory.
Mamdani, in turn, rewarded Lander’s faith and foresight by endorsing the former comptroller in his race to unseat sitting Democratic Congressman Dan Goldman, who represents New York’s 10th Congressional District.
Interestingly, that race against Goldman (which resulted in a huge Lander victory roughly three weeks ago) shows how quickly and how profoundly the Democratic Party is changing.
For more than a century now, the Democrats have been the allies of organized labor and public employees. Both groups have been unwavering members of the Democratic coalition since at least FDR and more likely since Woodrow Wilson. Yet Lander’s tenure as NYC Comptroller was a de facto rebuke of those constituencies and their interests.
Lander—like many in the Democratic Socialists of America universe—differentiated himself from his opponent specifically on the question of support for Israel. Lander, who is Jewish, attacked Goldman, who is also Jewish, for being a sellout to Israel and President Donald Trump.
The Trump charge was preposterous, given that Goldman is himself extremely left-wing and has made a point of being confrontational in his interactions with the administration. The Israel charge stuck, however, which is why Lander even outperformed his new political patron in New York’s 10th Congressional District (Lander won 65% of the Democratic vote in the District, while Mamdani won 60% there last November).
This, then, is the state of the Democratic Party in the year of our Lord 2026: when faced with a choice between two candidates, both extremely liberal, voters will choose the challenger over the incumbent by more than 2-to-1. They will do so even if the challenger has a demonstrated record of disregard for his previous job and for his constituents at that previous job, two core Democratic constituencies.
The issue that matters most to Democratic primary voters—at least in New York’s 10th Congressional District—is the Israel-Palestine question. Support Israel, and your career is over. Support the Palestinians, by contrast, and a multitude of other sins can be forgiven and forgotten, even if those sins include turning city pensions into a political cudgel.
That campaign poll graphic is still hilarious, largely because it shows the level of support that Brad Lander deserved, given his politicization of the city’s pensions.
Unfortunately, voters tend to have short attention spans, and Lander is now having the last laugh.
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