Curse of the Comptroller

In the final season of The Crown, Prince Charles ruminates: "To be Prince of Wales is not a position -- it's a predicament." 

The same is true of the American Vice-Presidency. Much like the Prince of Wales, the job is mainly just to exist, to be ... there ... until the top job opens up ... or not.

Right now the American Vice-Presidency is under a microscope -- as President Biden steps aside, his Vice-President, Kamala Harris, is being vaulted to become the 2024 Democratic nominee for President (and, God willing, will be elected President in November). And President Biden, of course, was Vice-President just a few years ago.

And, yes, two years ago Prince Charles in real life became King Charles. 

Eventually the predicament of being #2, the understudy waiting in the wings, comes to an end, one way or another (for the previous Vice-President, Mike Pence, it almost ended when his President, Donald Trump, sent a violent mob to attack him).

As the 2024 presidential race gets hotter and wilder, the 2025 NYC Mayor's race is being quietly talked about. Mayor Eric Adams is not popular and several people are being spoken about challenging him next year. Amongst the rumored candidates are Scott Stringer and Brad Lander, the former and current Comptrollers of NYC. 

Much like the Prince of Wales or Vice-President, the NYC Comptroller is also a predicament. Now, unlike those jobs, it does have some real substance to it -- the Comptroller is the Chief Fiscal Officer of the city, overseeing the city's accounts, running audits of city agencies, managing the pension system, issuing bonds, reviewing and approving city contracts, etc. It's a very important position, and it's overall job is to make sure NYC tax dollars are spent legally, ethically, and transparently.

However, what makes the job a predicament is that it simply doesn't have the powers or glamour of the mayoralty -- the Comptroller is the CFO, not the CEO of the city, doesn't get to sign or veto legislation, doesn't get to set government policy, doesn't appoint agency heads, and doesn't get to live rent-free in a mansion. It's a job that's so close and yet so far from the top job, existing across a chasm that's a foot wide and a million feet deep.

On paper, the Comptrollership should be the perfect launching pad for the mayoralty. It's a citywide elected position, it has real power, and the comptroller's name is often in the media. And yet the last NYC Comptroller to be elected mayor was Abe Beame back in 1973 -- since then, almost every single Comptroller has run for mayor and lost, often badly. For more than half a century the #2 job, the job that seems like the perfect political stepping-stone to #1, has instead proven to be a political banana peal. 

Not for nothing, NYC political wags have come to believe in "the curse of the comptroller." 

Of course, in every election, there have been various, often forgotten reasons, why these Comptrollers have never become mayor. But it will very interesting to see if, next year, two Comptrollers run and if either of them can actually topple Adams and become mayor. 

If so, then the "curse of the comptroller" will be lifted. If not, it will be doubled.