Freedom Line Blog

Michael Warren of The Weekly Standard has some analysis of a big name running for a little known office that should gets lots of attention.

In the piece, Warren explains how Eliot Spitzer – disgraced former New York Governor and current candidate to become New York City’s Comptroller – would use the powers of the obscure financial office to foist a liberal political agenda onto corporations.

The key to the scheme is the $140 billion worth of public employee pension funds that Spitzer would be in charge of administering. If elected, Spitzer plans to use the money invested in private companies as leverage to demand corporate policy changes in-line with his political agenda.

Of course, that’s not what the job of the NYC Comptroller is designed to do.

“As Yale law professor Jonathan Macey says, the comptroller’s top duty is to get a good return on the city’s investment of its pension funds. ‘It’s a public trust,'” Macey tells Warren. “‘His fiduciary responsibility is to maximize the returns of the beneficiaries.'”

“But what Spitzer is proposing instead—in interviews, in articles, and in his new book, Protecting Capitalism Case by Case—is to use the power of public-employee pension funds to influence corporate policies. Ostensibly, he’d do that for the sake of the public good. What’s more likely to happen is that Spitzer will use the city’s power as shareholder to extract concessions from corporate America that further a populist liberal agenda.” (Emphasis added)

Along with Troy’s excellent column this week, this is yet another reason for New York voters to reject Eliot Spitzer’s political comeback bid.