Drew Warshaw, a leader in rebuilding the World Trade Center and affordable housing, announced his 2026 run for NY State Comptroller to tackle the affordability crisis and put money back in New Yorkers’ hands.
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A Doer Who Helped Rebuild the World Trade Center Lays Out New Vision to Reimagine the Most Powerful Office in Government that Lacks Urgency and Ideas Needed for this Moment
New York, NY (May 7, 2025) – Drew Warshaw, who after rebuilding the World Trade Center, built a renewable energy company and ran the largest affordable housing nonprofit in the United States, today announced his campaign to be the Democratic nominee for New York State Comptroller in 2026. If elected, Drew will put money back into the hands of New Yorkers through achievable solutions that target an historic affordability crisis ignored and sometimes caused by a dysfunctional State government.
“We need urgency, ideas and independence, and right now we have the opposite in the State Comptroller’s Office,”
said Drew Warshaw, Democratic Candidate for New York State Comptroller. “The Office actually possesses the power to address New Yorkers’ most pressing needs—a cost crisis that is out of control and taxes that just keep going up—and yet for the last 18 years New Yorkers’ problems have only gotten worse as Wall Street has gotten rich. It’s time for a change.”
Drew is running to reimagine the Comptroller’s Office with a campaign rooted in the following ideas:
As the sole trustee of the third-largest public pension fund in the United States, for nearly 20 years, Comptroller DiNapoli has handed over $11 billion in fees—New Yorkers’ tax dollars—to Wall Street bankers who then underperformed their benchmark by 35%. Instead of holding them accountable, Comptroller DiNapoli increased their fees by 530%. Drew will stop lining Wall Street’s pockets and invest smarter to give billions back to working New Yorkers while earning a higher rate of return for pensioners in the process.
The Comptroller controls a $270 billion fund—and hardly any of it is invested in solving New York’s affordable housing crisis. Drew will launch the largest affordable housing fund in the United States—$10 billion—to build and preserve homes New Yorkers can actually afford right here where they live and work.
Right now, the Comptroller is holding $19 billion of New Yorkers’ money in the NYS Unclaimed Fund—money that’s owed to New Yorkers for things like insurance claims, expired gift certificates, uncashed checks, and closed bank accounts. Drew’s plan is simple: give it back to you. All $19 billion. It’s not the Comptroller’s money, it’s New Yorkers’. We should act like it.
Drew brings a fresh perspective, big ideas, and an extraordinary combination of government, private-sector, and nonprofit experience—a proven record of tackling entrenched problems and delivering results. From leading one of the biggest rebuilding efforts New York has ever seen—the World Trade Center—to expanding renewable energy and affordable housing across the country—solving our most intractable problems is Drew’s driving force.
A lifelong New Yorker, Drew grew up with his two sisters (he’s a triplet) one block south of East Harlem. A view north and one south gave him a visceral insight into one of the starkest divides in New York. A witness to the random and sometimes not random distribution of power, wealth and a fair shake.
For the last five years, Drew has taken on the affordable housing crisis, as Chief Operating Officer and then as co-CEO of Enterprise Community Partners, where he helped lead a nonprofit that has created and preserved more than 1 million affordable homes.
In the wake of 9/11, Drew stepped up to rebuild his hometown. As Chief of Staff of The Port Authority of NY & NJ, Drew played a central role in reviving the rebuilding of the World Trade Center, which had been stalled by years of gridlock and finger-pointing. He rolled up his sleeves, brought people together, and stood up to powerful interests—transforming a symbol of dysfunction into one of resilience.
Drew then joined a Fortune 250 power company to build their renewable energy division. Under his leadership, the division transformed into an independent renewable developer and owner. Drew led its community solar business, helping build an industry from scratch, putting more than $1 billion of steel in the ground, and democratizing access to renewable energy for Americans all across the country.
Drew proudly served on the board of directors of Union Settlement, one of NYC’s oldest service providers, and started his career at the Center for American Progress and then at the New York Governor’s Office.
Drew earned a BA from Cornell University and an MBA from Columbia Business School. He and his wife, Charlotte, live in Lower Manhattan with their two sons, Benjamin and Jacob.
Drew stepped up when the World Trade Center was on the ground. He’s stepping up again to take on a new crisis—an affordability crisis that is hurting New Yorkers and sapping the soul of what makes New York New York: its people.
Drew often says, “The cavalry is us” as a reminder that help is not inevitable—that it’s up to all of us. It hit him after reading an old Jewish proverb—“if not now, when?” —so he took the “us” seriously and decided to run for State Comptroller with unmatched experience, a bigness of thinking, and the fierce urgency of now that this moment requires.