Jonathan Trichter

Jonathan Trichter

Republican

BACKGROUND: Trichter, 47, of Manhattan, is a lifelong Democrat running on the Republican and Conservative lines. Trichter is a former Democratic operative who joined the Republican Party during the campaign. His party registration change will not formally occur until next year. He graduated from Emory University with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy. Trichter was a principal in the MAEVA Group, LLC, a White Plains-based firm that provides corporate turnaround and restructuring services. He previously worked as an investment banker at JPMorgan Chase. Trichter, who has never previously run for office, worked on the successful attorney general campaign of Democrat Eliot Spitzer and on the unsuccessful state comptroller campaign of Republican Harry Wilson. Trichter founded a polling institute at Pace University and served as an adjunct political science professor at Fordham University. He is married with a son.

ISSUES: Trichter said he would ban the state’s public pension from investing in hedge funds and private equity funds, which, he contends, have underperformed for retirees. He also would refuse to certify any state budget that wasn’t fiscally balanced or structurally sound and impose generally accepted accounting principles that are free of one-shot revenue drivers. “The state comptroller’s office has tremendous potential to fix vexing state problems including a dysfunctional budget process, increasing public pension liabilities, back door borrowing and other pernicious debt policies,” he said. Trichter said he would audit major state agencies, including the MTA, to prevent infrastructure decay and future subway concerns. “The end goal would be to uncover operational and cost inefficiencies and to discover capital budget misallocations, from state of good repair spending to the mega projects that do nothing to keep the current system running efficiently,” he said.