John Burnett will gladly tell you that New York City comptroller's race didn't end with last month's Scott Stringer-Eliot Spitzer Democratic primary.
"Some people still think the primary winner won the whole election," Burnett, the Republican and Conservative Party candidate, said during an interview at his campaign headquarters on W. 136th Street in Harlem.
Burnett, seemingly forgotten amid the Stringer-Spitzer tussle, will face Manhattan borough president Stringer in the Nov. 5 general election for the open comptroller's seat. Stringer defeated Spitzer, the former governor who resigned in 2008 amid a prostitution scandal and whose comeback try became tabloid fodder.
A rare black Republican in city politics,
"In Harlem, people come up to me and say 'I didn't know a black Republican existed,'" he said.
Citywide, Democrats outnumber Republicans six to one.
It's Burnett's first run for public office. His resume includes 23 years in financial services overseeing advisors and global wealth portfolio managers at Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Citigroup and McGraw Hill, among other firms.
"I'm not a politician. I've been reared in financial services and I worked my way from the bottom up," he said. "I have all the qualifications for this job, including compliance and risk management. I have not only domestic but global experience."
Burnett proudly touts his housing projects-to-Wall Street story as he aims for an office that oversees the city's bond program and five pension funds valued at a combined $140 billion. The comptroller also audits municipal agencies and advises on the $78 billion municipal budget.
"I think the media is a little more kind to me now," Burnett said. "Several times during the Democratic primary the media said to me, 'We'll get to you later.' But the crux of that is that people would think I just came out after the primary."
Democrat John Liu will vacate office after unsuccessfully running for mayor. Green Party candidate Julia Willebrand and Libertarian Hesham El-Meligy are also on the ballot.
George Pataki, the state's Republican governor from 1995 to 2006, endorsed Burnett earlier this week.
"New Yorkers need a comptroller who will be both a watchdog for taxpayers and a serious advocate for pensioners. John is the right man for the job with the experience and independence to get the job done," Pataki said in a statement.
Burnett eagerly invoked Martin Luther King, George Bernard Shaw and childhood cookie sales along with campaign talking points during the interview, part of a long day that culminated 25 miles to the south when he secured the endorsement of Staten Island Republicans.
"Nowhere in his message did Dr. King communicate that someone owed him anything. His message was civil liberties and opportunity," Burnett said of the late civil rights leader.
He favors consolidating the five municipal employee pension funds into one and passing savings to retired pension holders, opening up the fixed-income portion of the pension funds "to make it more competitive and not locked down by the top-tier firms," opposes retroactive pay raises for municipal employees who are now working without contracts, and favors business development initiatives for minorities and women.
Minority- and women-owned businesses now receive less than 5% of the city's $78 billion budget, according to Burnett. "Fifty-four percent of the city is black and Hispanic, and 14% of that 54% is unemployed," he said. "The black community is always in a recession. And when everyone else is in a recession, the black community's in a depression."
Burnett said one takeaway from the Democratic fight is that it drained Stringer of some campaign money. Burnett himself only has $35,000, he said.
"Not a lot of money," he admitted. "It puts me at a disadvantage. But I look at the positives. Stringer's spending is down after his primary fight with Spitzer."
If Burnett seems to embrace his longshot role, he's used to it. He grew up in the rough-and-tumble Louis H. Pink houses in Brooklyn's East New York neighborhood and lived later in Jamaica, Queens.
"My parents experienced the Depression and they were Southern, so they had to deal with the Jim Crow laws, too. They told me countless stories of abuse and horror," Burnett said. "My father was a conservative Democrat. My mom was a bleeding heart. She'd answer the phone, it would be a wrong number and she'd spend two hours on the phone with the person on the other end because he threatened suicide."
Burnett began working on Wall Street before he completed school, attending college at night to earn undergraduate and business degrees from New York University and Cornell University, respectively.
The youngest of seven children, he traces his financial services origins to his youth.
"We'd go grocery shopping and we used to ask for big boxes for our food. I'd cut out the boxes, make signs and call it 'John's Store,'" he said, smiling. "I'd sell my brothers and sisters double what I paid for at the local store. I took the toiletries at home, relabeled them and sold them to my family out of dad's attaché case. They had to buy the products back. So I learned about pricing and rebranding."
Young Burnett even baked oatmeal cookies, where he "learned about supply-chain disruption," and sold them in school, along with a classmate. "Then the teacher found out, broke up our oligopoly and confiscated the cookies. I learned about a ban on sugary substances, and I even learned all about outside regulation."
Burnett thought twice about running for comptroller. "I said no at first. I'm not for bureaucracy and inefficiency. I don't like to listen to [government] people who have no intention of doing anything. But then people told me, 'John, that's why you should run.' It's a crazy thought, but maybe I can change things."
Should he upend Stringer, Burnett anticipates union and investment-banking headwinds trying to combine the five pension funds into one comprehensive plan, which he said could save New York City about $100 million in administrative costs and fees. Pension-funding needs, he added, crowd essentials such as education, safety and social services out of the budget.
"I'm going lowball because I don't want to overpromise and underdeliver," he said. "I expect some pushback on this - people saying 'Who the hell is this new guy,' but look at the [federal] government, Detroit, Chicago. No longer can New York City operate this way.
"Can New York City become Detroit? Absolutely, easily."
Municipal employees are working on expired contracts, with negotiations looming as a challenge for the next mayor, Democrat Bill de Blasio or Republican Joseph Lhota. Unions favor retroactive wage increases, which Mayor Michael Bloomberg, whose 12 years in office end Dec. 31, opposes.
As Burnett sees it, continued employment and benefits in the face of a ghastly recession is tantamount to back pay.
"The Democrats beat me up on this. 'You have some nerve,' they told me. I said 'No, I'm just a fair person.'
"What they did get was compensation and job security, which is worth its weight in gold. When the recession hit, New York City employees were virtually untouched. Nine out of 10 employees do not pay for health care; somebody's got to pay for it. They get IRAs. When you combine all the benefits with the salary ... boom! The salary jumps up. When you factor in all of that, city employees aren't doing all that badly."
Burnett would extend Liu's practice of cutting interest through refundings, as long as interest rates remain low.
"Liu did a great job with respect to refunding and I would like to continue that. I would like to bring the interest expense down a little more. Our debt exposure has gone up 86% in 10 years and in 2014, we could begin another inflationary cycle."
He cited Shaw, who wrote in "Man and Superman" that the reasonable man adapts himself to the world, while the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. "Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man," Shaw wrote.
"So call me unreasonable," Burnett said.
