A former Wall Street executive with auditing experience will shake up the city comptroller’s race by declaring his candidacy today.
Republican John Burnett, 43, who has spent 20 years as an auditor for major banks, blasted Democratic rival Scott Stringer as unqualified for even an entry-level financial-services job.
“The Democratic candidate for city comptroller is a career politician with absolutely zero business experience — he’s never had a job in the private sector. He’s not qualified to work as a bank teller, but he wants to manage a $130 billion pension fund,” Burnett told The Post.
“It’s insanity.”
Burnett, raised in Brooklyn’s East New York section and in Jamaica, Queens, has held executive positions at Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Citigroup and the global analytics division at McGraw Hill and has earned degrees from NYU and Cornell.
But Stringer, who is unopposed for the Democratic nomination, is a resourceful campaigner with strong community and labor ties who has tackled such bread-and-butter city issues as transportation and education.
Stinger “has served for the last 7 1/2 years as a trustee on the $46 billion New York City Employees’ Retirement System, where he has worked to further diversify the fund and strengthen risk assessment,” said George Arzt, a spokesman for the Stringer campaign.