Public advocate hopefuls Mark Green and Council Member Bill de Blasio will face each other. In an upset, de Blasio bested Green, the former public advocate who is trying to reclaim his seat, by a margin of 32 percent to 30 percent.

On the East Side, Green’s main base of support, de Blasio edged out his rival by 385 votes.

Council Member Eric Gioia and civil rights attorney Norman Siegel received 18 percent and 14 percent of the total vote, respectively.

Green, with wide name recognition, was expected to be in the lead, but de Blasio, who enjoys immense union support, pulled ahead. Green is trying to paint de Blasio as a political insider, tying him to the Council’s slush fund scandal. Green said that de Blasio doled out taxpayer money to nonprofits, which then donated the money back to his campaign.

For his part, de Blasio has criticized Green for being absent from city issues since he left office in 2001, after failing to beat Bloomberg in the mayor’s race that year.

For comptroller, Council members John Liu and David Yassky will face off again in the Sept. 29 run-off. Liu nearly avoided a run-off with 38 percent of the vote. Yassky, from Brooklyn, came in second with 31 percent.

Yassky was the clear favorite on the East Side, receiving 7,668 votes. East Siders’ second choice, Melinda Katz, got 3,359. When Katz failed to make it to the run-off, she endorsed Yassky.

Overall Katz got 20 percent of the city’s vote and Council Member David Weprin came in last place with 11 percent.

Liu, from Queens, is seeking to be the first Asian-American elected to citywide office. He has strong union support, including the labor-backed Working Families Party, and he is popular among minority voters. Weprin also threw his support to Liu.

While running third in the polls, Yassky leapt to second place after key endorsements from the New York Times, the Daily News and his former boss, Sen. Chuck Schumer. Yassky has pulled support from his home borough of Brooklyn and Manhattan’s liberal base.

“We’ve had a great first phase of the campaign, and now we’re going to make it count by building on our momentum over the next two weeks,” Yassky wrote in an email to supporters.

Moments after the polls closed, the general election between Thompson and Mayor Michael Bloomberg began, with both candidates lobbing blistering attacks at each other.

Thompson reiterated his claim that Bloomberg favors the wealthy, and that he overturned the will of the voters with his extension of the city’s two-term limit for local office holders. Using the slogan, “Eight is Enough,” the Democratic mayoral nominee began soliciting $8 donations.

Though Bloomberg was unopposed for the Republican nomination, he held a lavish party along the Hudson River in Manhattan. There, the mayor slammed “politics as usual,” which is part of his new ad slogan, “Progress. Not Politics.”

One sign that the mayor might not be a shoo-in for re-election were the results of several City Council elections. Backlash to the term-limit extension appeared to play a role in ousting four incumbents, with two more hanging on by a handful of votes, certain for a recount. Nearly all of the Council members who survived contentious races received less than half of the total vote. Even Council Speaker Christine Quinn only received 52 percent of the vote against two spirited challengers.

“Even though few voters voted, the ones who did spoke loud and clear in turning out and voting against incumbents,” said Dick Dadey, executive director of the good-government group, Citizens Union. “That is a loud shout to the city’s elected leadership.”

The biggest winner in Manhattan on primary night was Cy Vance, who is all but assured to be Manhattan’s next district attorney, with no Republican running for that seat. With 44 percent of the vote, Vance beat 2005 candidate Leslie Crocker Snyder and newcomer Richard Aborn.

In the East Side’s District 4, two Republicans faced off for the right to go against Council Member Dan Garodnick—an uphill battle, considering the incumbent’s popularity and the district’s Democratic lean. Ashok Chandra, a native Texan and member of the New York Young Republican Club, beat the Manhattan Republican Party’s candidate, Neal D’Alessio, 477 to 239.

“My campaign has brought a lot of people out of the woodwork; Young Republicans who in the past haven’t been Republicans. They’re very conservative about fiscal issues,” Chandra said in an interview before the primary.

Tony Avella

Mayor
If going against Mayor Michael Bloomberg is considered a long shot for Comptroller William Thompson, then Council Member Tony Avella is the longest of shots. Avella, from Queens, has spent most of his Council career as a firebrand who often casts the lone-dissenting vote on legislation. He wants to empower community boards to take a greater role in local development, pledges to increase the involvement of parents and teachers in education policy making and supports commercial rent control.

William Thompson

Mayor
When most prominent Democrats declined to take on Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Comptroller William Thompson was the last one standing, facing only Avella, a long-shot aspirant, in the primary. As comptroller, Thompson’s alternative investment strategies helped cushion the pension fund when the economy collapsed. He knocks the mayor for being overly focused on Wall Street and real estate, a strategy that he says has harmed the middle class, and he promises to diversify. He would create an independent body to study student progress, and wants to mitigate the taxes, fees and fines that he says burden small businesses.

Melinda Katz

Comptroller
In the City Council, Melinda Katz chairs the powerful Land Use Committee, which oversees all development projects that need zoning changes. That has helped her raise campaign cash from real estate interests, but Katz says she has also pushed for affordable housing, fair labor wages and buildings that fit within a community’s context. Before her Council election, she worked in the Queens borough president’s office and she was a State Assembly member. As comptroller, Katz promises to invest a portion of pension funds in successful but debt-strapped companies that do business in New York, to help spur local job creation.

John Liu

Comptroller
John Liu is a reserved City Council member from Queens, but he also has a reputation for being a pit bull during committee hearings. As chair of the Transportation Committee, he claims to be the first elected official to discover the now-infamous “two sets of books” the MTA was using. Liu promises to use his tenacity when auditing city agencies, which the comptroller must do every four years. He also wants to audit and track stimulus funds coming to the city. On pensions, Liu wants to return to traditional, low-risk, low-yield investment strategies.

David Weprin

Comptroller
David Weprin wants voters to understand that he knows the buck. The Queens Council member chairs the Finance Committee, which must pass the city’s budget. He was also Gov. Mario Cuomo’s state superintendent on banking. His position in the Council has baggage, as he was partly blamed for not catching the slush fund scandal sooner. Nonetheless, he is touting his experience and his willingness to stand up to the mayor when appropriate, as he did when opposing the term-limit extension. Weprin plans to open satellite comptroller offices that would focus on financial literacy and assistance programs.

David Yassky

Comptroller
In a field of comptroller candidates from Queens, David Yassky is the lone Brooklynite. He is also the only candidate who supports the creation of a new level of pension benefits that would ease the city’s budget woes, but that remains unpopular with unions. Yassky points to his record in the City Council, where he worked to eliminate waste in the Housing Department, assisted in closing a tax loophole used by luxury developers and supported creating gas-electric hybrid taxis. He promises to invest a small portion of pension funds into biotechnology companies and increase transparency; during the campaign, he put the city’s budget online, at www.ItsYourMoneyNYC.com.

Bill de Blasio

Public Advocate
Council Member Bill de Blasio became Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s chief antagonist during the fight to extend term limits. The successful extension ruined de Blasio’s plans to run for Brooklyn borough president, but he found a spot in the public advocate’s race. He was quickly endorsed by most of the city’s elected officials. As the city’s ombudsman, de Blasio said he would stand up to a powerful mayor when necessary and promises to work collaboratively with other elected officials to get results.

Eric Gioia

Public Advocate
This two-term Queens Council member built a network of support from unions and young professionals, winning his first term without the backing of the borough’s Democratic organization. Gioia is capitalizing on this “outsider” status in his bid to be the city’s ombudsman and is touting his effective use of publicity to drive policy change. In 2007, he went on food stamps for a week, then pushed for legislation that would put applications online. He says he will continue working to improve schools, fighting for economic justice and holding government accountable.

Mark Green

Public Advocate
Voters may remember Mark Green as the city’s first public advocate who served during the Giuliani years, when he sued the mayor for withholding information on racial profiling and police misconduct, and he served as a general foil to many administration policies. He promises to continue that “aggressive progressive” platform, standing up to City Hall and helping government better serve New Yorkers. Since his unsuccessful bid for mayor in 2001, he has been president of Air America Radio, the liberal talk radio network that was owned by his real estate mogul brother, Stephen.

Norman Siegel

Public Advocate
This is civil rights lawyer Norman Siegel’s third bid for public advocate, following his unsuccessful challenge of incumbent Betsy Gotbaum in 2005. Siegel, who says the public advocate needs to be visible, a big mouth and a fighter, points to his record representing groups like the 2004 Republican National Convention protestors and West Harlem tenants in their battle against Columbia University. He plans to recruit hundreds of volunteers to be “surrogate public advocates” in each community, and create an “Institute of Advocacy” to help New Yorkers make themselves heard.

Richard Aborn

Manhattan District Attorney
Richard Aborn, a former assistant district attorney under Robert Morgenthau, stormed into the district attorney race as a dark-horse candidate. Yet his campaign has gained momentum after most of the borough’s elected officials, including Rep. Jerrold Nadler, endorsed his campaign. A gun-control advocate who was behind the federal assault weapons ban and the Brady Bill, Aborn is running on a platform of providing alternatives to incarceration, rehabilitation for nonviolent offenders and expanding the use of technology in the office.

Leslie Crocker Snyder

Manhattan District Attorney
This year, Leslie Crocker Snyder is mounting her second attempt to be Manhattan’s top prosecutor. In 2005, the former State Supreme Court judge ran against incumbent Robert Morgenthau, who had been in office since 1974. Snyder, a former assistant district attorney, was the first woman to prosecute homicides, founded Manhattan’s Sex Crimes Bureau and co-authored the Rape Shield Law. As district attorney, she would create a Second Look Bureau to address wrongful convictions and connect prosecutors to local law enforcement, civic and religious groups.

Cyrus Vance, Jr.

Manhattan District Attorney
Retiring prosecutor Robert Morgenthau chose Cy Vance, his former assistant district attorney, to be his successor. Vance, the son of President Jimmy Carter’s secretary of state, has been a defense lawyer in Seattle, Wash. for most of his career, litigating white collar crimes at a national firm. He plans to develop a community-based justice model in neighborhoods to better attack problems such as domestic violence and discrimination against immigrants. If elected, Vance would tackle the criminal court backlog and form special units for mental health issues and hate crimes.

But this year, the mayoral primary a foregone conclusion—Comptroller William Thompson, a Democrat, will likely face Mayor Michael Bloomberg in November. Plus, the bad economy is dragging down the pension fund, which the comptroller must protect. The fund covers benefits for 237,000 retiring municipal employees, police officers, firefighters, teachers and Department of Education officials.

This past March, the value dropped to $77.1 billion, down from $82.5 billion in December of 2008.

A sagging pension fund is seemingly of little concern to residents of the Upper West Side, a neighborhood where municipal pensioners are a rarity. But as the fund dips, taxpayer costs rise. In 2009, nearly one in every 10 dollars spent by the city will go toward pension costs. By the time the new comptroller ends his or her first term in 2013, pension costs to the city are projected to jump to $7.6 billion, from $6.4 billion this year. Moreover, the city must pay out pension benefits to retirees regardless of the fund’s health, leaving taxpayers on the hook for a large tab. And with the economy creating gaping deficits in the city’s budget, spending is being scrutinized more than ever.

That leaves the 2009 Democratic candidates for comptroller—Melinda Katz, John Liu, David Yassky and David Weprin, all City Council members—rolling out plans to better identify government waste, provide stringent oversight of municipal agencies and bolster the pension fund.

The comptroller is the city’s chief financial officer, the most public and visible trustee to four pension boards and an investment advisor to all five. Along with the other trustees, who include leaders from the city’s most politically powerful unions, a mayoral appointment, the borough presidents, their appointees and the public advocate, the comptroller is responsible for protecting and improving the pension fund.

As the city’s fiscal watchdog, he or she can nix any contract deemed questionable. Thompson famously rejected the city’s contract with the beverage company Snapple in 2004, calling the bidding process tainted.

But even a job that is essentially about money is fraught with political decisions that go beyond running for mayor, a popular career trajectory for most former comptrollers. Comptrollers have taken an activist approach to the job, leading to divestment in apartheid South Africa in the 1980s. Politics can also influence the decision to audit a particular city agency, or choose a sector in which to invest the pension fund. And as the city’s authority on finances, the comptroller can help sink or propel any proposal to balance the city budget, or bail out a struggling public authority. There can even be a role on social issues: Thompson released a report that detailed the economic benefits of same-sex marriage to the city and state.

“It’s got real power,” said Doug Muzzio, a political science professor at Baruch College’s School of Public Affairs. “This is a job worth having.”

Council Member Melinda Katz, who represents Forest Hills, Queens, seems to understand that. Beyond simply earning a return on city investments, she believes that the comptroller can invest in companies that will benefit the city while upholding her responsibility as steward of the pension fund. Katz says this will allow her to get concessions that will benefit New Yorkers, promote job creation and bolster the local economy.

“If you’re a big corporation and want millions from hardworking men and women, what are you doing for New York City?” Katz asks. “Where are your corporate offices? What will you do to train people being laid off?”

This aggressive approach toward shareholder rights is similar to how Katz chaired the Council’s Land Use Committee, which has a powerful role in shaping any housing development proposals that come through her committee. Despite being the preferred candidate of real estate industry donors, Katz said she has a record of pushing developers to include more affordable housing and create jobs.

“I’m willing to not back down. I’m someone who will negotiate better things for New Yorkers,” she said.

Tapping into her early career as a mergers and acquisitions attorney, Katz wants to invest a small part of the pension in companies that can make a profit but that are saddled with paying off debt. This investment strategy, skewed toward helping New York City companies, would allow businesses to restructure and emerge as a new company, debt-free.

John Liu, a Council member from Flushing, Queens, criticized the plan, saying that the pension fund should stay away from assessing the viability of struggling companies and providing taxpayer funds to help them get out of debt.

“That is not a function of pension plans,” Liu said. “That is a function for bankers.”

Liu has taken a hands-off approach to the pension funds, which he said wax and wane given that investment returns are cyclical. Besides, the real power of the comptroller, in Liu’s opinion, is in the ability to audit.

The comptroller has a mandate from the city charter to audit the mayor’s agencies every four years.

“The audit function is, at its core, the substance behind any system of checks and balances,” Liu said. “Tangible measurements are necessary.”

Liu notes his background as an actuary and management consultant for PricewaterhouseCoopers when highlighting his qualifications. Deadpan, he rehashes the joke that actuaries are like accountants, but without a sense of humor.

Liu developed a reputation as a pit bull by aggressively questioning city officials during his eight years in the Council, where he chaired the Transportation Committee. He has also fiercely criticized the Department of Education and the much-maligned MTA, claiming he was the first elected official to discover the authority’s now-infamous second set of financial books.

In addition to auditing city agencies, Liu wants to expand the comptroller’s influence to include the Department of Education (the gridlocked State Senate would have to act first to give the city comptroller that authority) and federal stimulus money.

“It’s a lot of money over a short period of time. It’s a recipe for waste and possible fraud unless someone is keeping an eye on it,” Liu said. “That would be my top priority.”

David Yassky, who represents Brooklyn’s brownstone belt, is another candidate who’s playing up his wonky persona. As the city was “within a whisker” of shutting down senior centers and firehouses, he says, it is increasingly crucial to use government money efficiently.

“That’s why I’m so determined to transform the comptroller’s audit staff,” he said, “into an in-house management consultant team that goes agency by agency to find the wasteful and inefficient spending.”

His goal is to identify the 10 percent of an agency’s budget producing the least results.

Yassky was a budget analyst in the mayor’s Office of Management and Budget, where he sat at a computer to analyze spreadsheets and create economic models to direct revenue. In the Council, he touts a law he authored that busted fraudulent claims to the city and his role in a bill that closed a loophole that gave luxury developers a tax break without building affordable housing. “You want to look for a background that tells voters: I know this candidate will produce in the comptroller’s office,” Yassky said.

Yassky has positioned himself as the “progressive” candidate, that is, the one poised to sweep Manhattan primary voters, though he has been criticized for his vote to extend term limits.

He is already the lone supporter—albeit a lukewarm one—of creating a new tier of less expensive pension benefits for future municipal employees. Gov. David Paterson and Bloomberg have endorsed the proposal as a way to bring down skyrocketing pension costs.

Yassky has also made green technology and the environment key components of his campaign. As comptroller, Yassky would push companies to account for their carbon footprint and plan for environmentally sound growth. He’d invest 5 percent of the pension fund in green technology.

“I don’t think it’s a conflict between a strong return and investing in the environmental sector,” Yassky said. “Most economists’ view is that the environmental sector will be the growth area when the economy as a whole rebounds. We want to make sure that that growth happens as much as possible in New York.”

David Weprin, however, is looking at a different kind of grassroots growth. The northeastern Queens Council member wants the comptroller to be the people’s financial planner, as well as guardian of the city’s finances. In addition to the comptroller’s headquarters in lower Manhattan, Weprin wants an office in every borough, plus one in northern Manhattan. These offices would educate New Yorkers on financial literacy, banking issues and predatory lending practices.

“I would have a more consumer-friendly office in the five boroughs,” Weprin said. “When I leave office, the public will know what the comptroller does.”

Though his proposals aim at creating an accessible comptroller’s office, Weprin has a propensity to use fiscal jargon that can sound like a foreign language to the average Democratic primary voter. When he talks about the pension investments, Weprin muses about investing in real estate now—“Buy low, sell high,” he quips—or talks about the merits of bond underwriting. It can be dense, but Weprin wants voters to know he is as knowledgeable on the economy as his resume suggests.

Weprin was deputy superintendent of banks under Gov. Mario Cuomo, served on the state banking board, spent time on Wall Street in municipal finance and has chaired the Council’s Finance Committee for the past eight years. These connections, he argues, are crucial for a comptroller.

Rather than detail a pension investment plan early in the campaign, Weprin says he would assembly a “blue-ribbon panel” of advisors and rely on the advice of fellow trustees to craft his policies.

“My whole professional career has been tailored to being comptroller,” he said.

While each of Weprin’s challengers would likely say the same thing, it remains to be seen what’s going to resonate with primary voters.

Perhaps they are looking for the candidate who promises to be a strong, independent check on the mayor (as Liu wants to be). They may want a comptroller who can help them handle a tax problem (Weprin’s vision). Or are they looking for investment in local business (Katz) or green technology (Yassky)?

Whatever these candidates’ goals or plans, the pension fund is low and a bad maneuver can cost taxpayers money to cover retirement benefits, points out Carol Kellermann, president of the Citizens Budget Commission.

“The fiduciary duties to maximize the funds come first,” Kellermann said. “When some of these creative ideas are placed into office, they might not be quite as enthusiastic about it.”