Early voting starts this weekend and continues through Election Day on June 23.
If you live in Orange County and you're a registered Democrat, we encourage you to support Raj Goyle instead of the incumbent, Thomas DiNapoli, because of what appears to be an attempt by DiNapoli to bury the audit of South Blooming Grove. Something his office began in March of 2024 and is still going.
Why?
According to Thomas DiNapoli’s office, “During the audit, we identified matters requiring additional review which has impacted the timing of the audit.”
Our guess is this audit will be done around the same time the remaining two to three million Epstein fiels are going to be released.
Vote for Raj instead. It may be our only shot at full financial transparency from this Village.
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Note: The following transcript was lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
BJ Mendelson, Editor, The Monroe Gazette: Raj, thank you so much for joining us here on The Monroe Gazette. Would you like to take a moment to introduce yourself?
Raj Goyle, Candidate for New York State Comptroller: Thank you for having me, BJ.
My name is Raj Goyle and I am a Democratic candidate for New York State Comptroller.
BJ Mendelson: Tell us a little about yourself, and a little about yourself before you decided to run.
Raj Goyle: I’m running to be the affordability watchdog. I think that we need better Democrats, people who fight and not fold, and that we can lower utility rates and that we can get ICE out of New York and build affordable housing. We can invest and attack the affordability crisis and fight the Trump authoritarian administration. I myself am a dad, I’m a husband, I’m a son, got two teenage daughters.
I’ve run a successful New York business. I helped pass the cell phone ban in public schools here in New York. I’ve been a former legislator and perhaps most importantly I’ve been a civil rights lawyer my entire life and so I worked at the ACLU, the NAACP legal defense fund, Public Citizen, and very much believe in holding power accountable.
BJ: Here in Orange County, we’re particularly excited for someone to challenge Thomas DiNapoli for some of the reasons that we’re gonna get into. But before we get into that, I first wanna ask you some bigger national …
Raj: BJ, I I’m sorry, I need to interrupt you because you realize that I’m an adopted son of Orange County. My wife, Monica Aurora, is a a lifelong New Yorker and a native Orange Countian. And so she, my in-laws immigrated from New Delhi with, you know, five bucks to Rochester in nineteen seventy. And then after six months took a bus to Warwick. And some locals took them in and got them jobs in the school system. And they spent 30 years as lifelong union members and public school teachers. And my in-laws built a gorgeous Indian temple off exit 118 off the Thruway called Bartheam under.
BJ: I sometimes feel like we have politicians that will run for a local office that have no connection at all to Orange County. We just had a gentleman, I won’t say who it was, run for Monroe Town Supervisor, who had never gone to a meeting and his only claim to fame was being the chief of staff of a New York State Assemblyman. So there was really no connection that they had with Monroe civically. So I I always love hearing things like that.
Before we get into the Orange County stuff, there’s a bigger question I wanted to ask you about because I I really enjoyed the op-ed you wrote in City and State recently. So I have two questions related to that on some of these large national issues that New York State and the New York State Comptroller’s Office play a role in.
And so the first is… This is something that we had first pointed out to DiNapoli’s office. Where the New York State Common Retirement Fund held just about 3.5 million shares of Tesla, which is worth about $1.42 billion. And this was around the time where Musk was still in the White House and was beginning his cuts, or not long after where Musk was beginning his cuts, to USAID.
It’s projected that the number of people that have died because of these cuts is about seven hundred and sixty-two thousand people, over five hundred thousand of which are children.
So we asked DiNapoli’s office basically, you know, would you consider divesting from Tesla? And we kind of got this non answer:
“We recognize the concerns regarding Tesla’s governance challenges, recent financial performance, and reputational risks, but we must continue to focus on long-term value and sustainability. Consistent with this approach, we prioritize engagement with corporate management, and only contemplate divestment as an absolute last resort and only then when the Fund would not be negatively impacted by such action.”
But I just wanted to ask, if if you were in Mr. DiNapoli’s seat, given what we know now about the Musk cuts to USAID and as well as the, you know, people can’t get accurate weather forecasts because of DOGE…
So given all the damage that we can factually say has been caused by Musk, would you, as the comptroller divest from Tesla and other companies owned or operated by him?
Raj Goyle: I know I would have a fundamentally different approach to Elon Musk than Tom DiNapoli Even in my launch video, I filmed a scene outside Tesla’s showroom in Manhattan because Tom DiNapoli voted for Elon Musk in a Tesla board election, did not seriously audit Tesla after the boondoggle in Buffalo. And he’s been, as you mentioned, when Elon Musk was taking a literal chainsaw to the federal government when he, you know, on on one of his ketamine fueled binges, causing massive death and destruction and of course not saving the government a dollar.
In fact, he will end up costing us vast sums of money. Tom DiNapoli said nothing. And so I will absolutely take just a fundamentally different approach to Musk rather than coddling him.
We will fight to make sure that we have not only our values protected in the pension fund, but moreover, we must have clear corporate governance. Elon Musk is taking a meat cleaver to very long establish corporate governance protections for not just investors, but for the people at large and the SpaceX IPO. That’s coming up is is a great example of that. They’re gonna SpaceX investors gonna be able to dump their shares right away, possibly. There is this … he’s got the Nasdaq to list the company much sooner than the normal lockup period to see which is an important investor protection. And so I would absolutely take a very, very different approach to Musk and of course I’m very open to divesting from Musk owned companies.
BJ: And just for people listening, the it was the Cato Institute that had pointed out that the DOGE cuts would actually cost more money than what was actually saved. (Something laid out in detail from other reports like this one.) So we’re generally left leaning on this show. I think people know that when they listen to read our work, but I just wanna point out that it was even the conservative think tank that had pointed out that Musk would cause more financial damage…
Raj: Well yeah, I mean I think any of us who are who are involved in government and public life, I think could have seen that one a mile a mile away. And I certainly was doing media appearances at the time and and and called that out very, very clearly.
And in fact I predicted that the Musk-Trump relationship would fracture as it did. And so, you know, these are volatile people who have very who have no scruples and don’t mask their agenda. They are about self interest and and corporate greed and they do not care one bit about how we succeed as a community, as a people, as an economy.
BJ: And this is on a similar topic where Orange County was sort of ground zero for this warehouse expansion that was proposed of taking warehouses across the country and converting them into concentration camps. That’s my term for them. I know most people are okay with that analogy, but some aren’t, and I understand why. But there was this big question of whether or not 29 Elizabeth Drive [in the Village of Chester] was gonna be converted. They eventually backed off, they being ICE and DHS.
However, they did open a office in New Windsor that not even the town supervisor was aware of. And there’s also currently a discussion as to what they want to build, if anything, over by Stewart Airport over on the town of Newburgh side. So ICE is very much top of mind, so is DHS. You know, as I write this, ICE is continuing to kidnap Monroe residents.
And so there are a number of companies that are currently doing business with DHS and ICE. Dell, UPS, FedEx, Motorola, Comcast, ATT, Lexus Nexus, Home Depot and Lowe’s, Amazon and Palantir, Palantir being the big one. we’ll circle back to Palantir when we get to the next question. But some of these other companies, it’s sort of the same topic of… if you found that they were doing business that deprived American citizens of their rights. What action could you take as the comptroller to help send the message saying that this is not okay?
Raj Goyle: Obviously there’s two levers here. There’s divestment and then there’s shareholder activism and and pressure on the company. And I believe Tom has failed at both.
Nobody I think fears Tom DiNapoli in terms of corporate responsibility and his strongly worded letters. I don’t know if you listen to the debate we had last week, but you know, a a strongly worded letter from Tom DiNapoli I think, is is sort of maybe worth the Kleenex it’s printed on.
And so I would be an absolute 180 degree different comptroller in terms of going to these companies and ensuring that we rise up and and take concrete action on curbing that behavior that offends our values.
And then of course, if they don’t alter their behavior, we will divest. And you know, the other thing to mention, BJ, is that the enormous leverage that the blue state pension funds would have if we acted in concert. And so just California, Illinois, and New York alone with shared values could have enormous pressure on the way these companies behave.
Look at how Texas and the red states scared corporate America just through some cultural shaming and through the culture wars on Fox News and the Murdoch media. Well, imagine if we actually took principled stands and not just scare tactics but actually spoke factually and and authentically about the behavior of these companies, there would be a sea change.
I know you mentioned that we talked about it later but Palantir, our campaign broke the about DiNapoli investment in Palantir. He continues frankly to lie about it. It is an active position. We have the documents that show that it was that he is he’s launched shareholder proposals of course that have that have been relatively meaningless but he’s launched shareholder proposals at Palantir. The New York State Commons started at around $180 million worth and then got up to $480 million worth. Obviously the index fund didn’t triple its weighting for Palantir, the Tom DiNapoli stock pickers such that he knows what they’re doing, did that as an act of position. So that is outrageous, it’s immoral. Palantir is the technology backbone of ICE, ICE’s war of terror, and moreover, we know that its valuation and its economics are driven by Trump largesse.
BJ: Palantir is top of mind in the Congressional District Eighteen, because Pat Ryan has received Palantir funding in the past.
So. Palantir is something that in this district we’re very concerned with, given the nature of Congressman Ryan’s relationship with the company and other companies like it.
And that brings us to this one other large national thing I want to talk to about, which is the genocide in Gaza and the what looks like, and this is just my opinion, what looks like another attempt at genocide over in Lebanon with the Israeli government.
So I really enjoyed the op-ed that you published in City and State. So I was kind of hoping you could first share with us your position on on the situation, but then second …
What are the levers of a New York State Comptroller could exercise in a situation where they see bad action or something that really is unacceptable or in violation of the human rights charter of the United Nations?
And a lot of New York State residents are upset about what’s happening in Israel. What can we do if anything about the genocide?
Raj: So Tom DiNapoli often claims that he runs the fund free of politics, but what could be a more political decision than in a foreign bond portfolio being overwhelmingly weighted toward one country out of the two hundred and twenty or so countries in the world and that being Israel. their bonds have been downgraded. It makes no financial sense to be so heavily weighted. And then of course I have been the only candidate in this race from day one to talk about the war crimes, about Netanyahu as a war criminal, and of course the genocide and the dignity of the Palestinian people. And so, the state comptroller … and when I’m comptroller on minute one, we will sell those bonds. And that’s no ifs, ands or buts.
And we will cancel the entire foreign bond portfolio in the comptroller’s office and bring that money home to New York. And we will invest in the things that make New York great, which are affordable housing and clean energy and lowering utility rates and doing everything we can to tackle the affordability agenda and let New Yorkers live the best life they can.
BJ: I wanna drill down just a little bit. About how you mentioned that you do things differently. And so I’m gonna kinda walk you through our situation here in Orange County with the village of South Blooming Grove.
So I’m just gonna give you like a little bit of a data dump before I get to my question, which is back in March of 2024, DiNapoli’s office began an audit of South Blooming Grove.
The day before the audit, there was security camera footage of one of the people who is identified often as the co-mayor, Joel Stern, removing items from Village Hall and bringing them up to the United Jewish community of Blooming Grove headquarters.
Above: A copy of an email, forwarded by The Monroe Gazette to a federal agency, concerning Thomas DiNapoli’s office ignoring reports from residents about the movement of documents following news coverage of the Comptroller investigation in March of 2024. The Village of South Blooming Grove delayed, repeatedly, FOIL requests for this and other security camera footage, routinely replying that no footage exists whenever requested.
It’s unclear if DiNapoli’s office ever followed up on, you know, the multiple citations that they that they received from village residents who had seen the box truck that had moved those documents. What is clear though is that the South Blooming Grove audit, as far as Thomas DiNapoli goes, doesn’t seem to exist. It’s never been mentioned over the two years since March of 2024 in his email newsletter. Whenever we ask DiNapoli’s office about it, they’ll they’ll tell us every every audit is on the website, right? But they’ve never actually identified South Blooming Grove in their weekly email newsletter for over two years now.
Once June 2025 had rolled around, DiNapoli’s office went completely silent. it was as if this audit was was just not happening. And then there was a fraudulent election that was held, which drew the attention of the New York State Senate, the Senate Investigation Operations Committee, which then referred a lot of documentation evidence over to Attorney General Letitia James’s office.
James’s office claims the investigation is open, but you know, we can talk about that some other time. But my point here is … There were definitely irregularities flagged to DiNapoli office as far back as January of 2021 about South Blooming Grove. There was a three-year gap before he [DiNapoli] even did anything.
And then in March of 2024, when his office did do something, it became very evident to both residents and the media that DiNapoli’s office had no interest in discussing or even pretending that this audit existed.
So when you say that you’re going to do things differently, I’m kind of wondering if you could walk us through how you would do things differently in that situation.
Raj: So it’s clear that the office has mishandled this audit, failed to use the audit authorities to help New Yorkers, and I will be transparent about my entire audit process. I will hold corporations and individuals accountable. And if I uncover any illegal activity or inappropriate behavior, I’ll use every every lever available to hold people accountable. And it really should not be that complicated. And I have heard this from many people around audits that sort of go into outer space and just sort of stay there.
And I think even more importantly, BJ, we have an office where these audits don’t make a difference in people’s lives. This incredible power to audit every state dollar and to hold power accountable. Instead, Tom DiNapoli preserves the insider’s power. He is the living embodiment of wasted political power. And so you know, it’s like a hundred and eighty degree difference. When Raj Goyle is comptroler, there will be full accountability for any issue that I tackle and take on and transparency will be the hallmark.
BJ: Tell me a little bit about how you would coordinate with law enforcement. So I happen to know that there’s at least one federal agency looking into South Blooming Grove.
And as I mentioned, Attorney General Letitia James’ office claims. I I don’t, honestly, it’s just my opinion. I don’t believe her. And we could talk about that some other time, but her office also claims that the investigation to South Blooming Grove remains open.
But I’m curious about … The word irregularities has come up. You know, in DiNapoli’s office when talking about South Blooming Grove has said, they found irregularities. And so what I’m wondering is if you were to find irregularities, what how would you coordinate with law enforcement in sharing and prosecuting if needed?
Raj: Well, of course, if something rises to the level of necessitating a law enforcement inquiry and or action, we will we will trigger it. Of course it depends on the facts and circumstances of the particular audit and the particular issue that we’re dealing with, but we should not have neither fear nor favor for anyone. And so if if these are political allies or political enemies.
We should the only gold standard is is what’s best for the people and what’s best for New York. And so I will work with frankly any and all and take on any and all fights if I view that the that the right thing to do is to is to take action.
BJ: So my dad is a New York City retiree. He was a New York City retiree. he was a public school teacher and later administrator for 40 years in the Bronx. and so there’s a lot of concern now about the pension funds and whether or not, you know, those pensions are gonna be affected in one way, shape, or form or if that money, you know, will be there.
And so I was just curious if you can talk a little bit about the current situation that might be facing retirees about available funding and what if anything might be able to do to do to alleviate that?
Raj: Well, I believe that the pension fund or New York State Common has been underinvested in because of course he pays so much in Wall Street fees. I’ve been sort of focused on fees for many, many years. I even looked at running at this office in 2018 because I’ve been so long interested in its power and the issues that it can help New Yorkers on.
And so the fact of the matter is that if we had a bigger principle, you know, the New York State pension fund should just be larger. If it was larger, you could of course even contemplate there’s two things that would happen. You’d have less of a need for employer and employee contributions. So that means less taxes and less diversion of people’s wages. And secondly, you could even increase the return that you give to each retiree. So the payouts would be higher.
That is the math and the calculus of simply dividing up a huge pie. And so I know that we could invest this fund more prudently, more economically, and return more money to the pensioners.
Unfortunately Tom has no financial background before he was appointed to the office. And I think we’ve seen a result of that.
BJ: Is there anything that I could have asked you or should have asked you that I didn’t?
Raj: Ask me about your utility bill.
The state comptroller, as I said, should be the affordability watchdog. Tom DiNapoli should be auditing the public service commission aggressively, extensively, thoroughly, and finding out what’s happening with these rate hikes, these proposed rate hikes and why they get approved. And if you look at this last budget, there’s a raft of bills that deal with utility hikes. But.
The tragedy is that the one office that is the that should be the responsible party for looking out for the ratepayers of New York is asleep at the switch, and that’s Tom Dinapoli. And so when I am Comptroller, we will have a very aggressive stand in terms of not only is the pension fund invested in publicly traded utilities and can use the shareholder prong, but can also of course use that audit authority to very extensively find out and open up these books and then of course ensure if if they say that they need a billion dollars and it turns out they needed half a billion, we’re gonna claw that money back.
And we are going to be very aggressive about AI data centers as well.
BJ: Where how can people get involved? How can they support your campaign?
Raj: I appreciate it. Go to RajGoyle.com, Instagram at RajGoyleNY and of course just shoot a note over to us anytime. Email is on the website, and our volunteer page is on the website, and really appreciate all your work, BJ and and if love to keep talking.
