California needs nonpartisan elections for the top two fiscal roles

Californians are unlikely to pay too much attention to whom they elect on Tuesday as their next controller or treasurer. After all, these offices are responsible for seemingly mundane tasks like managing state debt, auditing agencies and disbursing funds. But both officials play an important role in ensuring the fiscal health of the Golden State. The treasurer is California’s chief banker: selling bonds to finance infrastructure, managing the state’s cash and investment pools, and executing duties relating to the state’s public pension funds. The controller, meanwhile, is California’s accountant and internal auditor, who is responsible for producing an annual financial report, ensuring accountability from state agencies and local governments that spend state funds, and overseeing the payment of public employees.

Neither the controller nor treasurer has discretion over whether California raises taxes, expands abortion access or cracks down on crime — the kind of policy questions where party affiliation provides a useful signal predicting how a candidate would govern. These two positions are a check against wasteful spending and a defender of the state’s creditworthiness. Indeed, these officials apply their technical judgment to questions with mostly right and wrong answers. Whether one is a Democrat or Republican is irrelevant to determining whether a bond is prudently structured or a payment has been properly processed. Yet these officials in California are elected exactly like governor or U.S. senator, with a party label attached that has little to do with job responsibilities, but almost everything to do with who wins. In fact, someone who is elected through a partisan process and feels beholden to a political party may not be applying objective standards to guard California’s fisc.

That’s why a citizen-led initiative is needed to make nonpartisan the election of our fiscal officers in California. Although the state Legislature could place a constitutional amendment making this change directly on the ballot, it’s unlikely the governing majority in Sacramento would favor increasing scrutiny over their spending or hampering their ability to win statewide elections. Thus, it’s up to voters to demand accountability in a state where fiscal controversies abound, like the notorious high-speed rail project that has wasted taxpayer dollars, is chronically over budget and remains uncompleted.

When I ran for state controller four years ago, I campaigned on being an independent fiscal watchdog for taxpayers. I had a nonpartisan platform, highlighting my service in presidential administrations of both parties and commitment to ensuring accountability for state spending. I lost anyway, in a campaign fought not over who would be the better auditor or check on Sacramento’s excesses, but instead over issues like reproductive rights and Donald Trump.

One would hope that the 2026 controller’s race would be a referendum on what my then-opponent and now-incumbent Malia Cohen has accomplished during her time in office. But her record is unlikely to matter because of one simple fact: Cohen (like her counterpart running for treasurer, Eleni Kounalakis) is a Democrat.

A skeptic could reasonably ask what nonpartisan elections would fix, given that California’s one existing nonpartisan constitutional office, the superintendent of public instruction, has been held by Democrats or Democrat-aligned candidates for decades. If removing the party label doesn’t change who wins, what’s the point?

A nonpartisan election can change what a campaign is about. Under our current system, a candidate for either fiscal office starts a campaign saddled with the baggage of national politics, and most voters never consider the individual’s fiscal arguments, whether good or bad. An incumbent for these offices rarely needs to defend their record in any meaningful detail. Instead, most voters cast their ballots solely based on party label. In fact, a recent study examined ballots cast by more than 50 million voters across 24 states in the 2020 general election and concluded that partisanship accounted for over 80% of the within-contest variation in elections for partisan state and local offices. (By contrast, partisanship explained just 10% of vote variation in local nonpartisan and ballot measure elections.)

Nonpartisan elections would force incumbents to campaign on their record, while pushing challengers to articulate plans to address how they would clear audit backlogs, modernize payroll systems and prudently manage the state’s debt. As a result, candidates would face substantive scrutiny during their campaigns so that voters can determine who is best suited to address California’s challenging fiscal condition.

When I ran for state controller, I argued that I’d be a check on the governor and other elected officials in Sacramento because I wasn’t politically beholden to any of them. Fiscal candidates in charge of auditing the rest of state government should be independent from, not aligned with, the officials and offices they are holding accountable. That’s why about half of states with controllers treat the office as nonpartisan, and about a third of states with treasurers do the same.

Removing the party signal from the ballot would create more competitive campaigns and, ideally, less ideological fiscal officers. Even if candidates for these offices signal their partisan allegiances through endorsements or reliance on union or donor networks that are aligned with one party or the other, they would need to answer for why they are leaning on their inferred partisanship; the focus would shift to their ideas and experience.

Although removing the partisan ballot designation from the election of California’s controller and treasurer won’t completely mute partisanship in these elections, it will affect campaigns for these offices and, eventually, perhaps who is elected. This reform isn’t nearly as ambitious as the 2010 ballot measures that instituted the “top-two” primary election or placed redistricting in the hands of a citizens’ commission. Instead, it sets a more modest goal: For two offices that have consistently failed to live up to their responsibilities, let’s elect leaders who seek to address those problems, rather than talk about national politics and unrelated issues. The candidates who win elections for California’s fiscal offices should have to earn their victories by telling voters how they would do their jobs well.

Lanhee J. Chen is a fellow in American public policy studies at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.