ALBANY – Democratic state comptroller candidate Raj Goyle is making a sharp left turn to try to unseat longtime incumbent Tom DiNapoli, massively flip-flopping from his days as a conservative Dem.
unearthed by The Post reveals.
“In the state house, I voted with Republicans 80% of the time,” Goyle bragged in a campaign ad while repping Kansas’ 4th Congressional District in 2010.
A spokesman for his campaign at the time described him as “a fiscal conservative and a social moderate.”
But now the tech entrepreneur is rebranding himself as a “progressive” — calling for divestment from Israel, opposing immigration enforcement and demanding a move away from fossil fuels – sometimes in stark opposition to his voting records and public statements from his time in office in Kansas 15 years ago.
“My values are completely consistent,” Goyle insisted during a recent interview with The Post.
“I was an absolute, no-question a progressive. That’s why, of course, they attacked me for it,’’ he said.
Many of his contradictory statements today compared to years ago stem from his 2010 campaign.
He lost the race to Mike Pompeo, who would go on to serve in President Trump’s first administration as CIA director and secretary of state.
For example, in 2010, Goyle called for a crackdown on businesses that hired undocumented migrants.
“Our immigration system is in a complete crisis right now. We must secure the border. We need to crack down on employers who knowingly hire undocumented workers,” he wrote on Facebook.
“I think immigrants need to come here the right way,” he said at a political forum in 2010, according to the Newton Kansan at the time.
Goyle’s parents are doctors who immigrated to the US legally from India.
He also voted for bills at the time to make English the official language of Kansas, place additional restrictions on abortions after 22 weeks, allow concealed carry on government properties such as college campuses, allow Kansans to own automatic firearms and silencers and to stop undocumented immigrants from getting drivers’ licenses.
In addition, he voted against raising sales taxes in 2010 and supported extending the President George W. Bush’s tax cuts.
Goyle now says he specifically voted against the sales tax hike, arguing that it’s a regressive tax that hurts poor people more.
On the other topics, he claims that he cast his votes as compromises with Republicans who were pushing for even more conservative policies such as stopping state Kansas from accepting documents in languages other than English altogether.
He also said his immigration comments stemmed from an issue of employers mistreating undocumented migrant workers on job sites.
“We were defeating and beating back as much of their bad legislation as we could. And look in a state like Kansas, of course, progressives are going to be on the defensive,” he said.
Goyle argued that DiNapoli has evolved his stances over his nearly four decades in the state Assembly and as comptroller.
“When Tom DiNapoli was in the assembly, he was actively opposing drivers licenses for undocumented immigrants,” he said.
Goyle is running in a primary against DiNapoli alongside perennial Brooklyn candidate Adem Bunkeddeko and housing non-profit executive Drew Warshaw.