Herb Morgan seeks California controller on transparency pledge

Republican Herb Morgan, a longtime finance executive, is running for California Controller against Democrat Malia Cohen in the Nov. 3 general election.

Asked why he is seeking the office, Morgan said in our candidate questionnaire: "California's finances lack the independent, real-time oversight the Constitution assigns to this post. The Controller is the state's chief fiscal officer and auditor, not a policy advocate. That role has not been used to its full extent."

Candidate information

Party: Republican

Family: "Married 35 years, two adult children," Morgan said in our questionnaire.

Education: "My education is a B.A. in Economics with honors from the University of California, Santa Cruz," Morgan said in our questionnaire. He holds a high school diploma from El Camino High School, according to BallotReady.

Hometown: Morgan grew up in Westminster and Oceanside, California, and attended local public schools, according to his campaign website.

Experience and public service

Morgan said in our questionnaire: "I am a finance executive and investment adviser with roughly forty years in capital markets. I began on Wall Street with Dean Witter, J.&W. Seligman, Dreyfus, and LPL Financial. In 2004 I founded Efficient Market Advisors, the first ETF-managed-account platform, which grew to about $1.5 billion in assets and was sold to Cantor Fitzgerald in 2017. I remained Senior Managing Director and Chief Investment Officer of that division until I retired to run for Controller."

Morgan also said he "served on the San Diego City Employees' Retirement System board, appointed in 2009 and reappointed in 2013, and served as both vice president and president of the board."

According to a Cantor Fitzgerald announcement, Efficient Market Advisors had approximately $1.1 billion in assets under advisement when Cantor Fitzgerald acquired the business in March 2017.

On the issues

Morgan's pitch is fiscal accountability.

Asked what distinguishes him from other candidates, Morgan said in our questionnaire: "The office is California's independent fiscal officer, not a policy seat. My opponent has treated the post as a platform for broader political priorities and has not delivered continuous, public scrutiny of how state dollars are spent."

He added: "I will publish state payments on a public ledger and apply continuous audit tools to high-risk programs so findings arrive while money is still moving. The current approach relies on periodic reports that appear long after the funds are gone."

Morgan also said: "I will report waste, fraud, and control failures in plain language. The test of the office is whether the books are open, not whether the Controller agrees with the spending."

On government reform, Morgan proposes creating a system where every time a state-funded nonprofit pays for anything, that transaction enters a state database, with AI monitoring purchases and flagging suspicious activity, according to CalMatters.

Morgan said he would carefully scrutinize the state's spending on homelessness, CalMatters reported.

Asked about the best advice he ever received, Morgan said in our questionnaire: "Work Hard - Be so good, they can't say 'NO'."