A Wall Street Rebel Runs for New York State Office

If Gus Christensen looks like an investment banker, it’s because he was one until four months ago. A handshake reveals a monogram on a shirt sleeve, an Omega watch, and lapis cuff links he got during a business trip to Chile. One clue to his new line of work is the donkey-patterned tie he wore to address a crowd from Manhattan’s Upper East Side, who had gathered at New York’s Yale Club on Feb. 27 for the Lenox Hill Democratic Club’s annual dinner. “Reactionary forces are strong,” said Christensen, who is gearing up to run for a seat in the New York State Assembly, a job that pays $79,500 a year. “But the progressive side is stronger. And both time and right are on our side.”

Christensen, 42, is using money he made during two decades working in finance to challenge some principles many of his former colleagues hold dear. During his dinner speech, the onetime JPMorgan Chase derivatives trader and former Goldman Sachs banker mocked the Ayn Rand novels that financiers adore, put his minimum-wage goal at $15 an hour, and praised Massachusetts Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren’s efforts to curb the banks that once employed him. Christensen advocates stronger rights for workers and women, tougher regulation, and affordable housing. He also supports increasing taxes on the rich. He came out of Wall Street “with a slightly different, or maybe radically different, point of view than a lot of other members of the financial community,” he says. “I may be an idealist whose hopes and dreams are crashed on the rocks of reality in short order.”