Herb Morgan built an investment advisory business before running for California State Controller. His case for the job rests on financial experience: understanding a balance sheet, questioning an assumption and checking whether the records support a decision.
Updated October 18, 2026
Morgan’s campaign biography describes a childhood in Westminster and Oceanside and a public-school education. He graduated with honors from UC Santa Cruz; his published fund biography identifies his degree as a B.A. in economics.
Economics and investment management are different from an accounting license. The records cited here establish Morgan’s degree and investment responsibilities; they do not establish that he is a CPA. His case for Controller rests on the financial work he has done and the changes he proposes.
Morgan founded Efficient Market Advisors in 2004. The firm constructed portfolios with exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, which hold baskets of investments and trade on exchanges. The work involved allocating investments, evaluating risk and keeping costs in view.
Cantor Fitzgerald Investment Advisors acquired EMA’s asset-management business in March 2017 and named Morgan senior managing director and chief investment officer of its EMA division. The announcement put assets under advisement at approximately $1.1 billion.
Cantor’s July 2018 announcement reported $1.4 billion under management and advisement for EMA. These are dated business figures. They describe the advisory platform and should not be presented as the size of Cantor Fitzgerald or as money Morgan managed for the State of California.
The March 2025 Cantor disclosure identifies Morgan and Glenn Ambach as managers of conservative, moderate and aggressive strategies for an 11–19 year investment horizon. The disclosed portfolios held ETFs from providers including iShares, Invesco and Vanguard.
Morgan managed strategies that invested in those funds; he did not manage the underlying Vanguard or iShares funds. The distinction gives voters a more useful picture of his experience than a general claim that he worked on Wall Street.
The same disclosure reported approximately $944.5 million in assets for the platform, including discretionary and nondiscretionary assets. The investment horizon is the strategy’s name, not Morgan’s employment dates. His campaign and fund biography describe his retirement in 2026.
Morgan’s campaign biography says San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders appointed him to the San Diego City Employees’ Retirement System board and that fellow trustees twice elected him chair. Pension trustees oversee a retirement system whose decisions affect public employees, retirees and taxpayers.
That experience connects private investment management with public obligations. It also differs from running the Controller’s Office. The Controller directs a statewide staff, administers financial operations and works within laws governing payments, audits and public reporting. Morgan’s 100-day plan is his proposed bridge between those responsibilities.
Morgan wants financial scrutiny to begin while money is moving, when an agency can still stop an unsupported payment or correct a contract. In his Independent Joe interview, he describes the Controller’s task as checking that an authorized purchase was paid correctly and that the public received what it bought.
Speaking with KCRA’s Ashley Zavala in July, Morgan described a gap between California’s compassionate intentions and the results of its spending. He named Medi-Cal and publicly funded nongovernmental organizations as audit priorities. Those are specific programs against which to assess his broader transparency pledge.
His 100-day plan translates that argument into an initial timetable: review controls, assign responsibility for payment checks, begin transaction monitoring and publish a scorecard. Californians would have an early record against which to judge his administration.
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His published fund biography identifies a B.A. in economics from the University of California, Santa Cruz. His campaign biography says he graduated with honors. Those sources support the economics credential; they do not establish that he holds a CPA license.
After acquiring EMA’s asset-management business in 2017, Cantor Fitzgerald Investment Advisors named Morgan senior managing director and chief investment officer of the EMA division. His responsibilities covered that investment-advisory business, including its managed ETF portfolio strategies.
Cantor’s March 2025 fact sheet lists Morgan and Glenn Ambach as managers of conservative, moderate and aggressive managed ETF portfolio strategies. The portfolios invested in underlying exchange-traded funds. Managing a portfolio containing an ETF is different from managing the ETF itself.
His campaign biography records service on San Diego’s public employee retirement-system board and says fellow trustees elected him chair twice. That is public pension governance. It should be evaluated alongside his investment experience and his proposed approach to managing the Controller’s statewide duties.
Herb Morgan is an investment executive running for California State Controller in 2026. He founded Efficient Market Advisors in 2004. Cantor Fitzgerald Investment Advisors acquired its asset-management business in 2017 and named him chief investment officer of the EMA division. His published biography lists an economics degree from UC Santa Cruz and service on San Diego’s public employee pension board. His campaign centers on earlier financial scrutiny and searchable spending records.