NY GOP mayoral nominee Curtis Sliwa: 'street cred' will win him election

"Yes! Yes! I'm taking the fight to the Democrats!" Curtis Sliwa shouted, fist pumping in the air, to begin a recent interview on "Just the News AM."

Hours before, the Guardian Angels founder had won the Republican nomination for mayor of New York.

Sporting his iconic red beret, Sliwa spoke colorfully about the city's current mayor, Bill de Blasio, who he says has "taken a Miley Cyrus wrecking ball to the city that we so love."

Winning the mayoral contest in New York City is a steep uphill climb for any Republican. Sliwa, however, believes that he has forged unique bonds in the city that will allow him to make inroads with voting blocs that do not typically vote red.

"I've been working in neighborhoods where the only Republican some people have seen is Abraham Lincoln on the $5 bill," he quipped.

"Projects, tenements, urban areas. I’m accepted there. I have street cred,” he said. Sliwa spent years, and much of his primary campaign, touring hot beds of NYC homelessness and doling out help to New Yorkers in need on subway lines along dangerous routes.

Sliwa believes his decades of work with disenfranchised communities around the city will give him an edge that virtually all Republican politicians lack, but in case the "Republican" label is too much too soon for some people, he'll be on the ballot as an Independent as well.

"I have an independent line in the general campaign, which is going to give people an opportunity, who would never vote for a Republican in their lifetime to vote for me on the Independent line," he said. He claims the growing movement in New York City is among independents.

"I know how to reach independents because I was one of them," he said, adding that even now he is identified more as a "populist" than a deep-dyed Republican. 

As in many other large metropolitan areas around the nation now, there is a focus in New York on the rising crime rate. That focus gave Eric Adams, a former police captain with the NYPD, an edge in the Democratic primary, which he appears to be on his way to winning, even though the NYPD captains union, which once represented Adams, endorsed Andrew Yang in the primary. 

"They'd rather endorse [Yang] than one of their own, because Eric Adams has done more to hurt policing in New York City than anyone else," said Sliwa.

The Republican nominee says he has been studying alongside former Mayor Rudy Giuliani to learn "all the tactics that he used to take a city that was the crime capital of America, the murder capital of America, averaging 2,000 murders a year, and turn it into the safest big city in America."

"Rudy has schooled me and tutored me," he said. "I anticipate that he'll be side by side with me in the administration."