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I've got John Tucker, Pauls when you're live here in our Bloomberg Interactive Brokers studio along with Tom Kean.
We welcome to our studio. Curt Sleewak. He is the founder of the Guardian Angels.
Mister Sleewah is a Republican candidate twenty five New York City may.
Very patient, Curtis, very patient.
Thank you for waiting.
Were listening to President Trump and Prime Minister.
Heres far more important than what we're going to be talking about.
Curtis, talk to us about New York City, Your view of New York City.
What does this city need right now, right now? Just from the business perspective, you think about it with the seventeen and a half percent corporate text, when you include the state and city nine percent for the city, and you compare it to where everybody is fleeing to Florida or Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, Tennessee, it's prohibitive
to keeping business here. The personal income tax set about nine percent in the city and then nine percent of the sales tax for us to keep business from fleeing, We've got to start slashing taxes, at least those that a mayor can control. And he's done nothing to fight Overen. He nothing to go up there and to battle the governor and also the state legislature to try to preserve the business climate in New York City. Just walking to this studio of yours at Bloomberg today, all the storefronts
that are closed, the retail storefronts. Why congestion pricing. It has limited the amount of foot traffic for merchants, many of them small business owners, mid sized business owners, and the chain stores, and they just can't pay their lease at the end of the month. So this state, in this city especially, does everything to basically make it impossible to stay.
My daughter is desperate to move into Manhattan, and I'm desperate for her to move out of the house she would have to get we calculated this, to pay a Manhattan rent, she'd have to have ten roommates. What is the plan to make housing rents more affordable in Manhattan?
Well, you're right, I happen to be all of New York City. Yeah, I'm married to a millennial, Nancy who is an e attorney.
How mus you work that out?
It was an upgrade for me. But she went to Brooklyn Law and she has huge student loans to pay, as so many millennials do. That's why Zorhan has resonated, you got to pay your student loans first, then you got to pay your rent. Then, as you mentioned, you already went maybe to four years of college, got a graduate degree. You lived in dormatory style housing. You come into New York City, you're now living in a dormitory again. You're making one hundred and fifty thousand maybe as a
financial analysts, a CPA, and attorney. You just can't make ends meet. So you're angry. So you've got to provide a means for these young people to stay here because they're being attracted also out of state with their skill levels. We promised them, you go to college, get a good education, get a skill level, and you'll live the American dream. They can't even get a mortgage for a house. They can't even buy a car, and that's something we have to address in this city also nationally.
Curtis, I gonna ask is a courtesy Over a decade ago, you had a cancer scare.
How's your health?
I did? I had prostate cancer and I had it removed. Maybe worst mistake in my life, because now they have about twelve other remedies.
Science has really come on.
Oh yeah, absolutely, But I lost a great colleague, Bernard McGirk at WABC, the healthiest guy there. But he never got a simple PSA test, the simple prick of the finger, the blood test. I advise everyone listening out there, make sure your men folks get that PSA test.
New York Post sympathetic to you. They've got an article just in the list. I'm gonna say, forty eight hours Times Prediction Markets forecast socialist landslide for New York City mayor race.
What can you do to that?
Do you have a timeline to the first Tuesday of November where you say I'm stepping aside in support or whoever?
Well, if you've noticed in the last three weeks, I've been surging, and in fact, the New York Post Business section said I was the winner of the week. Not only my polling numbers are up, but also my pathway to victory. Because now you have four main candidates, three Democrats. Zoran is still a Democrat, even though these are socialists. Cuomo and Adams, who have been a failed mayor and a failed governor, and then you have me, the Republican candidate,
who starts with about twenty eight percent. I also have to protect the animal's line. Never before in the history of electoral politics on any independent line, no kill shelters and put animal abuses in jail. With that, I expect to get up upwards of about thirty five percent of the vote, and I could be your next mayor. You have sixteen cats, well, six cats, now we had sixteen
and the last election cycle twenty twenty one apartment. It's small, but we were rescuing cats who are not being taken in by the shelters.
Remember with the lockdown and pandemic hurtis. Talk to us about mister mum Donnie. What does it say to you that he had such a successful primary. What does this say to you about the city of New York?
Right now?
He worked hard, and Andrew Cuomo who mailed it in, who thought he was going to have a coronation, and now he's apologized for not working hard to beat the socialists. I say it's the Democrats who let the socialists in. Remember Bernie Sanders was never a Democrat, is still not a Democrat. But Hillary wanted a show she had competition in twenty sixteen, he basically won the caucuses and the primary,
she got the super delegates, and then what happened. Joe Crowley didn't run a race against AOC she won, Andrew Cromo didn't run a race against Sohai Mandami. So the Democrats have turned their party over to the socialists. That's why the only thing you could do is hope for the Republican because remember during Giuliani and Bloomberg that was twenty years, but Taki twelve years as governor republic no chaos, no corruption. The Blasio, Cmo and Adams. All we've had
is chaos and corruption. You've got to go the Republican route. And I'm the only Republican candidate in this.
Has Momdani locked up the younger vote, No.
He is not. Now. I don't see Adams no Como going after the millennials or gen Zers. But remember my ability to organize Guardian Angels, not just here but all over the world thirteen countries, one hundred and thirty cities over a total of forty six years, is based on me being able to recruit volunteers who are younger than I am, who fit into the category of millennials and
gen Zers. So I'm in all the communities that he overwhelmingly beat Como in the Democratic primary, Long Island City, Astoria which is his base, the Lower East Side, and they're all millennials and gen Zis who will join your effort as they did the Trump effort when he beat Harris convincingly, he got a lot of male millennials and a lot of male gen Zs because they targeted them.
Talk to us about crime and the New York City Police Department.
We need at least seven thousand more cops, and I have a remedy to do that. First off, Jimmy Dolan, a Madison Square garden who pays no property taxes. He's going to be paying his fair share. And universities like NYU and Columbia are going to try to touch the money that they use for teaching and for the teachers themselves.
But they buy up a lot of property that has nothing to do in Morningside Heights in Greenwich Village with education or housing for teachers as students, and they should be forced to pay their fair share of property tax. That should be enough money to hire seven thousand cops. That we desperately need and we have to give them
back their qualified immunity. Every civil servant, all three hundred thousand in the city are protected by the insurance we pay for should they be sued, except the police, the state legislature, the city Council in twenty nineteen, and then Governor Cormo stripped them of qualified immunity. Notice who's protected by qualified immunity now with the thirteen sexual harassment suits. As Tom DiNapoli, the state Controller, has told us Andrew Cuomo we keep paying his legal bills. Is when he
was governor. He's protected by qualified immunity. We have to give that back to the cops so they can go out there and do the job as they've been trained to do.
In the green room, you were listening to Donald Trump as we carried him live with Kira Starmer from Scotland. What's your relationship with the president as a Republican?
Oh, I go way back with Donald Trump with a consummate New York As we've had a love hate relationship. If you've noticed of late, he has embraced Eric Adams because he got him out of the court process of the Department of Justice. I know intimately the details of destroyed Donus, because he did that when he was running against me in twenty twenty one. Eric Adams belongs in jail. Now he's at the beck and call of the President.
The President has said nice things about Angrew Cuomo and has basically just referred to me as a Republican candidate. I would suggest, with the world issues the president just stay out of the local election. Just stay out of it.
Curtis, I got to go back here a bit, and I say this with great respect for John Lindsay and a Republican of another time in place. Nineteen eighty Aldamato stuns the world and beats Jacob Javits by fifty five percent. Take then he wins on a split Democratic ticket forty five percent.
Eldamato wins.
Aldamato wins by a small fifty three percent against Mark Green. This is staggering. Through the nineteen eighties, there's a resurgent Republican Party. Mister Trump has proven that people go Paul New Jersey. It could go Republicans, or Long Island again, or north up the Hudson River. How do you perceive the Republican Party doing better in the boroughs How's that going to happen in Brooklyn, in Queens and brock Dare I say the twelve Republicans in Manhattan it could happen.
How does a Republican party take this city.
Well, if you look at the polling data of late in which I'm surgeing and Eric Adams can barely get into double digits, I have thirty five percent of the vote in the Bronx. So you look to Brooklyn and Queens and obviously Staten Island, it's blue collar, working class people, homeowners.
That's why I'm opposed to the City of Yes, because we give the developers and the realtors and opportunity to go in and take single and two and three and four family homes from people who have decided to improve out to the chase.
What are you going to do with the NYPD? What we had? How many mayor kennidates have we had? Five, six, seven, eight.
You've been doing this for pushing fifty years.
Mario Cuomo got behind you a million years ago. The NYPD. What's the consensus ball?
We're down thirty thousand police officers.
What are you going to do day one to help NYPD?
Well, Number one, you keep Jessica Tiss right there. If she's willing to serve, she had to give one police plaza a badly needed colonic on the fourteenth floor. What klonic? Come on? Just police commissioner had so tainted the role of the police commission And worse, Jeffrey Madri, head of Patrol, turned that thirteenth floor into caligula. They were all Eric Adams cronies. The best choice he made was Jessica Tish
to clean up his mess. And I think if she wanted to stay for stability, you keep her as police commissioner and you will go a long way into his storing the glory and the tradition of the NYPD which has maintainted by Eric Adams and his cronies.
And just to be clear before you go, congestion pricing is cold.
Put congestion pricing. I side with the Secretary of Transportation and also the President. It's got to go. It has led to so many businesses closing south of sixtieth Street. It's another tax of the many taxes that have been put on New Yorkers and those from out of state and affect blue collar working class people and tradesmen and tradeswomen. It's got to go. And you know something, Mandami says, free bus fare and people get upset after people don't
pay their bus fare to begin with. How about enforcement of fair evasion? Adams hasn't done it, Homo didn't do it, as Governor Sleewer, will do it when I'm maya and that will be at priority. You pay your fare when you ride the subways of buses, thirty percent of the people who ride the subways don't even bother to pay their fare.
Thirty seconds immigration in New York City.
Immigration. If you want to preserve business, you can't be dragging people out of the backs of restaurants and the hospitality industry who are not criminals if you don't allow them and find a way for them to legally work. My three sons, I have three sons. Neither of them or any of your sons or grandchildren out there are going to do that kind of work. Curtis, thank you so much for joining us.
Curtis Lee, while he's a founder of the Guardian Angels also Republican candidate for the twenty twenty five New York City at mayor race coming up, we appreciate getting a few minutes of your time,