Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: I've got John Tucker, Pauls when you're live here in
Speaker 2: our Bloomberg Interactive Brokers studio along with Tom Kean.
Speaker 1: We welcome to our studio. Curt Sleewak. He is the
Speaker 1: founder of the Guardian Angels.
Speaker 2: Mister Sleewah is a Republican candidate twenty five New York
Speaker 2: City may.
Speaker 3: Very patient, Curtis, very patient.
Speaker 1: Thank you for waiting.
Speaker 2: Were listening to President Trump and Prime Minister.
Speaker 1: Heres far more important than what we're going to be
Speaker 1: talking about.
Speaker 2: Curtis, talk to us about New York City, Your view
Speaker 2: of New York City.
Speaker 1: What does this city need right now, right now? Just
Speaker 1: from the business perspective, you think about it with the
Speaker 1: seventeen and a half percent corporate text, when you include
Speaker 1: the state and city nine percent for the city, and
Speaker 1: you compare it to where everybody is fleeing to Florida
Speaker 1: or Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, Tennessee, it's prohibitive
Speaker 1: to keeping business here. The personal income tax set about
Speaker 1: nine percent in the city and then nine percent of
Speaker 1: the sales tax for us to keep business from fleeing,
Speaker 1: We've got to start slashing taxes, at least those that
Speaker 1: a mayor can control. And he's done nothing to fight Overen.
Speaker 1: He nothing to go up there and to battle the
Speaker 1: governor and also the state legislature to try to preserve
Speaker 1: the business climate in New York City. Just walking to
Speaker 1: this studio of yours at Bloomberg today, all the storefronts
Speaker 1: that are closed, the retail storefronts. Why congestion pricing. It
Speaker 1: has limited the amount of foot traffic for merchants, many
Speaker 1: of them small business owners, mid sized business owners, and
Speaker 1: the chain stores, and they just can't pay their lease
Speaker 1: at the end of the month. So this state, in
Speaker 1: this city especially, does everything to basically make it impossible
Speaker 1: to stay.
Speaker 3: My daughter is desperate to move into Manhattan, and I'm
Speaker 3: desperate for her to move out of the house she
Speaker 3: would have to get we calculated this, to pay a
Speaker 3: Manhattan rent, she'd have to have ten roommates. What is
Speaker 3: the plan to make housing rents more affordable in Manhattan?
Speaker 1: Well, you're right, I happen to be all of New
Speaker 1: York City. Yeah, I'm married to a millennial, Nancy who
Speaker 1: is an e attorney.
Speaker 3: How mus you work that out?
Speaker 1: It was an upgrade for me. But she went to
Speaker 1: Brooklyn Law and she has huge student loans to pay,
Speaker 1: as so many millennials do. That's why Zorhan has resonated,
Speaker 1: you got to pay your student loans first, then you
Speaker 1: got to pay your rent. Then, as you mentioned, you
Speaker 1: already went maybe to four years of college, got a
Speaker 1: graduate degree. You lived in dormatory style housing. You come
Speaker 1: into New York City, you're now living in a dormitory again.
Speaker 1: You're making one hundred and fifty thousand maybe as a
Speaker 1: financial analysts, a CPA, and attorney. You just can't make
Speaker 1: ends meet. So you're angry. So you've got to provide
Speaker 1: a means for these young people to stay here because
Speaker 1: they're being attracted also out of state with their skill levels.
Speaker 1: We promised them, you go to college, get a good education,
Speaker 1: get a skill level, and you'll live the American dream.
Speaker 1: They can't even get a mortgage for a house. They
Speaker 1: can't even buy a car, and that's something we have
Speaker 1: to address in this city also nationally.
Speaker 4: Curtis, I gonna ask is a courtesy Over a decade ago,
Speaker 4: you had a cancer scare.
Speaker 5: How's your health?
Speaker 1: I did? I had prostate cancer and I had it removed.
Speaker 1: Maybe worst mistake in my life, because now they have
Speaker 1: about twelve other remedies.
Speaker 5: Science has really come on.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, absolutely, But I lost a great colleague, Bernard
Speaker 1: McGirk at WABC, the healthiest guy there. But he never
Speaker 1: got a simple PSA test, the simple prick of the finger,
Speaker 1: the blood test. I advise everyone listening out there, make
Speaker 1: sure your men folks get that PSA test.
Speaker 4: New York Post sympathetic to you. They've got an article
Speaker 4: just in the list. I'm gonna say, forty eight hours
Speaker 4: Times Prediction Markets forecast socialist landslide for New York City
Speaker 4: mayor race.
Speaker 5: What can you do to that?
Speaker 4: Do you have a timeline to the first Tuesday of
Speaker 4: November where you say I'm stepping aside in support or whoever?
Speaker 1: Well, if you've noticed in the last three weeks, I've
Speaker 1: been surging, and in fact, the New York Post Business
Speaker 1: section said I was the winner of the week. Not
Speaker 1: only my polling numbers are up, but also my pathway
Speaker 1: to victory. Because now you have four main candidates, three Democrats.
Speaker 1: Zoran is still a Democrat, even though these are socialists.
Speaker 1: Cuomo and Adams, who have been a failed mayor and
Speaker 1: a failed governor, and then you have me, the Republican candidate,
Speaker 1: who starts with about twenty eight percent. I also have
Speaker 1: to protect the animal's line. Never before in the history
Speaker 1: of electoral politics on any independent line, no kill shelters
Speaker 1: and put animal abuses in jail. With that, I expect
Speaker 1: to get up upwards of about thirty five percent of
Speaker 1: the vote, and I could be your next mayor. You
Speaker 1: have sixteen cats, well, six cats, now we had sixteen
Speaker 1: and the last election cycle twenty twenty one apartment. It's small,
Speaker 1: but we were rescuing cats who are not being taken
Speaker 1: in by the shelters.
Speaker 6: Remember with the lockdown and pandemic hurtis. Talk to us
Speaker 6: about mister mum Donnie. What does it say to you
Speaker 6: that he had such a successful primary. What does this
Speaker 6: say to you about the city of New York?
Speaker 5: Right now?
Speaker 1: He worked hard, and Andrew Cuomo who mailed it in,
Speaker 1: who thought he was going to have a coronation, and
Speaker 1: now he's apologized for not working hard to beat the socialists.
Speaker 1: I say it's the Democrats who let the socialists in.
Speaker 1: Remember Bernie Sanders was never a Democrat, is still not
Speaker 1: a Democrat. But Hillary wanted a show she had competition
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen, he basically won the caucuses and the primary,
Speaker 1: she got the super delegates, and then what happened. Joe
Speaker 1: Crowley didn't run a race against AOC she won, Andrew
Speaker 1: Cromo didn't run a race against Sohai Mandami. So the
Speaker 1: Democrats have turned their party over to the socialists. That's
Speaker 1: why the only thing you could do is hope for
Speaker 1: the Republican because remember during Giuliani and Bloomberg that was
Speaker 1: twenty years, but Taki twelve years as governor republic no chaos,
Speaker 1: no corruption. The Blasio, Cmo and Adams. All we've had
Speaker 1: is chaos and corruption. You've got to go the Republican route.
Speaker 1: And I'm the only Republican candidate in this.
Speaker 3: Has Momdani locked up the younger vote, No.
Speaker 1: He is not. Now. I don't see Adams no Como
Speaker 1: going after the millennials or gen Zers. But remember my
Speaker 1: ability to organize Guardian Angels, not just here but all
Speaker 1: over the world thirteen countries, one hundred and thirty cities
Speaker 1: over a total of forty six years, is based on
Speaker 1: me being able to recruit volunteers who are younger than
Speaker 1: I am, who fit into the category of millennials and
Speaker 1: gen Zers. So I'm in all the communities that he
Speaker 1: overwhelmingly beat Como in the Democratic primary, Long Island City,
Speaker 1: Astoria which is his base, the Lower East Side, and
Speaker 1: they're all millennials and gen Zis who will join your
Speaker 1: effort as they did the Trump effort when he beat
Speaker 1: Harris convincingly, he got a lot of male millennials and
Speaker 1: a lot of male gen Zs because they targeted them.
Speaker 2: Talk to us about crime and the New York City
Speaker 2: Police Department.
Speaker 1: We need at least seven thousand more cops, and I
Speaker 1: have a remedy to do that. First off, Jimmy Dolan,
Speaker 1: a Madison Square garden who pays no property taxes. He's
Speaker 1: going to be paying his fair share. And universities like
Speaker 1: NYU and Columbia are going to try to touch the
Speaker 1: money that they use for teaching and for the teachers themselves.
Speaker 1: But they buy up a lot of property that has
Speaker 1: nothing to do in Morningside Heights in Greenwich Village with
Speaker 1: education or housing for teachers as students, and they should
Speaker 1: be forced to pay their fair share of property tax.
Speaker 1: That should be enough money to hire seven thousand cops.
Speaker 1: That we desperately need and we have to give them
Speaker 1: back their qualified immunity. Every civil servant, all three hundred
Speaker 1: thousand in the city are protected by the insurance we
Speaker 1: pay for should they be sued, except the police, the
Speaker 1: state legislature, the city Council in twenty nineteen, and then
Speaker 1: Governor Cormo stripped them of qualified immunity. Notice who's protected
Speaker 1: by qualified immunity now with the thirteen sexual harassment suits.
Speaker 1: As Tom DiNapoli, the state Controller, has told us Andrew
Speaker 1: Cuomo we keep paying his legal bills. Is when he
Speaker 1: was governor. He's protected by qualified immunity. We have to
Speaker 1: give that back to the cops so they can go
Speaker 1: out there and do the job as they've been trained
Speaker 1: to do.
Speaker 3: In the green room, you were listening to Donald Trump
Speaker 3: as we carried him live with Kira Starmer from Scotland.
Speaker 3: What's your relationship with the president as a Republican?
Speaker 1: Oh, I go way back with Donald Trump with a
Speaker 1: consummate New York As we've had a love hate relationship.
Speaker 1: If you've noticed of late, he has embraced Eric Adams
Speaker 1: because he got him out of the court process of
Speaker 1: the Department of Justice. I know intimately the details of
Speaker 1: destroyed Donus, because he did that when he was running
Speaker 1: against me in twenty twenty one. Eric Adams belongs in jail.
Speaker 1: Now he's at the beck and call of the President.
Speaker 1: The President has said nice things about Angrew Cuomo and
Speaker 1: has basically just referred to me as a Republican candidate.
Speaker 1: I would suggest, with the world issues the president just
Speaker 1: stay out of the local election. Just stay out of it.
Speaker 4: Curtis, I got to go back here a bit, and
Speaker 4: I say this with great respect for John Lindsay and
Speaker 4: a Republican of another time in place. Nineteen eighty Aldamato
Speaker 4: stuns the world and beats Jacob Javits by fifty five percent.
Speaker 4: Take then he wins on a split Democratic ticket forty
Speaker 4: five percent.
Speaker 5: Eldamato wins.
Speaker 4: Aldamato wins by a small fifty three percent against Mark Green.
Speaker 4: This is staggering. Through the nineteen eighties, there's a resurgent
Speaker 4: Republican Party. Mister Trump has proven that people go Paul
Speaker 4: New Jersey. It could go Republicans, or Long Island again,
Speaker 4: or north up the Hudson River. How do you perceive
Speaker 4: the Republican Party doing better in the boroughs How's that
Speaker 4: going to happen in Brooklyn, in Queens and brock Dare
Speaker 4: I say the twelve Republicans in Manhattan it could happen.
Speaker 4: How does a Republican party take this city.
Speaker 1: Well, if you look at the polling data of late
Speaker 1: in which I'm surgeing and Eric Adams can barely get
Speaker 1: into double digits, I have thirty five percent of the
Speaker 1: vote in the Bronx. So you look to Brooklyn and
Speaker 1: Queens and obviously Staten Island, it's blue collar, working class people, homeowners.
Speaker 1: That's why I'm opposed to the City of Yes, because
Speaker 1: we give the developers and the realtors and opportunity to
Speaker 1: go in and take single and two and three and
Speaker 1: four family homes from people who have decided to improve
Speaker 1: out to the chase.
Speaker 5: What are you going to do with the NYPD? What
Speaker 5: we had? How many mayor kennidates have we had? Five, six, seven, eight.
Speaker 4: You've been doing this for pushing fifty years.
Speaker 5: Mario Cuomo got behind you a million years ago. The NYPD.
Speaker 5: What's the consensus ball?
Speaker 4: We're down thirty thousand police officers.
Speaker 5: What are you going to do day one to help NYPD?
Speaker 1: Well, Number one, you keep Jessica Tiss right there. If
Speaker 1: she's willing to serve, she had to give one police
Speaker 1: plaza a badly needed colonic on the fourteenth floor. What klonic?
Speaker 1: Come on? Just police commissioner had so tainted the role
Speaker 1: of the police commission And worse, Jeffrey Madri, head of Patrol,
Speaker 1: turned that thirteenth floor into caligula. They were all Eric
Speaker 1: Adams cronies. The best choice he made was Jessica Tish
Speaker 1: to clean up his mess. And I think if she
Speaker 1: wanted to stay for stability, you keep her as police
Speaker 1: commissioner and you will go a long way into his
Speaker 1: storing the glory and the tradition of the NYPD which
Speaker 1: has maintainted by Eric Adams and his cronies.
Speaker 3: And just to be clear before you go, congestion pricing
Speaker 3: is cold.
Speaker 1: Put congestion pricing. I side with the Secretary of Transportation
Speaker 1: and also the President. It's got to go. It has
Speaker 1: led to so many businesses closing south of sixtieth Street.
Speaker 1: It's another tax of the many taxes that have been
Speaker 1: put on New Yorkers and those from out of state
Speaker 1: and affect blue collar working class people and tradesmen and tradeswomen.
Speaker 1: It's got to go. And you know something, Mandami says,
Speaker 1: free bus fare and people get upset after people don't
Speaker 1: pay their bus fare to begin with. How about enforcement
Speaker 1: of fair evasion? Adams hasn't done it, Homo didn't do it,
Speaker 1: as Governor Sleewer, will do it when I'm maya and
Speaker 1: that will be at priority. You pay your fare when
Speaker 1: you ride the subways of buses, thirty percent of the
Speaker 1: people who ride the subways don't even bother to pay
Speaker 1: their fare.
Speaker 2: Thirty seconds immigration in New York City.
Speaker 1: Immigration. If you want to preserve business, you can't be
Speaker 1: dragging people out of the backs of restaurants and the
Speaker 1: hospitality industry who are not criminals if you don't allow
Speaker 1: them and find a way for them to legally work.
Speaker 1: My three sons, I have three sons. Neither of them
Speaker 1: or any of your sons or grandchildren out there are
Speaker 1: going to do that kind of work. Curtis, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for joining us.
Speaker 2: Curtis Lee, while he's a founder of the Guardian Angels
Speaker 2: also Republican candidate for the twenty twenty five New York
Speaker 2: City at mayor race coming up, we appreciate getting a
Speaker 2: few minutes of your time,