NEW YORK (BLOOMBERG) -- New York Republican mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa vowed to slash $10 billion from the schools budget and trim the Buildings Department to help pay for his proposed tax cuts.
“I’m the only candidate, GOP candidate, the one to slash taxes, corporate tax, income tax, especially the property tax, which a mayor does hold sway over,” Sliwa said in a Bloomberg Radio interview Monday. “I’m the only one who’s talking about fiscal constraint.”
The $10 billion he’s targeting from the Education Department “is all being spent on bureaucracy,” Sliwa said.
The red-beret-wearing founder of the Guardian Angels safety patrol has coveted City Hall for years, despite a Republican not winning the race in heavily Democratic New York in almost two decades. He’s currently polling last behind Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani and former Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo, who’s running as an independent.
Sliwa, 71, received just 28% of the vote running against the current New York mayor, Eric Adams, in the 2021 mayoral election and faced no opposition for the GOP nomination this year.
Sliwa, who has mounted a mayoral platform focused on law and order, said he would work with President Donald Trump and his cabinet on operations by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and the National Guard. He pledged to make public safety a priority.
“We live in a city where we are best known around the world for locking up toothpaste and not locking up criminals,” Sliwa said.
Reports have swirled that the Trump administration had held discussions about offering jobs to both Sliwa and Adams to whittle the race to a two-way competition between Cuomo and Mamdani. Adams has already dropped out.
On Monday, Sliwa repeated his commitment to remain in the race.
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com.