New York City mayoral candidate Fernando Mateo has said he believes Republicans ‘do not have a chance to fight, a chance to win’ in the mayoral race, given what he considers to be the unintentionality of Mayor Bill de Blasio and government Andrew Cuomo.
Mateo, a native of the Dominican Republic, has long served as head of the state federation of taxi drivers, and recently took a leadership role at the Bodegas Association of America.
“There’s a turning point going on right now, but we need to have the right Republican to present,” the taxi and bodega lawyer said in an interview with Fox News on Saturday.
In the 2017 mayoral race, de Blasio won a second term with 66.17 percent of the vote. The Republican Malliotakis, who now serves in the House, earned only 27.59 percent.
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“The man has been vacant since taking office,” Mateo said of the city’s Democratic mayor. “He had no leadership, he was bullied and punched by Cuomo. Cuomo was the governor and he was also the mayor.” The two New York Democrats have a long feud that boiled over during the coronavirus pandemic.
Meanwhile, Mateo said Cuomo’s career in politics was ‘done’ after revelations of his mistreatment of nursing homes.
He said he jumped into the race because the Democratic candidates are ‘basically a continuation of de Blasio’.
“We do not need it, our city is in the throes – crime is rampant, our economy is underground at the moment, we need to get small businesses back,” he said, noting that 80,000 were closed due to the pandemic.
“The first thing we need to do is get public safety back. Nobody wants to be in a city that is not safe,” he continued.
Mateo said he would add ‘thousands’ of NYPD officers to the street and work to restructure the city’s bail reform law.
Under New York’s bail laws enacted last year, a number of ‘non-violent’ offenses are not bail-free, allowing those who allegedly commit crimes such as burglary, domestic abuse and even second-degree manslaughter, until their trial dates.
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“It does not help those who commit minor crimes and deserve bail reform. It has not been put together properly. We have opened the prisons and allowed every armed criminal on the street,” Mateo said.
Mateo said he believes Cuomo’s career in politics is ‘over’. He said Cuomo was “out of touch” throughout the pandemic, and recalled when the governor begged wealthy New Yorkers to return to the city. “I’ll buy you a drink!” he told them in August. “First of all, there is nowhere to buy them a drink because he has shut everything down, so it’s very hypocritical of him,” Mateo said.
Mateo said Cuomo “deserves everything that happens to him”, with the firestorm he faces due to the nursing home scandal after he stopped businesses that broke his strict restaurant protocol. “Why would you do that? People struggle, don’t kick them while they’re down.”
“I believe his career in politics is over, it’s over. If you can not admit that you made a mistake that cost thousands of people their lives, it will follow him and haunt the rest of his career. She life.”
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Mateo will run in the Republican primary in June against Curtis Sliwa, founder of the Guardian Angels, and financier Sara Tirschwell. Sliwa and Tirschwell