Andrew H. Giuliani sprung upon the GOP as a true “America First,” gubernatorial candidate, the lone populist, and the ardent supporter of “common sense” law enforcement.
The 36-year-old, son of former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, has made a career as a conservative contributor and has been elevated within the ranks of the Trump Administration’s Office of Public Liaison. He also worked with the prior administration on the opioid crisis.
The gubernatorial candidate stated, “I was on the Opioid Task Force, and after 32 or over 30 years of opioid deaths increasing every single year from the late eighties all the way through 2018, in 2019, we actually saw a 17% decrease for the first time.” He went on to say the pandemic lockdowns and lax border law enforcement were key contributors to the rising opioid overdose rates within the last couple of years.
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers announced the seizure of nearly 55 pounds of fentanyl, enough to kill over 12 million people in a press release. Within the same month, the Justice Department reported that fentanyl seizures in the first five months of 2022 have surpassed all of 2021.
Mr. Giuliani doesn’t envision New York’s crime problem to be simply an urban problem, but quite the contrary. “I think stop and frisk needs to be re-implemented, not on a New York City level, but also on a statewide level,” he said. “I’d also look at programs like CompStat and really allow the data to lead the way on making sure that our police are in the areas where the most violent crime is happening.”.
“Broken windows” championed by Rudy and now Andrew Giuliani is generally considered an effective way to combat crime by addressing superficial concerns such as smaller crimes, homelessness, and community upkeep. Sheriffs have spoken to Mr. Giuliani about the lack of resources and the necessity for “broken windows” implementation in suburbs and midsize cities, like Buffalo, Rochester, and rural areas like Cuyahoga County, which have been overrun by the increased crime.
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Mr. Giuliani firmly believes that the focus on mass transit would be the best initial approach. He said he would utilize the board seats over the mayor to address the MTA. He added that the support action would come, as “There are a majority of New Yorkers and even Democrats that are saying crime is the number one issue.”
Mr. Guiliani said, “If you do that from a subway perspective, from the LIRR, from the Metro-North perspective right there, you’re going to immediately have an appetite from the mayor to start addressing what’s going on above ground.” Gains, no matter how small, would be welcomed by Mayor Adams, who continues to struggle with the New York crime wave. Politics aside, he believes in restoring people’s faith in law enforcement while empowering officers to do their duty without hyper-scrutiny.
“I would create a $5 billion pot for our police in the state budget. That way I could work directly with these PDs that have had resources taken away.” He stressed that we need to retain New York’s finest here, rather than chasing them out of state. According to the New York Post, 15,000 NYPD officers have either resigned or retired so far this year. That is a 38% spike from the same period the year before.
Reflecting back on one of the possible causes of the depleted morale of New York’s finest, Mr. Giuliani recognizes a need for a special inquiry into the 2020 riots surrounding the death of George Floyd. He referred to it and its associated enforcement of laws by rising “progressive” DAs as “the exact opposite of broken windows.” He said, during the riots he “went down a block where literally every single store had been looted.” The destruction put him in complete awe. He furthermore stressed the popular cultural notion of police being “inherently bad and inherently racist” as key contributors to the crime epidemic.
With regards to immigration, Mr.Giuliani plans to investigate the comings and goings of flights and the shuttles of undocumented immigrants. He said, “I believe the governor has the right to actually bring a lawsuit against the city as they are violating the New York state constitution. And that’s something that we would do on day one.” There were almost 2.2 million migrants apprehended in President Biden’s first year, with nearly 756,000 released into the U.S.
Acknowledging he won’t be surrounded by like-minded conservatives in office, Mr. Giuliani plans to remove DA Alvin Bragg under Article 8, Section 13B of the New York state constitution, as well as “bail reform.” He also said he will push back against the Justice Departments' labeling of political rivals as domestic terrorists.
“I’m going to ask one thing of myself and my staff every single day: what can we do today to make New York the safest state in the country? And that’s going to be our guiding mission every single day,” said. Mr. Giuliani.
He ended by saying, “I’m going to be fighting for New York for the next 50 years and fighting for this country. My wife and I talked about this last year before I announced, and we determined that we need to do everything we possibly could so that way we could leave a better country, a better state for our children than was left for me.”
New York’s gubernatorial primaries are Tuesday, June 28 with early voting starting Saturday, June 18. Andrew Giuliani positioned himself as a populist “American First” candidate among GOP designated nominee Lee Zeldin, former Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino, and businessman Harry Wilson. He is the only Republican candidate that has worked in the Trump administration.
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