Exclusive: Giuliani Campaign for New York Governor Uses Father’s Blueprint

Andrew Giuliani is looking to bring his father’s no-nonsense 1990s governing strategy in New York City to Albany, focusing his gubernatorial campaign on much-needed law enforcement solutions in the Empire State ahead of the June 28 primary.

“The changes that we, that I want to make in New York, I think the changes that Donald Trump made in Washington, and the change that Rudy Giuliani made in New York City in the late ’90s are incredible examples for the next governor of the state of New York in terms of what we need to do,” Giuliani told Breitbart News in a wide-ranging interview.

“From going after the bureaucracy, from making sure that our police can proactively police again, from going after ‘big education,’ the teachers union and how they completely corrupted education, not just in this state, but in this country, and from going after these unconstitutional [COVID] mandates,” Giuliani continued.

“I like to be honest with voters. And for me, I’ve introduced myself as who I am, which is, you know, I’m Andrew Giuliani, and I’ve worked four years in the Trump White House — and I’m proud of it, to be honest.”

Giuliani is running a similar play to his father’s mayoral campaign, with a heavy focus on the state’s rampant crime problem, especially in New York City. Asked by Breitbart News how he would navigate opposition to his conservative agenda by the Democratic Mayor Eric Adams, Giuliani claimed that he could work with Adams by providing political cover for the mayor from criticism by his left-wing base in the city.

“I do think that Adams is kind of a chameleon in the sense that I think he’ll work with a Republican governor, as he would try to work with a Democratic governor,” Giuliani told Breitbart News.

“I do think, deep down, and maybe this is me being an optimist, but I do think deep down he understands that his legacy and whatever other political ambition he holds, is going to be based first and foremost on getting that murder rate and getting that violent crime down. And if he sees a governor that is more invested in actually doing it, rather than talking about it, I think he’s going to get his act together and make sure that he gets on board at the very least,” Giuliani continued. “And if not, we’re going to tell him to get the hell out of the way.”

Giuliani told Breitbart News he would allocate $5 billion from the state budget for police, creating a state fund for police to supplement areas that have decreased cops’ budgets, remove radical district attorneys, and repeal bail reform, which has allowed repeat offenders to roam free and which Giuliani called an “unmitigated disaster.”

“In New York’s $220 billion budget, there are a whole lot of cuts that we’re going to make, but the one place where I’m not willing to compromise on this is our policing,” he told Breitbart.

“I’ll use the governor’s bully pulpit to go into every assembly member, every state senator’s district where crime is increasing, and explain to [district residents] what they are voting for and how it’s actually hurting their lives. I don’t think we’ve had a governor in a very long time that has actually utilized the governor’s bully pulpit and put pressure on members of the legislature, and utilized that public strategy where you go directly to voters,” Giuliani continued.

Giuliani also outlined a plan for his education policy in an interview with Breitbart News, vowing to raise the Charter School cap and looking to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ model for what he would like to do in the Empire State with curricula.

“What I plan to do on day one, or start working toward on day one, is raising the charter school cap in New York City from 270 and statewide from 460 to over 1000. And really, I’d love to obliterate the charter school cap and have it not even there. But I’m happy, as a negotiating point, to at least double that by the end of my first term because they have been so successful. I would also look at legislation just like DeSantis introduced — the Parental Rights in Education Act. I think it’s extremely reasonable and something that I would look to as a model in the state of New York in terms of what a curriculum should be,” Giuliani told Breitbart News.

He additionally addressed the ongoing battle between religious schools and the state, as religious groups push back on state attempts to institute “oversight rules,” which would infringe on the communities’ right to provide their children an education.

“It’s something that I’ve spoken to the Orthodox communities about — it’s beyond absurd. I think this is something we would work to roll back immediately. And as it’s come through the legislature, this will take some negotiating in terms of how we do this, but I find it to be beyond crazy,” Giuliani said.

He threw in a scathing rebuke of the punitive, anti-religious coronavirus policies implemented by New York City and State in 2020, which were ultimately addressed as a First Amendment issue by the Trump administration but which saw a sustained harassment campaign against Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jewish community by Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

“It’s consistent with what this governor and the previous governor have done, and how they view government to be more important than religion. We can go right back to the fall of 2020, when they were penalizing and arresting our Jewish brothers for celebrating marriage or for celebrating life at a funeral. So, to me, this is just more of the same, when you have somebody who, instead of wearing a cross or a Star of David, wears a ‘vaxxed’ necklace.”

Andrew Giuliani, running a “grassroots strategy” in his campaign for governor of New York in the Republican primary, is operating with barely any money and with no support of the state GOP. However, he is running a much closer race than initially expected with Lee Zeldin, who has secured virtually the full support of the New York Republican apparatus.

“We started very early on and kind of said, look, this is going to be a grassroots strategy here. We decided to go to all 62 counties within the first month, and I think it’s paying off,” Giuliani told Breitbart News in an extensive exclusive interview. “I think New Yorkers have seen that we’re not just willing to travel around the state and talk to them, but we’re really talking with them and we’re listening to issues that are affecting New Yorkers.”

The polling average in June — between polls conducted by McLaughlin, Zogby, and Emerson — has Giuliani at 23.3 percent, versus Zeldin at 34.4 percent. It is worth noting that McLaughlin has been employed by the Zeldin campaign, which has him further ahead than any of the public polls at 41 percent, versus Giuliani’s 18 percent. Zogby has Zeldin at 25 percent to Giuliani’s 35 percent, and Emerson has Zeldin at 40 percent, and Giuliani at 17 percent.

Giuliani is leaning into his name brand, for better or worse, emphasizing his father’s influence on his policy opinions and his close personal ties to the MAGA-verse. After mainstay GOP consultants and fundraisers in the state went to Zeldin, the Giuliani scion has turned to an outside group of high-profile MAGA confidants to guide his play — including his father, known for lifting New York City out of some of the worst crime conditions in its history and busting up the mob’s control over key industries.

“All action, no bullshit,” is how one out-of-state senior GOP fundraising consultant described Andrew Giuliani to Breitbart News, who appeared with the candidate at a private party following a Trump-held fundraiser for Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) at the Upper East Side’s Beach Cafe.

Giuliani attended the Stefanik fundraiser at the Trump National Golf Club in Westchester in June, where he was singled out in the crowd and praised by the former president — and then appeared at the “afterparty” with top-level Stefanik staffers.

Giuliani finds himself in a peculiar situation — he is clearly ideologically aligned with Trump and is personally close with the former president, and many powerful figures in the Trump movement, but none of the big names have come out to endorse him publicly.

“If the main campaign point is: ‘Donald Trump — bad, Rudy Giuliani — bad, so, you know, then Andrew Giuliani must be really bad.’ That’s not a solution for a state that leads the country in out-migration, for a state where we’ve seen crime that has spiraled out of control over the last half-decade,” Giuliani told Breitbart News. “That’s why I come out there and put plans out there, plans that I think New Yorkers can see on day one,” he continued, dismissing the notion that he could be attacked in a deep-blue state for espousing a Trump-style posture and agenda.

New York earned over 3,250,000 votes for Donald Trump in the last presidential election, the highest any Republican has received in the state since Ronald Reagan in 1984.

“Those Republicans that want to run away from Trump, I think they’re looking at the consultants’ playbook of 25 years ago. They’re not actually looking at the updated field of play over here,” Giuliani told Breitbart News.

Trump has held back endorsing Giuliani because he likes both candidates personally and approves of both of their agendas, according to a source with knowledge of the former president’s thinking, who spoke to Breitbart News. He allegedly especially appreciated Zeldin defending him during impeachment, according to the source. Consultants who spoke with Breitbart News added that a Trump endorsement of Giuliani would likely put him over the top in the June 28 primary. Trump has not endorsed Zeldin either.

Giuliani predicted that with diligent conservative policy implementation in Albany, the state could be turned around quickly, telling Breitbart News, “this stuff can happen fast,” vowing major change within the first year of his administration.

“I think that people are going to be really surprised with how fast we can turn around New York. I’m going back to the days of Rudy Giuliani — you can look at the rotting Apple, the cover of Time magazine in 1991. They said New York City was ungovernable, and by 1997, New York was one of the safest cities in the world — one of the safest large cities in the world. This stuff can happen fast, positively and negatively, as we’ve seen,” Giuliani said. “And it wasn’t long ago that New York was one of the safest cities in the country — less than ten years ago — and we’ve seen how it’s declined,” he continued.

“I really think we can bring it back, and I think we have the agenda items that we can start implementing on day one, where you will see a massive difference in the first year of a Giuliani administration,” he told Breitbart News.

Emma-Jo Morris is the Politics Editor at Breitbart News. Email her at ejmorris@breitbart.com or follow her on Twitter.