Lhota shares his thoughts about city's top issues

It's been less than a week since Joe Lhota threw his hat into the mayoral race and he's already hitting the airwaves to share his thoughts on the Big Apple's big topics.

Lhota, a former deputy mayor under Rudy Giuliani, made an appearance on Good Day New York Monday to discuss his campaign and vision for the city.

The former MTA chief has been playing catch-up with other potential mayoral candidates who've already got a head start in media coverage, including Tom Allon, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, former City Comptroller Bill Thompson and Public Advocate Bill de Blasio.

On why Lhota, a GOP candidate is running for mayor:

"This city is in my DNA and there's a lot of things that we need to do," he said. "We've got to focus on education for our children, we have to focus on getting more jobs for everybody here in the city and diversify the economy and we still have to keep a laser light focus on the reduction in crime because of how its enhanced all of our quality of life."

On the failure between the teachers union and the city on teacher evaluations:

"None of us know what happened behind closed doors because we're not getting a real good answer. The most important thing to do when you're mayor of New York is to be able to get the right team in place to sit down with the other team. There's nothing that can't be worked out."

On the ongoing school bus strike:

"These bus drivers are not like transit authority workers. They're private sector workers but they want the same benefits and everything else that goes on that you would have at the transit authority, and they're not, and the mayor is absolutely correct."

On why he's a better candidate than Quinn:

"I've known Christine for 20 some odd years now and my background and her background are very, very different. Running the legislative process and then managing a problem and performing and hitting all of the goals and exceeding all of the goals is a completely different skill set."

On Unions:

"As mayor, I have to represent the people of the city of New York, not just the labor unions. I'm going be tough with the unions, I always have been tough with the unions but no union member can tell you I haven't been fair with them."