NEW YORK (WENY) -- Joe Pinion, a Republican Senatorial hopeful from Yonkers, New York, tells WENY News he is giving New York's current Senator, Chuck Schumer a run for his money.

New York State has not elected a Republican Senator since Al D'Amato was re-elected in 1992. Chuck Schumer beat D'Amato in 1998, and has been New York's Senator since.

Joe Pinion believes he can upset Chuck Schumer.

"The reason we haven't elected a Republican to the United States Senate? It is because we haven't really tried," said Pinion, over a zoom call Wednesday morning. "Chuck Schumer is running ads right now in Syracuse, in Utica, in Elmira, all across Chemung. He's not doing it because he just wants to spend money. He's doing it because he recognizes that he has a real fight."

Pinion is a former television opinion host and political commentator turned politician.

"Running for U.S. Senate in 2022 was the last thing on my priority list. I had a job that I loved... the timing was not spectacular for my family. But, I think in some ways what was happening to my family and what was happening all across the country, let me feel as if I had no choice," Pinion said.

Pinion is running on a platform of: eliminating disparities in rural healthcare, increasing literacy rates and enshrining reading as a basic human right, enshrining school choice as law across the nation, and stopping the influx of drugs in America.

"Are you better off today than you were two years ago, four years ago, or in the case of Chuck Schumer, 24 years ago? If you look at New York, the story is of stark, no," said Pinion.

Pinion believes he can be a different type of leader than Schumer is.

"If you are unhappy with the world as it is today, you cannot vote for the architects who built it. Chuck Schumer built this world," Pinion said.

Schumer and Pinion have agreed to a debate that will take place nine days before the election.