The Democratic front-runner for mayor of New York City brought his message of change to the Rev. Al Sharpton’s Harlem headquarters on Saturday while the Republican nominee said in a TV interview that he is “very different from the national Republicans.”

Former deputy mayor Joe Lhota, who won the Republican nomination in Tuesday’s primary, said on MSNBC’s “Up With Steve Kornacki” that he supports same-sex marriage and abortion rights.

“There are rooms within the Republican party that I would not be allowed in,” Lhota said. “In fact, I’ll probably be excluded because of my social views.”

Lhota later attended the Staten Island funeral of a serviceman who was killed in Afghanistan and visited Manhattan’s Little Italy for the annual Feast of San Gennaro.

Democrat Bill de Blasio, the city’s public advocate, told the crowd at Sharpton’s National Action Network that he is campaigning for affordable housing, educational opportunities for all and ending the police practice of stopping and frisking large numbers of young black and Hispanic men.

“We have to uplift our young people,” de Blasio said. “We can’t be sending them a mixed message. When you tell a young person, ‘Do the right thing, do the right thing’ … and then treat them like a suspect or a criminal even though they’ve done nothing wrong. That’s a mixed message we can’t afford to continue.”

Sharpton introduced de Blasio as “the presumptive nominee” but it was not clear Saturday whether he won the 40 percent necessary to avoid an Oct. 1 runoff with second-place finisher William Thompson, the former city comptroller.

De Blasio’s vote total after Tuesday’s primary was about 40 percent but Thompson has declined to bow out, saying he wants to wait until every vote is counted.

The city’s Board of Elections was spending the weekend recanvassing the 640,000 votes cast Tuesday. A board spokeswoman said there was no update on the vote count Saturday.

The general election is on Nov. 5.

(AP)