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Dispensing with diplomacy, he once loudly challenged a 77-year-old Holocaust survivor to "be a man" at a public meeting of the region's transit authority, and on another occasion gave the middle finger to a reporter in the rotunda of City Hall.

And on the morning of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, acting on instinct, he raced into the streets of Lower Manhattan to direct traffic and, at day's end, delivered a copy of Winston Churchill's biography to Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani for inspiration.

In a city whose once raucous and colorful politics have become remarkably buttoned-down and tranquil over the past decade, Mr. Lhota, who filed documents to become a Republican candidate for mayor of New York City on Thursday morning, is something of a throwback: an unapologetically outsize personality, known throughout his career for big emotions and an uninhibited style.

His combination of experience — on Wall Street, in the Giuliani administration and, most recently, running the Metropolitan Transportation Authority — immediately changes the texture and character of a campaign dominated by Democratic elected officials.

But above all, Mr. Lhota's candidacy presents a question: is the New York City that elected Michael R. Bloomberg, a relatively measured, data-adoring technocrat, ready to embrace a hot-tempered, irreverent and unfiltered New Yorker, who as a deputy mayor, once paused in the middle of a closely watched legal deposition to quote Aristotle and playfully contemplate the derivation of the word "ejectment" – "a new word form, when I first heard it," he told his interrogators.

Advisers to Mr. Lhota argue that his candor and authenticity are his disarming charm, inevitably distinguishing him from a field made up of candidates they see as predictable political players.

"He can be very blunt with people without burning bridges," said Anthony Coles, a former deputy mayor in the Giuliani administration who is not involved in the campaign.

But even his supporters acknowledge that Mr. Lhota's challenges are significant. Democrats have an overwhelming registration advantage in the city. For every registered Republican in the city, there are six Democrats, making it difficult for any Republican candidate to prevail.

Mr. Bloomberg, relying on $100 million of his own money for a lavish campaign, struggled to win re-election in 2009 against William C. Thompson Jr., the city's Democratic comptroller. Mr. Lhota, who is expected to participate in the city's campaign finance system, will be limited to spending about $13 million, the same as his rivals, through the primary and general election cycle.

Mr. Lhota, in a brief interview on Thursday morning, said city voters "have a history of electing mayors on issues, not party label. That is how Fiorello La Guardia was elected in the '40s, John Lindsey was elected in the '60s, Rudy Giuliani won in 1993, and Michael Bloomberg won in 2001."

He has described himself as a kind of cosmopolitan conservative, determined to hold down the city's spending and resist giveaways to public unions, even as he embraces same-sex marriage and abortion rights.

Mr. Lhota, who was born in the Bronx and grew up on Long Island, has a biography that seems ready made for a mayoral race: his father was a New York City police lieutenant, his grandfathers a New York City firefighter and a taxi driver.

After graduating from Georgetown University and Harvard Business School, he became a leader in the fast-growing Wall Street business of municipal finance.

Like many young conservatives frustrated by New York City problems with crime and homelessness in the 1980s, he was drawn to Mr. Giuliani's tough-talking message of reform.

Mr. Lhota began showing up for weekly tutorial sessions for Mr. Giuliani, then a United States attorney, on everything from homelessness to policing, that were quickly dubbed "mayor university." Mr. Lhota, by then an expert in municipal finance, focused on educating Mr. Giuliani on budget matters.

When Mr. Giuliani won election as mayor in 1993, he convinced Mr. Lhota to join him at City Hall as an assistant in the city's economic development office, where Mr. Lhota's rise was rapid, even by the standards of city government. By the second term, Mr. Lhota was deputy mayor for operations, overseeing three-fourths of the city's work force and standing in as mayor for Mr. Giuliani whenever he was out of town.

He was an influential figure in many of Mr. Giuliani's signature pushes – the privatization of city services, like sanitation, a huge reduction in the city's welfare rolls, and a hard-nosed style of budgeting that sought to deprive the City Council of dollars it had relied on for years.

Mr. Lhota, working with Mr. Giuliani, pushed for unusually drastic reductions in mainstays of the city budget, like funding for the arts, knowing well that members of the Council would demand their return. The resulting fury would be calmed by the return of basic funding, but often little else.

"Joe was the person who helped formulate that strategy," Mr. Giuliani said. "Joe knew the inner secret."

Within an administration known for relishing political combat, Mr. Lhota emerged as a figure with whom sometimes beleaguered outsiders could work.

Ronnie Eldridge, who represented the Upper West Side in the City Council from 1989 to 2001, said Mr. Lhota was an uncommon ally in a truculent City Hall — an administration, Ms. Eldridge recalled, that once halted construction on a capital project that she championed because her husband, the legendary newspaper columnist Jimmy Breslin, criticized Mr. Giuliani's plans to overhaul Times Square.

"I had a terrible relationship with the Giuliani administration," she said in a telephone interview. "But not with Joe, ever. He was respectful, he was responsive and funny, and willing to at least give you the impression that he was agreeing with you."

After leaving City Hall at the end of the Giuliani term, Mr. Lhota returned to the corporate world, as a top executive at Cablevision and Madison Square Garden.

But he was quickly drawn back into government, taking the reins of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in 2011 and becoming an unlikely cheerleader for an agency whose reputation for bloated spending is outshone only by the daily complaints of its riders.

After Hurricane Sandy, as other regional transit systems strained to return to normal, Mr. Lhota was widely praised for the subway's rapid recovery, hastened by a decision to shut down service entirely the day before the storm.

But Mr. Lhota also left the authority with a trail of unfinished business. Little progress was made on contract negotiations with Local 100, which has been working without a contract for a year. The storm threw into flux an already fragile budget plan, and many corners of the system — from the South Ferry station to the Rockaway shuttle in Queens — remain in shambles.

Some transit workers also resent what they perceive as Mr. Lhota's taking too much credit for the post-storm recovery. (Mr. Lhota did say earlier this week that "M.T.A. workers — union workers — deserve a lion's share of the credit.")

"The irony is, he didn't lift a finger to put the system back together," said John Samuelsen, Local 100's president. "He didn't settle the contract with us and now off the work that we did, he's trying to launch a mayoral candidacy."

Over the past year, Mr. Lhota has endeared himself to a wider audience with an active and frequently impolitic Twitter account, where he offers unguarded commentary on sports, politics and his own alcoholic consumption.

In his original Twitter profile, he described himself as a "9/11 cancer survivor," a subject he is not shy about discussing.

Shortly after he received a diagnosis of cancer in 2005 – the result, he believes, of prolonged exposure to the air around ground zero – Mr. Lhota shared the information with friends with characteristic defiance and humor.

Anticipating hair loss from chemotherapy, he asked for "ideas for temporary tattoos to slap on the side of my head."

He asked for prayers, but made clear that he had already turned to his old standby, Mr. Churchill, for words of comfort. "Never give in, never give in, never, never, never," he wrote, quoting his hero.

Mr. Lhota's cancer is in remission, and he said his doctors have cleared him for the rigors of a mayoral run.