NEW YORK (BLOOMBERG) -- Curtis Sliwa said he won’t drop out of the race for New York mayor, regardless of the pressure applied or incentives offered to the Republican candidate.
“They have come up with all kinds of ways to get me out of the race. And truly the only way would be if something unfortunate happened to me, like me being hit by a Mack truck,” Sliwa, 71, said in an interview Wednesday. “That’s not happening.”
Sliwa, the red-beret-wearing radio host and founder of the Guardian Angels, has coveted the job for years, despite a Republican not winning the race in heavily Democratic New York in almost two decades.
Sliwa got just 28% of the vote running against Democrat Eric Adams in the 2021 mayoral election and faced no opposition for the GOP nomination this year as many in the party resigned themselves to all-but-certain defeat.
But then Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old democratic socialist, trounced Andrew Cuomo in last week’s primary, scrambling the race and setting off anxiety among wealthy donors who backed the former New York governor.
Now, Cuomo backers, business leaders and party elites are working urgently to stop Mamdani in November’s general election, fearful of his rhetoric around tax increases, his past criticism of the New York Police Department and his views on Israel.
But with Adams running as an independent, Cuomo refusing to quit and Sliwa on the GOP line — in addition to independent Jim Walden — the anti-Mamdani vote would be split four ways.
The heated mayoral contest has even caught the attention of President Donald Trump, who earlier this week threatened to arrest Mamdani if he’s elected and tries to interfere with the work of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. This week he also called Adams “a good independent” and “very good person” without name-checking or praising Sliwa.
Sliwa said Adams is behind a campaign to force him off the Republican line. He said in recent weeks Adams had told potential donors of both parties, “Don’t worry about Curtis, he’s been taken care of. He will have a job at the White House.”
Sliwa said no one has approached him with the offer and that he wouldn’t take it regardless.
A spokesman for Adams’s campaign didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Sliwa said Adams has also indirectly floated appointing him deputy mayor for public safety. The Republican called that idea a nonstarter, akin to “putting two scorpions in a brandy glass.”
GOP leaders publicly say talk of a ballot move is premature.
“Curtis is our candidate, and until further notice that’s who we’re going with,” said Bronx Republican Party Chairman Michael Rendino. “‘Will he get out?’ That’s the question everyone is asking. There’s no way he gets out unless he moves out of the state.”
But Adams, 64, who was briefly a registered Republican in the late 1990s, has grown closer to the Trump administration since the president’s reelection last year, which came just months after Adams was indicted on federal corruption charges. The Justice Department ordered the charges dropped, raising questions of whether Adams is beholden to Trump.
A group of former Cuomo backers desperate to stop a Mamdani victory is gambling that if Adams were to gain the GOP ballot line, he could somehow cobble together a voter base big enough to win the November general election. Unlike the Democratic primary, which used ranked-choice voting, a candidate needs only to win a plurality of votes in November.
Even if the Republican ballot line did become available, it’s unclear whether Adams would take it.
“We never find it helpful to answer hypothetical questions,” said Frank Carone, an Adams campaign strategist, in a statement. “But I will say the mayor has been and will remain the mayor for ALL New Yorkers regardless of political affiliation.”
Like Zelig
Sliwa’s refusal to consider dropping his bid is characteristic of the idiosyncratic lifelong New Yorker who has maintained a Zelig-like presence in city politics for decades. Best known for founding the Guardian Angels, a 46-year-old street patrol known for its red satin jackets and berets, he’s also a host on WABC radio and an animal-rights activist.
He’s been married four times, repeatedly won sour-pickle-eating contests in the mid 1990s and recounted to Bloomberg the story of winning an award alongside Trump, from the state Conservative Party – an event so long ago that neither man identified as a conservative at the time.
In 1992, he escaped death when he was kidnapped in a stolen taxi and shot, in an attack prosecutors said was mob-ordered retaliation for his criticism of Gambino crime family boss John Gotti on his radio show.
In addition to the Republican nomination, Sliwa created a new “Protect Animals” ballot line to appeal to younger voters and women who might be reluctant to vote for Republicans, he said.
When he ran for mayor in 2021, he and his wife, Nancy, were taking care of 16 cats; now they have six. Sliwa drew attention on election day in 2021 when he tried to bring a cat into a polling site.
“My campaign is about people and pets. And as Mahatma Gandhi said — and I don’t know of that many people who are in opposition to Mahatma Gandhi — a society that does not take care of its animals, does not take care of its people,” he said.