{"id":273100,"date":"2025-10-02T23:39:14","date_gmt":"2025-10-02T23:39:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/273100\/"},"modified":"2025-10-02T23:39:14","modified_gmt":"2025-10-02T23:39:14","slug":"rudy-giuliani-allies-back-andrew-cuomo-over-curtis-sliwa-for-nyc-mayor-socialist-and-a-fruit-loop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/273100\/","title":{"rendered":"Rudy Giuliani allies back Andrew Cuomo over Curtis Sliwa for NYC mayor: ‘Socialist and a fruit loop’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Top aides and associates of former Republican Mayor Rudy Giuliani are backing Andrew Cuomo over GOP nominee Curtis Sliwa <\/a>for mayor, The Post has learned.<\/p>\n

Joe Lhota, the Republican candidate for mayor in 2013<\/a> who previously was a deputy mayor under Giuliani, told The Post he\u2019s supporting Cuomo.<\/p>\n

He also served as then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo\u2019s MTA chief.<\/p>\n

Several of former Mayor Rudy Giuliani\u2019s top aides are backing former Gov. Andrew Cuomo for mayor. MediaPunch \/ BACKGRID<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a choice between a proven manager, a socialist and a fruit loop,\u201d said Lhota, who has since switched his party affiliation from Republican to Democrat.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course I\u2019m going to be with Andrew.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anthony Carbonetti<\/a>, a Republican who served as Giuliani\u2019s chief of staff at City Hall and was a senior advisor to his 2008 presidential campaign, also said he\u2019s pushing Cuomo.<\/p>\n

For any chance to defeat Democratic nominee and front-runner Zohran Mamdani, Cuomo, running as an independent, needs to siphon votes from Sliwa.<\/p>\n

\u201cCurtis is a great New Yorker. But the numbers aren\u2019t there for him to win,\u201d Carbonetti told The Post.<\/p>\n

Joe Lhota, the GOP candidate for New York City mayor in 2013, is supporting Cuomo. Stephen Yang<\/p>\n

He said he supported Sliwa four years ago, but the stakes are too high now with democratic socialist Mamdani the favorite to lead America\u2019s largest metropolis.<\/p>\n

Sliwa, he said, can only play spoiler.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want a socialist in charge of a $116 billion city budget,\u201d Carbonetti said.<\/p>\n

He said Mamdani\u2019s proposed fare free bus program will turn the vehicles into \u201cmobile homeless shelters.\u201d<\/p>\n

Republican mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa holding a press conference outside of Cuomo\u2019s Manhattan home on Oct. 2, 2025. Matthew McDermott<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, former GOP US Attorney General Mike Mukasey <\/a>under then-President George Bush , and a longtime Giuliani pal, endorsed Cuomo in an op-ed posted posted online by the Staten Island Advance Thursday .<\/p>\n

Mukasey said he\u2019s been a loyal Republican voter for 40 years \u2014 but this election is different.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first rule for Republicans must be that our city should not be put at risk of irreversible damage, which it would be if Mamdani is elected,\u201d Mukasey said in his column.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe second rule is that we must act on the best information we have so as to follow the first rule. That information says that Cuomo is the most viable alternative to Mamdani, particularly after Adams has withdrawn,\u201d he said, referring to Mayor Eric Adams announcing this week<\/a> he\u2019s not seeking re-election.<\/p>\n

Democratic candidate Zohran Mamdani speaking at a press conference in the Bronx on Oct. 1, 2025. James Keivom<\/p>\n

The maneuvering comes at a time when President Trump himself has dumped on his party\u2019s nominee<\/a>, Sliwa, the Guardian Angels founder.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook, I\u2019m a Republican, but Curtis is not exactly prime time,\u201d Trump said on \u201cFox & Friends\u201d last month.<\/p>\n

He said Cuomo would have a better shot than Sliwa at defeating \u201ccommunist\u201d Mamdani in a head-to-head contest.<\/p>\n

The Sliwa campaign dismissed support from Giuliani\u2019s network for Cuomo.<\/p>\n

\u201cJoe Lhota has been a Democrat since 2016. He worked for Andrew Cuomo,\u201d said Sliwa campaign adviser Rob Cole.<\/p>\n

\u201cBig deal,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Giuliani, 81, mayor from 1994-2001, and who has served as a personal lawyer to Trump, has not backed a horse in the race for mayor yet, his spokesman said.<\/p>\n

Recent polls show Democratic nominee Mamdani with about a 20-point lead over Cuomo<\/a>, running on the independent \u201cFight and Deliver\u201d ballot line, with Sliwa coming in a distant third. But Mamdani is getting less than 50% of the vote.<\/p>\n

There has been no general election survey released yet since Adams announced his exit from the race.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Top aides and associates of former Republican Mayor Rudy Giuliani are backing Andrew Cuomo over GOP nominee Curtis…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":273101,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,5297,5340,6335,141556,5248,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,5341,80,21281,67,586,132,5230,68,1154,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-273100","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-andrew-cuomo","10":"tag-curtis-sliwa","11":"tag-exclusive","12":"tag-joe-lhota","13":"tag-metro","14":"tag-new-york","15":"tag-new-york-city","16":"tag-newyork","17":"tag-newyorkcity","18":"tag-ny","19":"tag-nyc","20":"tag-nyc-mayoral-election-2025","21":"tag-politics","22":"tag-rudy-giuliani","23":"tag-united-states","24":"tag-united-states-of-america","25":"tag-unitedstates","26":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","27":"tag-us","28":"tag-us-news","29":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115307214567413156","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273100\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}