{"id":77004,"date":"2025-07-20T03:26:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-20T03:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/77004\/"},"modified":"2025-07-20T03:26:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-20T03:26:10","slug":"curtis-sliwa-has-a-path-to-become-the-next-mayor-of-nyc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/77004\/","title":{"rendered":"Curtis Sliwa has a path to become the next mayor of NYC"},"content":{"rendered":"

For much of New York City\u2019s business community, it\u2019s hard to take Curtis Sliwa<\/a> seriously.<\/p>\n

He seems to sleep in his trademark red Guardian Angels beret. <\/p>\n

His high-octane rants in a heavily accented outer-borough brogue can be distracting. <\/p>\n

The largest sources of campaign cash barely know he\u2019s running for mayor as the fat cat class courts Eric Adams<\/a>, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo<\/a> and even the Marxist Zohran Mamdani<\/a>, who upended the race by winning the Democratic primary.<\/p>\n

Yet the last I checked, most Big Apple voters aren\u2019t fat cats. <\/p>\n

Sliwa, red beret and all, is within striking distance of frontrunners Mamdani and Cuomo, at 22%, and beating Adams handily in a four-man race, according to a recent Harris poll.<\/p>\n

\t\t\tMore From\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCharles Gasparino<\/p>\n

\u201cYou guys always say follow the numbers. In a four-way race, I have a path to victory because people actually like me and they have problems with the others,\u201d Sliwa told me in an interview.<\/p>\n

Suffice to say, it\u2019s been an uneven trajectory to Sliwa\u2019s current role as the GOP mayoral candidate in a decidedly Democratic city.<\/p>\n

I have covered Sliwa\u2019s rise since I was a reporter for the Pace University newspaper back in the mid-1980s, following him and his crime-prevention troops, the aforementioned Guardian Angels<\/a>. <\/p>\n

We have mutual friends and have broken bread over dinner. <\/p>\n

And yes, he was wearing his beret throughout our meals.<\/p>\n

Ever the showman, he once staged his own kidnapping to drum up publicity. <\/p>\n

He was once really kidnapped and shot three times, allegedly as payback for repeatedly attacking the mob for drug dealing.<\/p>\n

The shooting nearly took Sliwa\u2019s life, but it didn\u2019t slow him down. <\/p>\n

He kept trudging away on TV, as a radio-show host and with the Angels. <\/p>\n

He remained relevant as violent crime came back to the city during the Bill de Blasio<\/a> years and then under Adams, whom Sliwa ran against and lost to by a wide margin.<\/p>\n

Money deficit<\/p>\n

He\u2019s back at it again and, according to the latest polls, has a shot. <\/p>\n

While Sliwa trails in raising money \u2014 by a lot (having pulled in just $169,000 compared with $1.5 million for Adams in the latest reporting\u00a0period), his style of in-person campaigning, not in the Hamptons like Cuomo but on subways and around the five boroughs, seems to be working. <\/p>\n

In other words, he\u2019s earned the business community\u2019s attention.<\/p>\n

He says\u00a0that he hasn\u2019t registered with Kathy Wylde of the NYC Partnership, the city\u2019s largest business group, who has been meeting with every candidate except Sliwa \u2014 even spending the past week listening to Mamdani\u2019s weird explanations of past socialist ravings about seizing the means of production, defunding the\u00a0police and refusing to disavow globalizing the intifada.<\/p>\n

Sliwa tells me the city\u2019s power brokers are making a big mistake snubbing him because he\u2019s the only true business candidate. <\/p>\n

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(Wylde says Sliwa, unlike the\u00a0others, has yet to ask for a meeting.)<\/p>\n

He plans to return Midtown to a true business mecca through enhanced crime prevention and by ditching congestion pricing that is reducing retail foot traffic and hurting property values. <\/p>\n

He will cut taxes and eliminate swaths of government, like the city\u2019s education bureaucracy that does a horrible job educating kids and does a good job employing loads of bureaucrats.<\/p>\n

\u201cBig business is hedging its bets and moving to Florida, Texas, even Tennessee,\u201d Sliwa said. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s impossible to keep them from diversifying but you have to convince them to keep what they have by getting rid of the homeless and making sure women are safe from pervs in the subway when going to work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brooklyn native<\/p>\n

Sliwa is a real New Yorker, a Brooklyn native who has never lived outside the city, unlike Adams or\u00a0Cuomo, the son of former Gov. Mario Cuomo. <\/p>\n

He comes from a working-class family in Canarsie, which is far different from the privileged Manhattan upbringing of the silver-spooned\u00a0Mamdani.<\/p>\n

Sliwa\u2019s\u00a0pro-business policies are why he insists it \u201cbehooves\u201d the fat cats in Wylde\u2019s group \u201cto treat me with a modicum of respect. I am here to support small- and medium-sized businesses, as well as the Fortune 500 guys and gals who pay the bulk of our taxes.\u201d<\/p>\n

One way to do just that is to address rising crime and keep Adams\u2019 very capable police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, in her job, he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s a saint in a cauldron of corruption,\u201d Sliwa said, referring to the scandals that engulfed the Adams administration.<\/p>\n

\u201cZohran would never exist if Adams had been a halfway decent mayor, and I\u2019m the only person standing in the way of a complete socialist takeover of New York.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cuomo, in Sliwa\u2019s view, is just as bad, having lost badly to Mamdani in the Democratic primary because of his own skeletons, his handling of COVID chief among them, the Republican candidate said.<\/p>\n

\u201cCuomo\u2019s approvals are as bad as Adams\u2019. People don\u2019t like them. But they like me,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Mandami might be superficially likable, but he will turn the Big Apple into \u201ca sea of socialism and destroy the city,\u201d according to Sliwa.<\/p>\n

More than anything, Sliwa wanted to make clear he isn\u2019t dropping out despite reports he might get a job in the Trump administration to narrow the field and prevent a Mamdani mayoralty.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one is going to bribe me from leaving the race,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In fact, he\u2019s so committed, he pledged to put away his trademark red beret if elected.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe realize that the beret is a recurring question,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen elected mayor, I will retire it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For much of New York City\u2019s business community, it\u2019s hard to take Curtis Sliwa seriously. He seems to…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":77005,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,5297,64,5340,5289,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,5341,9641,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,5301],"class_list":{"0":"post-77004","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-business","11":"tag-curtis-sliwa","12":"tag-eric-adams","13":"tag-new-york","14":"tag-new-york-city","15":"tag-newyork","16":"tag-newyorkcity","17":"tag-ny","18":"tag-nyc","19":"tag-nyc-mayoral-election-2025","20":"tag-polls","21":"tag-united-states","22":"tag-united-states-of-america","23":"tag-unitedstates","24":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","25":"tag-us","26":"tag-usa","27":"tag-zohran-mamdani"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114883433980435396","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77004","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=77004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77004\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}