Inside Curtis Sliwa’s Never-Ending Campaign
Many people, even those who won’t vote for Sliwa, seem to find his campaign charming and disarming. Mamdani’s supporters asked him to name Sliwa “cat tsar”. He has spent so long wearing a red beret that he has a visible tan line along his forehead. (Sliwa vowed to keep the beret if elected.) During his campaign, Sliwa spoke positively of former Black Panther Assata Shakur and said a socialist elected official was both nothing new and nothing to fear. Asad Dandia, a local historian who is a friend and early supporter of Mamdani, posted on X: “Once the elections are over, I really want to share them with Curtis Sliwa. »
“If everyone who said, ‘I love you, Curtis,’ ‘You did something for me, Curtis,’ had voted, he would have gotten double the number of votes that Eric Adams got,” Bruno told me. “When you campaign, you try to target your base,” he continued. “Try to understand the basis of Curtis.” I was perplexed. “It’s called New York City,” he said.
In Bay Ridge, I accompanied Steve, a volunteer activist, to watch Sliwa’s ground game in action. Steve, a retired LAPD officer, wore a “SLIWA FOR MAYOR“Baseball cap. He was about to drop off yard signs at a neighborhood barbershop and then talk to voters waiting for the bus. A few blocks from the campaign office, he met an acquaintance, Patrick Doyle, who was walking his dog, a two-year-old black pit bull named Buddy. They almost immediately began arguing. “My heart is with Curtis, but it’s not looking good,” Doyle told Steve. “No, no,” Steve said, “he East it looks good.
“Curtis can vouch for Cuomo,” Doyle said. “If Curtis gives up, Cuomo is in.” Steve shook his head and said to Doyle, “You believe the polls and that’s wrong.” »
“It’s going to hurt us in the end,” Doyle said of people refusing to vote for Cuomo. Buddy held out his leash and seemed to cough a little.
“I would never vote for Cuomo,” Steve replied. “It’s a question of conscience and morality.”
A big part of why Sliwa supporters are so stubborn may be because they hate Andrew Cuomo. “I call him Killer Cuomo,” Steve told me, referring to Cuomo’s handling of the issue. COVID in retirement homes. Pabon, the federal employee — who is not vaccinated — told me he didn’t respect Cuomo’s lack of conviction about whether he would rehire anti-vaxxers like him. “He was silent about it for months,” Pabon said. “One thing I’ll give Mamdani, he flat out said, ‘No, I won’t hire you.’ “After the second debate, I spoke briefly to Joe Tumsci, a union electrician, who was siding with Cuomo. “Why are they still campaigning? I have no idea,” said Tumsci, of the Sliwa group. “We should unite and defeat Mamdani. Mamdani’s campaign benefits from division.” I asked him if he had ever spoken to Sliwa supporters to try to persuade them. “No,” he said, “but the girl in the red jacket over there is really cute.” He pointed to a middle-aged blonde woman. “Go tell him I said so.”
Back on the street in Bay Ridge, Steve approached his prospecting spot. “We must act. Now is the time to act,” he muttered. Steve speaks fluent Mandarin – he previously lived and studied in Beijing and Taiwan – and he had a huge hit in a line on an S79 bus, where he chatted in Mandarin with an older Chinese man and a woman in a pink jacket. (“If you see me start speaking Chinese, I don’t want to surprise you,” he told me earlier.)
But, on a second line, an elderly man with an Eastern European accent, wearing a green corduroy jacket, approached him. “He’s a nice guy, but everyone has a ceiling, okay?” said the man. “If he didn’t run, Cuomo would win.”
“Don’t believe that,” Steve said. “You rely on the polls.” The man started saying that Sliwa was selfish. “I think I should also introduce myself. I’m an American citizen,” he said. “How can he win with twelve percent? I can win too, why not? He’s stupid, okay?” I asked the man if he thought Mamdani would win because of Sliwa’s campaign. “One hundred percent,” he said, pointing to Steve. “Because of him.” (The man said he was voting for Cuomo. I asked if he liked Cuomo. He said, “No.”)
