Sliwa’s colorful election for mayor of New York (2024)

NEW YORK (AP) — Wearing his signature red beret, Curtis Sliwa appears on television petting one of his 16 rescue cats in a campaign ad. He’s on the subway with his Guardian Angels anti-crime patrol. He destroys restaurant fights in Little Italy and blames the mafia and the mayor when he is banned from judging the meatball contest.

Here’s how the Republican candidate embarks on an unlikely quest to become mayor of New York City — always wearing his red hat.

Sliwa spent decades as a stunt-loving New York character, with a knack for keeping track of news cameras and a history of bombastic statements. He agrees survived an attempted mob hit prompted by his radio commentary.

The Republican insists his campaign this year is not a gamble, but more of a David-and-Goliath slingshot, with Sliwa speaking out on crime and disorder as a streetwise “man of the people.”

“I’m the only Republican who can go into neighborhoods where the only Republican they’ve ever seen is Abraham Lincoln with a five-dollar bill and be well received,” Sliwa told The Associated Press this week in an interview in his with cats filled house. apartment.

“I don’t think most people necessarily see me as a Republican. They see me more as a populist. “That’s Curtis. We know him,” Sliwa said. He says the fact that he won the Republican nomination despite never voting for Trump is a sign that he is unlikely to beat the Democrats.

At a campaign rally later that day, he rejected the idea that winning was impossible, saying he had been “David versus Goliath” all his life.

Sliwa is widely expected to lose next month’s election to Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, a Democrat and former New York City police commissioner who would become the city’s second black mayor.

In a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans 7 to 1, Adams emerged from a crowded primary field as the candidate with a more moderate image, a pro-business approach and a unique perspective on crime that blended his time with the NYPD , his former advocacy. calling for reforms in the department and experiences with police brutality as a teenager.

Sliwa, 67, has been a ubiquitous figure in New York since he founded the anti-crime group Guardian Angels in 1979. The unarmed unit of young men and women, dressed in red berets and matching jackets, began patrolling then-crime-ridden New York City. subway system and expanded into the city before establishing branches in the US

The 300-square-foot Upper West Side apartment that Sliwa shares with his wife Nancy is decorated with lavish campaign posters and images of himself and their many cats. Part of one wall is covered with old newspaper clippings and posters of the Guardian Angels’ early exploits, a sign that reads “Crack Down on Crack” and a few police sketches of decades-old rape suspects.

He says the tableau is a reminder of the group’s roots in rougher New York.

“His analysis of New York is in some ways very outdated and I think a lot of voters see him as a relic of the old New York, with his red beret and I would say a racial understanding of how the city functions, which I don’t . I don’t think many New Yorkers are interested in it right now,” said Christina Greer, an associate professor of political science at Fordham University.

Sliwa won the Republican primary earlier this year after defeating restauranteur Fernando Mateo.

Two decades of Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg in the mayor’s office prove that Republicans can — or at least someday could — overcome the Democrats’ advantage in the city.

But Sliwa’s style and reputation, Greer said, have led to him “not really being taken seriously by a certain segment of the population.”

Sliwa’s talent for attention turned deadly serious in 1992 when he was gunned down after using his radio talk show to smear mob boss John Gotti. He escaped his would-be killers by diving out of a car window.

He confessed after the real attack that he had made up stories in the past about the Guardian Angels’ exploits, including foiling a rape and a fake story about Sliwa’s kidnapping by Transit Authority police officers.

After making obscene and racist comments about the leader of the city council on television and radio, he was briefly excluded from a regular spot on a local television debate program. Sliwa later apologized for his comments.

Last summer, when Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio banned swimming on the city’s beaches in an effort to stem the spread of the coronavirus, Sliwa staged a protest on Coney Island, first by placing a cardboard cutout of de Blasio’s face on it to stick to the beach and kick the sand. on top. He then swam for about an hour, wearing a wetsuit and his red beret, ignoring orders from city park officers to get out of the water.

As a mayoral candidate he has remained true to form.

Sliwa holds press conferences in the city almost daily, often at day-old crime scenes, where he denounces the city’s failed leadership. A shooting not far from his apartment left him lying on his stomach in the street, looking for a “smoking gun” under a car as television cameras rolled.

His campaign released videos claiming Sliwa and his Guardian Angels swarmed a Little Italy restaurant to separate and restrain unruly customers.

Sliwa dismisses Adams as outrageous and off the streets, and has hammered him over reports that he was vacationing in Monaco and holding fundraisers in the Hamptons and Martha’s Vineyard. He jumped on news reports questioning whether Adams really lives in his Brooklyn brownstone as he walked across a bridge to Fort Lee, New Jersey, carrying a milk carton with the face of the “missing” Adams.

Adams has largely ignored Sliwa in the meantime.

“It’s a challenge for me to have a conversation with someone who acknowledged making up stories about crimes,” and who “gets up to antics every day,” Adams said in a recent radio interview.

“We’re going to have to put up with four weeks of the antics of someone who thinks this is a circus, and I’m going to tolerate it because that’s the process,” Adams told WNYC. “But can we take Curtis Sliwa seriously about anything, based on his history in this city?”