Sliwa’s Colorful Race for NYC Mayor (2024)

NEW YORK (AP) — In his trademark red beret, Curtis Sliwa is on television, petting one of his 16 rescued cats in a campaign ad. He’s on the subway with his Guardian Angels anti-crime patrol. He’s breaking up restaurant fights in Little Italy and blaming the Mafia and the mayor when he’s banned from judging a meatball-eating contest.

Here’s how the Republican candidate makes an unlikely bid for mayor of New York City — always wearing his red hat.

Sliwa has spent decades as a stunt-loving New York character, with a knack for keeping news cameras at bay and a history of bombastic pronouncements. He once survived an attempted attack by a mob prompted by his radio commentary.

The Republican insists his campaign this year is not a long shot but rather a David-and-Goliath slingshot, with Sliwa being a street-smart “man of the people” who speaks out on crime and disorder.

“I’m the only Republican who can go into neighborhoods where the only Republican they’ve ever seen is Abraham Lincoln on a $5 bill and be well-received,” Sliwa told The Associated Press this week in an interview in his cat-filled apartment.

“I think most people don’t 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’s unlikely to convince Democrats.

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

Sliwa is widely expected to lose next month’s election to Brooklyn Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat and former New York City police chief 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 combined his time in the NYPD, his early advocacy for reform within the department and his teenage experiences with police brutality.

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 New York City’s then crime-ridden subway system and expanded throughout the city before establishing chapters across the U.S.

The 3,500-square-foot Upper West Side apartment Sliwa shares with his wife, Nancy, is decorated with copious campaign posters and images of himself and their many cats. A portion of one wall is covered with old newspaper clippings and posters from the early adventures of the Guardian Angels, a sign that reads “Crack Down on Crack” and a few police sketches of decades-old rape suspects.

According to him, the scene is a reminder of the group’s roots in a grittier New York.

“His analysis of New York is in some ways very old-fashioned, 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 racialized view of how the city functions, which I don’t think a lot of New Yorkers are interested in right now,” said Christina Greer, an associate professor of political science at Fordham University.

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

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

But Sliwa’s style and reputation, Greer said, have meant that he is “not really taken seriously by a certain segment of the population.”

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

He confessed after the real attack that he had previously fabricated stories about the Guardian Angels’ exploits, including a foiled rape attempt and a false story about Sliwa being kidnapped by Transit Authority police officers.

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

Last summer, when Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio banned swimming at the city’s beaches in an effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus, Sliwa organized a protest on Coney Island. First, he taped a cardboard cutout of de Blasio’s face to the beach and kicked up sand. Then he swam for about an hour, wearing a wetsuit and his red beret, ignoring orders from city park rangers to get out of the water.

As a mayoral candidate, he has remained true to form.

Sliwa holds almost daily press conferences around the city, often at day-old crime scenes, where he criticizes the city’s failed leadership. At one shooting not far from his apartment, he lay face down in the street, searching for a “smoking gun” under a car as television cameras rolled.

During his campaign, videos emerged showing Sliwa and his guardian angels storming into a Little Italy restaurant to separate and restrain unruly patrons.

Sliwa dismisses Adams as an out-of-touch, out-of-touch individual, and has criticized him for reports that he has vacationed in Monaco and held fundraisers in the Hamptons and Martha’s Vineyard. He has jumped on news reports questioning whether Adams really lives in his Brooklyn brownstone, across a bridge from Fort Lee, New Jersey, while holding 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 admits he made up stories about crimes,” and “does crazy things every day,” Adams said in a recent radio interview.

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