Republican mayoral nominee Curtis Sliwa maintains that there is only one way that he will exit the New York City mayor’s race.
“A Mack truck hits me and I get turned into a speed bump, and they can’t recover me in the ICU. That’s the only way,” Sliwa told amNewYork in an interview. For him, it comes down to principle.
“I believe the people have a right to vote and determine who the next mayor is,” the Guardian Angels founder added. “They don’t get picked by billionaires or the professional political class. That’s not how our elections work.”
Sliwa’s comments show that he remains defiant amid mounting pressure on him to exit the mayor’s race, following Mayor Eric Adams ending his own ill-fated reelection campaign on Sunday.
In many respects, as he told amNewYork, he has little reason to quit the race now — given that there are just 35 days until the Nov. 4 general election, he is the Republican nominee, and he has raised millions of dollars from New Yorkers.
The pressure campaign on Sliwa
While Adams said his decision to exit the race stemmed from his inability to raise sufficient campaign funds, both he and Sliwa have been facing a concerted push by rival Andrew Cuomo and others to drop out in order to boost the former governor’s chances of defeating democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani — the Democratic nominee and frontrunner.
Cuomo is likely to only slightly benefit from Adams’ departure, given that the current mayor was showing up in the single digits in most public polls. However, if Sliwa — who has been polling in the mid-teens — were to drop out, it could put Cuomo within striking distance of Mamdani.
Sliwa vehemently rejected Cuomo’s contention that because he has no clear path to victory, his continued candidacy is a spoiler that will land Mamdani in City Hall. He charged that if Mamdani wins, it will be both Adams’ and Cuomo’s faults, rather than his own.
“It’s the Democrats who allowed a Zohran Mamdani to emerge,” Sliwa said. “A mayor who failed us. Had he been a halfway decent mayor, it would have been round two, the incumbent Democrat Eric Adams versus the Republican Curtis Sliwa. And the reemergence of Andrew Cuomo, who spent all his time in the Hamptons instead of campaigning, and Mamdani beat him fair and square. So the Democrats are the ones to blame.”
However, Sliwa now appears to be facing some pressure from within the GOP. John Catsimatidis, a Republican megadonor and supermarket magnet, who is Sliwa’s employer at 77 WABC, said on his Sunday radio show that the GOP nominee should “do the right thing” if he no longer feels he can win the race.
‘No one handed Curtis anything’
Republican Strategist William O’Reilly said Sliwa will likely see his campaign through to the end despite the effort to push him out because he feels he has earned the right to run.
“No one has handed Curtis anything,” O’Reilly said. “He’s busted his ass for the last 30 years, helping the city and doing his part, being a personality in the city. So from his perspective, it’s like, ‘Who the hell are you to tell me to get out?'”
O’Reilly added that no amount of money or any kind of outside offer could entice Sliwa to end his campaign. Sliwa has charged that allies of Cuomo have tried to remove him from the contest by offering cash and jobs — an accusation that Cuomo denies any knowledge of.
Political commentator Gerson Borrero, who co-hosted a NY1 talk show with Sliwa for 13 years, expressed similar sentiments.
“I don’t think that there’s anything that can buy Curtis off,” Borrero said. “I don’t think there’s is a dollar amount….or a position or guarantees of jobs for the next 10 years. Nothing like that. So I don’t see how he gets out.”
One Republican insider, who was granted anonymity to share their thoughts freely, agreed that there is little chance of Sliwa leaving the race. But they contended that Sliwa is staying in because he is motivated by creating chaos around him.
“At some point, when everyone you know on planet Earth is telling you to get out of the race, that you have no chance, it should have some impact,” the insider said. “But this is where Curtis thrives, doubling down on nonsense.”
Sliwa rejected that idea outright as “the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”
