Recently, a team of amNewYork and Schneps Media editors and reporters sat down with each of the three mayoral candidates for interviews about their campaigns and visions for the Big Apple. This is the first in a series of stories about those interviews.
Curtis Sliwa, the red beret-wearing Republican candidate for mayor, says he’s staying right where he is: In the fight.
The mayor’s race is in the home stretch, and with incumbent Eric Adams now out of the running, Sliwa is seen by some politicos as the third wheel in a larger matchup between Democratic frontrunner Zohran Mamdani and independent former Gov. Andrew Cuomo. After Adams dropped out of the contest, a recent poll suggested Cuomo picked up a big chunk of Adams voters — and some believe Sliwa’s voters could help Cuomo pull off a victory if the Guardian Angels founder drops out of the race.
Yet Sliwa, in an interview with Schneps Media, brushed off polls showing him as an underdog. In Quinnipiac’s latest poll of 1,015 likely voters, taken Oct. 3-7, Sliwa remains in third place with 15% support. He claimed a strong base among independents, saying he understands them from his time as state Reform Party chair.
“I look at favorability versus unfavorability. Most people say, ‘We might not vote for Curtis, but he’s honest and he cares.’”
After the interview, he told amNewYork there was only one way he would leave the race: “A Mack truck hits me and I get turned into a speed bump, and they can’t recover me in the ICU.”
Public safety
The Guardian Angels founder sat down with reporters and editors from Schneps Media earlier this month for a wide-ranging discussion in which he railed against “phony crime stats,” accused City Hall of cozying up to developers, and promised to make the city safer not just for New Yorkers, but for their pets too.
Public safety is the cornerstone of Sliwa’s mayoral campaign. Despite NYPD statistics showing record-low crime rates, Sliwa flatly rejects the data.
“You can believe what police headquarters, Jessica Tisch, and Eric Adams want to tell you,” he said, “or you can go into the streets and subways and see what people tell you. Women, in particular, are frightened. They get sexually harassed, perved on, and there are no cops around. There’s only 32,500 cops. We need 40,000.”
Sliwa has called for hiring 7,000 new officers to bring the NYPD’s ranks up to 40,000. He accused city officials of manipulating crime data by downgrading charges and failing to report incidents.
“If I shoot at you and miss but hit a tree, a bird, or blow out the back window of a Toyota Corolla — it doesn’t get listed as a shooting,” he said. “I’d rather the police department be accurate and acknowledge a rise in crime so we can address it. Ignoring it just makes it worse.”
Sliwa also questioned the shoplifting thresholds that classify thefts under $1,000 as misdemeanors, citing widespread public skepticism.
“I’ve been in all 350 neighborhoods,” he said. “Not one person has told me, ‘You know, Curtis, things are getting better.’ Nobody — especially women. So I don’t believe their stats.”
He accused successive administrations of “cooking the books,” a practice he claimed dates back before Adams’ tenure.
“This game’s been played long before Eric Adams became mayor,” he said. “Commissioner [Dermot] Shea knew how to knock down your numbers at the precinct level. It’s been persistent ever since.”
Tisch dismissed Sliwa’s accusations as “absurd,” saying at a recent press conference: “We record a shooting incident when a person is physically shot. If the suggestion is that we’re hiding people with bullet holes in them, that’s absurd.”
Fear, filth and fare evasion
Sliwa, who says he rides the subway daily, described the system as unsafe and deteriorating. His three priorities: more police, infrastructure repair, and addressing homelessness.
“You feel like you want to gag,” he said of the subway’s condition. “We have men and women living in the system, homeless, emotionally disturbed, the same people I’ve dealt with for years with the Guardian Angels.”
He stated that police should patrol train cars rather than stay on platforms and criticized officers for being distracted.
“Two cops should be going up and down the cars, that’s where most of the problems are,” he said. “They’re always on their phones. I don’t know how you can have two cops together, both looking at their cell phones simultaneously. That’s got to stop.”
On homelessness, Sliwa condemned what he called “a business that makes money on human beings,” accusing some nonprofit shelter operators of corruption and self-dealing. He said he would replace dormitory-style shelters with private single-room units.
“The homeless need dignity and privacy,” he said. “Every shelter I’ve been in houses people in dorms of eight or 12. There’s no humanity.”
He also criticized the state for failing to reopen mental health hospitals and pledged to pressure Governor Hochul to expand mental health services.
With the Trump administration’s constant saber-rattling, threatening to deploy the National Guard to NYC, Sliwa said he opposes federal intervention, though he said some cities “need all the help they can get.”
Asked whether he would support a presidential order deploying the National Guard to New York, Sliwa said such intervention isn’t necessary given Governor Hochul’s willingness to mobilize state resources.
“She’s certainly been willing to send in guardsmen and troopers,” he said. “I don’t think it’s needed here.”
He contrasted New York’s situation with other cities, citing “severe problems” in Memphis, St. Louis, New Orleans, and Baltimore.
If the president insisted on deploying federal troops, Sliwa said he would “respectfully try to dissuade him” and instead request FBI assistance to combat human trafficking tied to “cartel control from both Asia and Mexico.”
He said he would avoid escalating conflict with Washington to protect vital funding. “I don’t want to jeopardize federal funds,” he said. “You have to be respectful and look at the entirety of what’s being proposed.”
Housing and cost of living: ‘Improve, Don’t Move’
Sliwa opposes Mayor Adams’ “City of Yes” zoning initiative, calling it “Eric Adams gone wild to help his developer friends.”
“Forget zoning restrictions, forget community boards,” he said. “It’s central control in City Hall.”
He urged voters to reject Adams’ proposed charter changes, arguing they would weaken local oversight and empower developers. On the ballot are items 2, 3, and 4, which would let developers skip City Council review for certain subsidized affordable housing projects and minor zoning changes, establishing instead a new appeals process. Final approval would still rest with the City Planning Commission, where the mayor appoints seven of the 13 members.
Positioning himself as the champion of the outer boroughs, Sliwa criticized the spread of lithium-ion battery warehouses in residential areas, saying, “It’s all being built in the outer boroughs. I’m the only candidate defending those neighborhoods from greedy developers.”
“I’m running as a mayor who actually said we need to get more power to the neighborhoods, less power to the developers and realtors,” he added.
Rather than large-scale development, Sliwa favors a “bottom-up” housing approach focused on rehabilitation and small landlords. “We’ve got 6,000 usable NYCHA apartments,” he said. “With a little rehab, they could be occupied.”
He also said that the fear of tenant laws keeps small landlords from renting out their units. “They’d rather take the loss than have someone who never pays rent,” he said.
“That’s the number one thing that is brought to my attention, blue collar, working class area, empty apartments, not rentable, for the simple reason, that the on site landlord has determined I’d rather take a loss and live with peace and tranquility, other than having somebody there sucks the life out of me and never pays your rent,” Sliwa continued.
He proposed meetings with landlords of all levels to encourage occupancy and stated that developers who fail to deliver promised affordable units should face criminal penalties, citing the long-stalled plan to build hundreds of affordable apartments over the train tracks at Brooklyn’s Atlantic Yards as a prime example of where financial consequences are insufficient.
“A promise made must be a promise kept — cross your heart, hope to die,” he said.
He also opposed development on parkland, referencing the former Flushing Airport site: “Keep your hands off the parkland wetlands.”
Animal welfare: His most personal cause
No topic stirred Sliwa more than animal welfare. He called the city’s Animal Care and Control system “horrible” and “mismanaged,” with only “three functional shelters.”
“Staten Island’s shelter is the size of a shoebox — you’ll need a GPS to find it,” he said.
He proposed using empty storefronts as adoption centers and creating a City Hall animal welfare unit, declaring that New York should become a no-kill city.
“They have a death-row list,” he said. “If you don’t get the cat or dog within 72 hours, they’re destroyed. No need for that.”
After former President Donald Trump mocked his “love of cats,” Sliwa said the comments only drew more support from animal lovers.
“He actually did me a great favor,” Sliwa said. “Animal lovers realized I’m running on the first-ever independent line dedicated to animal welfare — Protect Animals, No Kill Shelters. Animal abusers go to jail.”
Quoting Mahatma Gandhi, Sliwa said: “A society that does not care for its animals does not care for its people.”
He later became emotional recounting the death of a cancer-stricken calico cat he and his wife Nancy rescued.
“She eventually had a stroke right in front of me,” he said. “I didn’t cry when my mother died — but I cried three days” [when Hope died].
“You bond with animals,” he said. “No matter how difficult I can be… all that animal will give you is love. To me, animals are the most forgiving in the world.”
No experience? No problem, he says
Sliwa said his lack of experience at City Hall is an asset. “Thank God I’ve never had a city job,” he said. “Could I do any worse than De Blasio, Cuomo, or Adams?”
He credited lessons from his ex-wife, Queens DA Melinda Katz, and from observing former mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg.
“She [Melinda] would explain to me the nuances of how you get stuff done in a City Council now that is even more emboldened and more empowered because of the majority that they [the Democrats] have where it appears that Adrian Adams runs the city and not Eric Adams,” he said.
“Rudy’s style was he was micro-manager, Bloomberg’s style when I watched him in the bullpen, delegate, delegate, delegate. I like the delegation part, and I’m not an omnipotent,” he said, pledging to elevate career civil servants and bring back retirees “not looking to make a killing.”
Sliwa accused the Department of Buildings of corruption, alleging without evidence that its former commissioner, Eric Ulrich, had been ousted after amassing “$600,000 in gambling debts to the Bonanno crime family.” He said he would “take the demolition team to it” and restructure the agency “so it will facilitate the needs of people who are desperate to have the Department of Buildings actually come in and do the job.”
Sliwa said the city’s $41 billion Department of Education budget is weighed down by a bloated bureaucracy that drains money from classrooms. He pointed to the Tweed Courthouse headquarters, where he said dozens of deputy chancellors and administrators “suck up all this money” while teachers still buy supplies with their own cash. He criticized “restorative justice” discipline programs that he believes let disruptive students escape consequences.
Instead, he said problem students should face removal or stricter discipline to protect classroom order. To re-engage young people, Sliwa called for lessons tied to real-world interests — computers, artificial intelligence and podcasts — alongside the basics. He also urged a revival of vocational high schools to prepare an aging city workforce, saying New York will soon need more trained home-health and technical workers.
On his opponents still in the race, Sliwa blasted Cuomo as “the candidate of billionaires.”
“He’s been bought, rented, leased, and sold over and over again,” he said. “You can’t buy me, lease me, or sell me. I’m not for rent. Let the people decide.”
He contrasted himself with the former Gov., saying, “If Zohran Mamdani becomes the next mayor, unlike Andrew Cuomo, I’m not fleeing to Florida. I improve — I don’t move.”
While sharply critical of Mamdani’s record on public safety, Sliwa called for an end to personal or religious attacks against him.
“Knock off all this other stuff,” he said. “Stop talking about his religion or culture — it has nothing to do with this.”
Sliwa said threats against candidates and activists endanger democracy, referencing his own history of being targeted by organized crime.
“I’ve had threats since I started the Guardian Angels,” he said. “I don’t travel with security — my choice — but no harm should come to Mamdani or his team. That would stifle democracy.”
