Curtis Sliwa isn’t quitting

Lodged in a distant third place and facing mounting pressure, is there anything that could make Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa drop out of New York City’s mayoral race? 

“There’s no dropping out,” the Guardian Angels founder told reporters on the Upper West Side Monday morning. 

Sliwa had drawn one of his bigger crowds of reporters of late to the 96th Street subway station, where he took jeers from passersby in stride. “Go home Curtis, you suck, New York hates you,” one man yelled out of a passing red Jeep. “Drop out, drop out,” another man coming out of the subway station called out perfunctorily, barely looking up at Sliwa as he passed, as if already resigned to the fact that his wish won’t be fulfilled.

Easily identifiable by his signature red beret, Sliwa often attracts attention on the streets and in the subways, where he says he’s focusing his campaigning. (And not all of the attention on Sliwa’s home turf Monday was negative. “That’s my man!” one driver called out, slowing on 95th Street to broadcast his support for Sliwa.)

But there’s a new urgency vibrating around Sliwa, after Mayor Eric Adams ended his campaign for reelection on Sunday. The move makes Sliwa, who has consistently polled in third behind front-runner Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani and second-place independent candidate Andrew Cuomo, the remaining prime target of those who are set against Mamdani and who believe Cuomo has the best chance of beating him. If only Adams, and now Sliwa, would get out of the way.

But unlike Adams, Sliwa shows no signs that he’ll shrink from the race – regardless of whether that makes him a spoiler candidate. He declines even to pick who between Mamdani and Cuomo would be a worse mayor. “It’s the double-headed Hydra,” he said Monday.

Sliwa said he’s been facing calls to drop out since Mamdani handily beat Cuomo in the Democratic primary in June, when he said was pressured to get out of the race to coalesce behind Adams. “How foolish would I have looked right now,” Sliwa said, pointing to Adams’ exit from the race. “Men have died in battle for the right to vote, and not so that billionaires or landed gentry or the professional political class will pick the next mayor.”

Sliwa has said that he’s turned down as much as $10 million in bribes to drop out of the race since June, offers he claims came from billionaires allied with Cuomo. He has declined to name names. Cuomo’s campaign has in turn called him a liar. “You know why I think you’re making it up, Mr. Sliwa? Because you’ve made it up many times before,” Cuomo said in response to the claims last week, referencing faked crimes during the Guardian Angels’ heyday. 

Sliwa said Monday that he’s given the people allegedly offering bribes “warnings,” saying, “next time it happens and I record it, I’ll go right to (Manhattan District Attorney) Alvin Bragg.”

But that pressure is not only coming from the city’s political powerbrokers or billionaries. One Upper West Side resident who came across Monday’s press conference said he wants to support Sliwa. He’s donated to Sliwa at least twice this cycle already. “You always know where he stands on issues and he appears to have a genuine heart and a genuine interest in this city from the ground up,” said Bill Apple, a retiree and self-described conservative. “He’s not an interloper or someone who is just taking advantage of a political situation to get a foothold to a higher office, which I believe is everything that’s wrong with Andrew Cuomo.”

But Apple said he’s also aware of the polls, which show Sliwa anywhere from seven to 18 points behind Cuomo. As Sliwa took questions not just from reporters but passersby on Monday, Apple asked the candidate and his wife, Nancy Sliwa, if they would accept a hypothetical deal from President Donald Trump to drop out if Nancy, an animal rights advocate, was offered a federal job that gave her control over animal testing. (She declined, saying she would never sell out her husband.)

That leaves Sliwa with a principled position and voters like Apple, who want to avoid a Mamdani mayoralty at all costs, at a frustrating loss. Apple said he would make a decision closer to election day. “If it’s at all close between Cuomo and Sliwa, I will tilt to Sliwa,” he said. “If it’s very top heavy for Cuomo, I will take this hand,” he said, pretending to puppet his right hand with his left “and write-in Cuomo.”