Each evening, earlier than bedtime, Curtis Sliwa and his spouse have a ritual: They watch an episode of The Workplace and hearken to some EDM. “It’s only a actual temper elevator,” stated the two-time NYC mayoral candidate, who’s a fan of the German twentysomething deejay BUNT however listens to a variety of artists within the style.
Sliwa, 71, was sitting in an Higher West Facet diner on a current weekday afternoon. Recent off a drubbing on the polls — his 7 % was the bottom whole for a Republican in almost 50 years — the Guardian Angels founder bore the look of somebody who received. In a method, he had. For many years recognized primarily to New Yorkers as reassuring robust man and — due to his sometimes-shameless antics on native TV and radio — object of parody, Sliwa has these days discovered unlikely nationwide superstar as a social media people legend. Lots of his stunts, each new and classic, have not too long ago gone viral on TikTok, and an SNL sketch in November satirizing his debate with Andrew Cuomo and mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani racked up extra views on YouTube, 7.1 million, than some other clip from the present this season.
Sliwa is the most recent product of this unusual, authenticity-seeking second: a Boomer who, simply by being the identical blusterily quotable man he’s at all times been, has discovered the tradition working its method to him. Die a hero, or dwell lengthy sufficient to grow to be Gen Z’s swaggering grandfather.
“They see that I’m a insurgent with a trigger,” stated Sliwa, whose trademark pink beret had returned after a short, jarring absence through the marketing campaign. “I’m an outlier; I’ve by no means been mainstream. I went out to the districts the place the Zohranistas had been,” he continued, utilizing his go-to coinage for Mamdani supporters. “And even once they would say they didn’t vote for me, they might say they revered me. They might say ‘I get what you do.’”
What Sliwa has executed includes an odd mixture of caricature and crusader — he’s a pro-police financial populist — and contradiction. Everytime you suppose you have got Sliwa pegged, he flashes a shock. He’s a law-and-order Republican who worries about local weather change and animal welfare; he’s a streetwise working-class child who loves EDM. (He picked it up observing the 1980’s rave scene in Europe whereas coaching new Angels.) This reinforces the celebrity. Who cares you had been eviscerated on the polls and not too long ago give up your job? (Sliwa final month ended a decades-long run as a WABC radio host after clashing with station proprietor John Catsimatidis over the latter’s help of Cuomo.) Maverick sells.
A teenage boy exterior the diner noticed Sliwa by way of the home windows and burst in. “Mr. Sliwa, my dad and mom voted for you,” he stated excitedly.
“Recognize that. What’s your title?” Sliwa replied, unfolding his imposing body to face and greet the boy.
“My title’s Leo,” {the teenager} replied.
“What college do you go to Leo?” Sliwa requested.
“I am going to Wagner,” Leo stated. Sliwa’s first query upon assembly strangers is the place they’re from (in the event that they’re not native New Yorkers) or what college they went to (if they’re), a sorting mechanism that doubles as a bonding instrument since he typically is aware of a random reality about it.
“Wagner, proper on 76th Avenue,” he answered. “Effectively I’m gonna offer you a card Leo. Go forward, scan that and it’ll inform you all the things you’ll want to know.” (The QR code takes you to Sliwa’s marketing campaign web page, nonetheless lively with no indicators of easing.) Leo requested for a selfie then breathlessly stated “I want you’d have received,” which Sliwa disarmed with an even-keeled “It’s OK” because the boy ran out.
“The brand new era had very restricted information of who I’m and what I’ve executed. However this election cycle launched them,” Sliwa stated after Leo left. “I’m on the Halloween Parade in Greenwich Village yearly, however this yr there have been all these Curtis Sliwa costumes. Although they’re Zohranistas.”
The recognition has echoed farther than you’d suppose. “Anyone met Curtis Śliwa in actual life?” a poster not too long ago wrote on the askNYC reddit. “I’m from Eire however one way or the other over previous few weeks I grew to become obsessive about NYC mayoral race and I’d love to listen to some tales about individuals who may need met Śliwa in actual life.”
Lengthy earlier than podcasting, Sliwa was practising a proto type of the artwork on the radio. For 30 years he tirelessly gabbed with bravado, if not precisely nuance, about something anybody needed to speak about, typically with an surprising verbal aptitude. Maybe not since H.L. Mencken has anybody roasted a politician as colorfully, or rhymingly, as Sliwa’s now-famous “slapping fannies and killing grannies” in regards to the MeToo and nursing-home allegations in opposition to Cuomo.
Not hurting (besides possibly him) has been a willingness to face in the best way of violent threats — the sort of gesture that performs properly with a sure white working-class base. Sliwa went viral through the Black Lives Matter rebellion of 2020 when he and a fellow Guardian Angel (they aren’t armed) sought to stop the robbing of a Foot Locker; he ended up within the hospital with a damaged jaw.
Sliwa often is the solely politician ever to have a comic book impersonate him, as Shane Gillis did within the SNL sketch, as a candidate “who has been dangled by my testicles off the Verrazano Bridge by a little-known gang known as the Lords of Flatbush.” He hasn’t been, however he was shot by mobsters at the back of a cab within the early 1990’s, allegedly as a result of John Gotti Jr. was upset over what Sliwa stated about his father on the radio. And also you thought the feedback part was unhealthy.
Throughout the race, Sliwa stated, he had gives of thousands and thousands of {dollars} from no fewer than seven completely different mysterious callers, all urgent for him to drop out to assist Cuomo. He is aware of who the calls got here from however declined to establish them. “When the time comes I’ll reveal it,” he stated. He definitely believes outgoing mayor Eric Adams, whom he repeatedly says is “corrupt and needs to be in jail,” accepted a payout of this sort earlier than leaving the race. “You imply to inform me he went from calling [Cuomo] every kind of names to embracing him in a matter of weeks for no cause? Give me a break.”
Whereas Sliwa is anxious about Mamdani’s method to regulation enforcement, he’s notably undisturbed by critics’ greatest knock on the rising Democratic star. “Now we have to cease with this concern and hysteria. Trump known as Mamdani a Communist. He’s not a Communist. He’s a Democratic Socialist, similar to I’m a populist Republican.” Sliwa wields his throaty South Brooklyn accent as each comedian enhancement and cred-booster, and he ratcheted it into gear now. “And it’s not like we haven’t had Democratic Socialists in New York Metropolis authorities. You understand who was a Democratic Socialist? [1990’s-era mayor] David Dinkins. Can we cease this nonsense?”
Mamdani’s fiery acceptance speech took him aback although. “What occurred? This man was all Sade ‘Clean Operator.’ After which he comes out after he wins and he’s steel.”
A middle-aged lady noticed Sliwa on the diner and got here in to greet him.
“You in all probability don’t bear in mind me. You lived throughout the road from my mother on the Decrease East Facet,” she stated.
“The place did you go to high school?” Sliwa requested.
“Tilden,” she stated, referring to the Brooklyn highschool with a various alumni roster of Norman Lear, Al Sharpton, the founding father of Snapple and the founder of two Stay Crew.
“Tilden! That’s the place my mother went,” Sliwa stated. “Canarsie. All roads result in Canarsie. Good and unhealthy.”
The lady asks Sliwa “what’s going to occur,” seemingly referencing Mamdani. “Every part will likely be high quality, all the things will likely be high quality,” he stated.
A part of the rationale Sliwa says he thinks Mamdani is not going to be an important disrupter is as a result of he sees the brand new mayor changing into part of the system he got here to tear down. “Have a look at who he’s employed. All these institutionalists who labored for earlier mayors,” Sliwa stated, name-checking some workers appointments.
The Republican says he sees the incoming govt participating with extra particular pursuits than the marketing campaign would have led you to consider. “You noticed it a number of days later at Somos,” Sliwa stated, referring to the Puerto Rico confab the place New York pols decamp after the election. “All these guys who hated him couldn’t wait to satisfy him. They’ve all acquired their beaks within the trough.” He stated he foresaw a rise up from Mamdani’s base not too far into his time period. “As a result of they had been there from the start and so they’re going to ask ‘the place did all these billionaires come from?’”
However Sliwa’s actual animus is reserved for Cuomo and people who he says gave him too simple a move. “I name them the Cuomosexuals. It’s nearly like they’re in love with this man. Me, I felt dirty watching him. I needed to take a scorching bathe.”
Sliwa stays unrepentant about not dropping out within the face of strain from reasonable Democrats —and, significantly, Catsimatidis and the hosts on the station Sliwa says he pressured. Even when his vote whole would have exceeded the margin between Mamdani and Cuomo (it didn’t), he says he would have been high quality along with his alternative.
“Once I went to high school my greatest instructor, Mr. Topol, in fifth grade at PS 114, stated ‘one-person one-vote.’ It wasn’t ‘billionaires, influencers and insiders’ get extra votes.’ The place is it written in a rule I’ve to drop out? What is that this nonsense?” He added, “The time to problem me was in a Republican major. Why didn’t anyone problem me? As a result of they knew they might lose.”
No kumbaya second awaits with Catsimatidis, he stated. “If I walked again into WABC now I’d be like any person strolling right into a cage of Doberman Pinschers with porkchop pants on.” Sliwa stated he truly needed to give up WABC after the 2021 election when the Gristedes-owning Catsamatidis, then an Adams supporter, posted a observe within the newsroom to not discuss Sliwa on air. However Sliwa wanted the cash. Now, nonetheless, he says an undisclosed supply of revenue has freed him.
Sliwa has stayed obscure about how he’ll convert his newfound reputation into the subsequent section of his media profession. If a run for Congress is within the playing cards, the throwback New Yorker is taking part in it cool; if there are podcast gives, he isn’t saying.
“Something is a chance. So long as it coincides with my mission. That’s what individuals don’t perceive. It’s not cash,” he stated, cranking up the accent. “It’s in regards to the Guardian Angels and animal welfare. If it’s one thing that helps that, I’ll do it. That’s why we’re right here.” He adopted a reflective look. “My mom and father primed me, ‘Do good issues and good issues will come to you.’ There are the unvoiced — animals don’t have a voice, homeless don’t have a voice, the emotionally disturbed on the subway don’t have a voice, veterans don’t have a voice. We discuss all of them however we don’t need to hear them.”
(Sliwa and his Millennial spouse, Nancy, a lawyer and politician in her personal proper, rescued almost two dozen cats through the pandemic, a reality which induced Donald Trump to snicker that Sliwa was “not precisely primetime” however endeared Sliwa to New Yorkers. “What Trump doesn’t perceive is that individuals have a relationship with their pets like they do with their household,” he stated.)
Animal rights will not be the one level on which Sliwa criticizes the president. (“I’m no Trumper, and for those who ask him he’ll in all probability not even say I’m a Republican.”) Sliwa gives a non-MAGA option to GOP voters hungry for a candidate that’s conservative on cops and security however who see local weather and jobs as points that transcend partisanship. Sliwa additionally has pushed into the AI-skeptic lane Trump has steered away from. “These billionaires say once they take away all our jobs they’ll deal with us with Common Primary Earnings,” he stated. “Yeah, proper. Deal with us like indentured servants.”
Trump and Sliwa knew one another on the New York scene within the 1980’s, when each had been media-savvy upstarts recurrently absorbing tabloid ink. The 2 even discovered themselves as co-honorees at a dinner for a conservative political group. “I checked out Donald and stated ‘you’re not a conservative.’ And he checked out me and stated ‘you’re not a conservative.’ So we each simply stated let’s give good speeches and get the hell out of right here.”
Sliwa seemed across the diner. “I believe at present is the perfect day of my life,” he stated, nearly out of the blue, quoting BUNT’s summer season 2025 remix hit. “These lyrics say all of it. I acquired up, I’m alive, I really feel good. Not one of the relaxation issues.”
A second later a lady in her twenties bumped into the diner nearly giddy with pleasure.
“Oh my god, I can’t consider I’m assembly you Mr. Sliwa. You actually put all of it on the market for us,” she stated rapidly and nervously, in Spanish-accented English.
“The place are you from?” he stated.
“Colombia.”
“And you probably did you go to high-school right here or in Colombia?”
“I studied at school right here,” she continued, nearly hyperventilating. “I’m so sorry, I’m very nervous proper now; it’s superb to satisfy you.”
“And the place are you from in Colombia?”
“Cali.”
“I do know Cali, I do know Medellin.”
“Thanks a lot. It’s superb Mr. Sliwa, thanks a lot,” the lady stated, as he handed her a card.