A lot of people, even those who will not vote for Sliwa, do seem to find his campaign charming and disarming. Mamdani supporters have asked him to appoint Sliwa as “cat czar.” He has spent so long wearing a red beret that he has a visible tan line along his forehead. (Sliwa has vowed to keep the beret off, if elected.) While campaigning, Sliwa has spoken positively of the former Black Panther Assata Shakur, and said that a socialist elected official was both nothing new and nothing to fear. Asad Dandia, a local historian who is a friend and early supporter of Mamdani’s, posted on X, “After the election is over, I genuinely want to chop it up with Curtis Sliwa.”
“If everybody that says ‘I love you, Curtis,’ ‘You did something for me, Curtis,’ had voted, he would have got double the amount of votes that Eric Adams got,” Bruno told me. “When you do campaigning, you try to target your base,” he continued. “Try to figure out Curtis’s base.” I was stumped. “It’s called New York City,” he said.
In Bay Ridge, I tagged along with Steve, a volunteer campaigner, to watch the Sliwa ground game in action. Steve, a retired L.A.P.D officer, wore a “SLIWA FOR MAYOR” baseball cap. He was on his way to drop off some yard signs at a neighborhood barbershop and then to talk to voters who were waiting for the bus. A few blocks from the campaign office, he ran into an acquaintance, Patrick Doyle, who was walking his dog, a two-year-old black pitbull called Buddy. They almost immediately started to argue. “My heart’s with Curtis, but it’s not looking good,” Doyle told Steve. “No, no,” Steve said, “it is looking good.”
“Curtis can guarantee Cuomo,” Doyle said. “If Curtis drops out, Cuomo is in.” Steve shook his head, telling Doyle, “You believe in the polls and that’s a mistake.”
“It’s gonna hurt us in the end,” Doyle said, of people who refuse to vote for Cuomo. Buddy strained against his leash and seemed to cough a little.
“I would never vote for Cuomo,” Steve replied. “It’s a matter of conscience and morality.”
A large part of why Sliwa supporters are so stubborn may be that they hate Andrew Cuomo. “I call him Killer Cuomo,” Steve told me, referring to Cuomo’s handling of COVID in nursing homes. Pabon, the federal worker—who’s unvaccinated—told me he didn’t respect Cuomo’s lack of conviction on whether he would rehire anti-vaxxers like him. “He’s dead silent on that for months,” Pabon said. “One thing I’ll give Mamdani, he straight out said, ‘Nope, I will not hire you.’ ” After the second debate, I spoke briefly to Joe Tumsci, a union electrician, who was rallying for Cuomo. “Why are they still campaigning? I have no idea,” Tumsci said, of the Sliwa group. “We should join together and defeat Mamdani. The Mamdani campaign enjoys the division.” I asked if he had ever spoken to any Sliwa supporters to try to persuade them. “I haven’t,” he said, “but the girl in the red jacket over there is really cute.” He pointed to a blond middle-aged woman. “Go tell her I said so.”
Back on the street in Bay Ridge, Steve approached his canvassing point. “We have to surge. This is the time to surge,” he muttered. Steve speaks fluent Mandarin—he previously lived and studied in Beijing and Taiwan—and he had tremendous success at a line for the S79 bus, where he chatted in Mandarin to an older Chinese man and a woman in a pink jacket. (“If you see me start to speak Chinese, I don’t want to surprise you,” he told me earlier.)
But, at a second line, an elderly man with an Eastern European accent, wearing a green corduroy jacket, accosted him. “He’s a nice guy, but everybody has a ceiling, O.K.?” the man said. “If he would not run, Cuomo would win.”
“Don’t believe that,” Steve said. “You’re going by polls.” The man started saying that Sliwa was being egotistical. “I believe I should run, also. I’m an American citizen,” he said. “How can he win from twelve per cent? I also can win—why not? He’s stupid, O.K.?” I asked the man if he thought Mamdani would win as a result of the Sliwa campaign. “Hundred per cent,” he said, and pointed at Steve. “Because of him.” (The man said he was voting for Cuomo. I asked if he liked Cuomo. He said, “No.”)
