Barron's, October 2025
Curtis Sliwa, the Republican running to be New York mayor, has no chance of winning in the avowedly Democrat megacity. But he is refusing to step aside despite fierce pressure to do so and make it a two-man race that could hurt the chances of the frontrunner, a Democratic socialist. Sliwa, whose star rose from the end of the 1970s when he formed the Guardian Angels subway patrol group which still sees him sport a red beret, says he has received seven different job offers, including a $10 million post, to step aside.
In a recent interview with AFP, Sliwa accused his second-placed rival, the former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, of being behind that effort. “There were about seven different offers on behalf of Andrew Cuomo, not by him personally, but people representing him… With a driver — a no-show job,” Sliwa said. “It probably would have kept going up and up and up and up until I said, ‘Hey, this is not only unethical, it’s bribery, and it could be criminal,” he added. “The next person who meets me or calls me and makes an offer like this, I’m going to go to the authorities.’ And it stopped at that.”
Cuomo’s office denied the accusation, calling Sliwa “a liar and a fraudster, who has admitted to faking crimes for publicity.” Sliwa, a 71-year-old Brooklyn native, is trailing a distant third with 15 percent in the most recent poll behind Cuomo on 33 percent and Mamdani on 46 percent.
