NEW YORK — “Remember the scene in Braveheart? Mel Gibson at the end? When the executioner was impaling him?”
It was shaping up to be another memorable interview with Curtis Sliwa, the Republican nominee for New York City mayor, who has been facing calls from Republican poobahs and moderate Democrats alike to drop out of the race in the hopes of boosting the candidacy of Andrew Cuomo.
On Wednesday morning, the outspoken GOP hopeful invoked the Academy Award–winning epic to make clear he wasn’t interested in joining a potential Cuomo administration — an offer the former governor dangled earlier this week as a carrot for Sliwa to drop out of the race.
“If all of a sudden the executioner would have stopped, and I was on that gurney, and [he] said, ‘Hey, you can work for Mayor Andrew Cuomo,’ I would say: ‘Finish the job. Impale me.’ That will never happen,” Sliwa said during a radio interview on WABC’s conservative-leaning Sid & Friends.
It was just the latest macabre declaration from someone who, despite polling a distant third, has become a fixation for political players hoping to stop Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist who is the current favorite to win the November general election. Mamdani trounced Cuomo in the Democratic primary and has been consistently leading the ex-governor by double digits in polls. The running theory among his chief detractors is that, if Sliwa were to end his campaign, the GOP nominee’s supporters would flock to the moderate Cuomo.
Sliwa has long been an intriguing character in New York City political life. In the 1970s, he began wearing his signature red beret as founder of the Guardian Angels, a vigilante group that patrolled the subways in the name of public safety. And he has consistently hosted a radio program that, in the 1990s, resulted in an assassination attempt allegedly at the hands of organized crime figures unhappy with his commentary.
Now, as Sliwa reaches new levels of visibility, his mayoral campaign is scrambling traditional political alliances while, thanks to Cuomo, opening a rift within the local Republican party.
Sliwa has received strong support from GOP leaders in all five boroughs who have urged him to continue his run. But earlier this week two of his close friends — billionaire John Catsimatidis and radio host Sid Rosenberg — publicly called on the Republican nominee to pack it in.
On Wednesday, an obstinate Sliwa responded by firebombing his professional relationship with both men, who are in their own right notable figures in New York City’s conservative establishment.
Sliwa vowed to never again set foot in WABC studios, the radio station home to Rosenberg’s eponymous program and where Sliwa has, until launching his campaign in February, long hosted his own show underwritten by Catsimatidis’ company.
“You will never see me ever in the studios of WABC again, never, no matter how this election turns out,” Sliwa said. “I cannot go out there every day and have to try to defend WABC, which is now ganging up on me in every conceivable way.”
Around halfway into the interview, Rosenberg implored Sliwa to at least focus his attacks elsewhere.
“You’ve mentioned Cuomo for 12 minutes. You’re still not talking about Mamdani,” Rosenberg said. “You’re talking about WABC and Cuomo, that’s not going to win you this goddamn race!”
In preparation for Wednesday night’s debate between the three leading candidates, Rosenberg suggested Sliwa change his approach.
“All I’m asking is, going into this debate tonight, that you realize that it’s not Cuomo. He’s in second. He’s double digits back. You’ve got to beat Mamdani,” Rosenberg said. “If you beat Cuomo with all your Cuomo talk, congratulations, you’ll come in second. You still lose.”
While Rosenberg, Catsimatidis and others see Cuomo as preferable to the democratic socialist, Sliwa said they’re equally bad choices.
“To me they’re the same,” Sliwa said. “They are the Democrats who destroyed our city and destroyed our state.”
