Curtis Sliwa: ego or principles?
From NY GOP mayoral nominee Curtis Sliwa:
Said Sliwa: “I’m the only one standing between Zohran Mamdani and Andrew Cuomo, who I call Zohran lite.”
I suppose it’s the case that Sliwa is standing between them, since otherwise it would be a 2-person race. But calling Cuomo “Zohran lite” obscures the fact that “lite” is different from “heavy.”
More importantly, though, it depends what’s meant by “stand between.” You can stand between two people and get crushed, which is what it appears will almost inevitably happen to Sliwa. His polling hovers in the teens, but if he dropped out and all his support went to Cuomo – which certainly might happen if Sliwa were to drop out – “Zohran lite” would be the victor rather than Zohran heavy.
If I’m reading Sliwa correctly, he has no intention of dropping out. But the net effect of his staying in the race is to assure the election of Mamdani. Therefore you might say he’s acting as a Mamdani enabler.
Why? Is it ego? If so, does he really think there will be such a late surge for him that he will win?
Or perhaps he feels it’s his duty to give New Yorkers on the right a choice, and if there aren’t enough of them and as a result Mamdani wins, that’s the voters’ fault and not Sliwa’s. He may just think that New York will get what it deserves if it rejects him.
Or maybe he really does feel that Mamdani or Cuomo, it doesn’t matter which because they’re so similar (a sentiment with which I don’t agree). So why drop out just to enable Cuomo?
Then again, perhaps I’m reading Sliwa wrong and he will drop out. I just don’t think so.
I’d say he’s not “between” Mamdani and Cuomo; he’s pretty far to Cuomo’s right, probably (I know little about him), and Cuomo is modestly to Mamdani’s right. Much as I dislike Cuomo’s performance as governor, I think his mayoralty would be less disastrous for the city than Mamdani’s.
Ego is a terrible thing to waste
Sliwa’s mayoralty would be the least bad thing that could happen to NYC. New Yorkers have moral agency and they do not have to elect Zamdani just because Sliwa stays in. If they choose to do so, they should get that choice, and its consequences. Sure, people who didn’t choose that will suffer too. That’s what we all have to deal with in all parts of the country, New York is not special in this regard. I myself live in a state where there are no longer choices but Left and farther-Left. New Yorkers will not like this better.
I do not understand why people who prefer Sliwa should be denied that choice for the convenience of those who want a less-than-Marxist Leftist who literally killed thousands of people in his last job and will be buying off all the Leftists who opposed him with money and patronage, making them stronger for the next election, where they WILL get Mamdani or someone like him. The lesser of the three evils is Sliwa, not Cuomo, and New Yorkers should vote accordingly, and if they don’t that is not Sliwa’s fault.
A vote for Cuomo is a vote to try to stay where they are on the slippery slope. It will not and cannot work and it never has.
Niketas:
In this election, Sliwa functions as a Cuomo spoiler. New Yorkers on the right have a choice with Sliwa – as I pointed out in my post in the third paragraph from the bottom.
But choosing Sliwa is counterproductive in the practical sense, as it will lead to the worst possible result.
What it comes down to is the meaning and purpose of a vote. Does the voter consider it an individual statement (not publicly known, however, who the person votes for) even if its result is the opposite of what the voter intended? In other words, is it a form of self-expression and virtue-signaling, and being true to oneself – no matter what? Or should a person vote tactically and strategically to try to make sure the worst possibility doesn’t occur?
In other words, should the voter take into account the actual real-world consequences of his or her vote? I think so.
And should the candidate do likewise? I also think so.
Your mileage – and Sliwa’s – obviously differs.
Of course, if Sliwa wins, I’ll be happy to say I was wrong about his chances.
Had I been living in New York, I could have filled out my ranked-choice ballot by marking Sliwa my first choice, Adams my 2d choice, and Cuomo my 3d choice. Oh wait, they only have ranked-choice voting in the Democratic primary.
It’s hard to comment when you are about to see the sinking of the Titanic in Real Time.
Sliwa’s campaign is not about winning; it is a grift. His campaign takes in public funding eight times the amount of the private contributions received. All the funding enriches the people running the campaign, who are Sliwa’s friends. That’s what it’s all about. No mystery, psychological or otherwise.
As for George Will, they were careless people, Tom and Daisy…
[Reposted; originally posted before Art Deco’s response at 5:05 pm.]
“During his show on [August 8, 2025], [host Bill] Maher described [Zohran] Mamdani as a ‘straight-up communist’ based on his policy positions and past political rhetoric.
“Will cut off Maher and said, ‘I want him to win. I think every 20 years or so, we need a conspicuous, confined experiment with socialism so we can crack it up again.'”
https://justthenews.com/government/local/conservative-columnist-george-will-says-he-wants-zohran-mamdani-win-nyc-mayor-race
Just response to Neo’s response to NC:
For myself, I have never considered a strategic vote. Ive only ever used my vote to support the candidate that represented my values. I spent 40 years in Connecticut seeing my vote not really affecting the known outcome, but at least knowing my insignificant vote was a statement that there’s more than one party. Even at the local state rep level (never mind Murphy or Blumenthal), I knew the D was going to win, but it felt good to vent some anger with that vote.
physicsguy:
I assume there was no cost,though, to your vote. If it was the Republican or the Democrat, you knew the Democrat would always win. You could vote for the Republican if you liked, or 3rd or 4th party if you liked. It would not affect the outcome in any meaningful sense. Once the primaries were finished, the outcome was known.
In NY right now, such a vote affects the outcome and makes it worse. How would you vote if you were in NY and a vote for Sliwa means Mamdani is more likely to win?
Art Deco:
Are you implying ranked choice voting would have increased Cuomo’s chances? I don’t see it that way. Most Mamdani voters would choose Cuomo second, and most Cuomo voters would choose Mamdani second although some would choose Sliwa. Sliwa would still have no chance. Mamdani’s lead would remain strong and I don’t think there would be enough Sliwa voters choosing Cuomo second to matter. Also, many Sliwa voters detest both Cuomo and Mamdani.
@neo:In other words, should the voter take into account the actual real-world consequences of his or her vote? I think so.
Yes, but not just for this election but the next one and the one after that. Cuomo is part of the problem that produced Mamdani. Electing Cuomo means someone like Mamdani is even more likely next election. It’s another click of the leftward ratchet. At best it may delay some consequences of electing Mamdani now. The broader Democratic party appears to be perfectly okay with and supportive of this candidate: that tells you that their views are significantly to the Left of Cuomo already and he will not be in any position to reverse that, because he doesn’t disagree with most of it.
Voting for Cuomo is a delaying tactic, but there is no point in a delaying tactic because no one is coming to save New York from itself.
Do we even know that Cuomo would win if it was just he and Mamdani? I don’t think we do know that.
Do we know if Zamdani would win if it were just he and Sliwa? If we do, and I think we do, then the discussion is completely moot: more New Yorkers would prefer an antisemitic Marxist to any sort of Republican, and there’s an end on it. We cannot save New York City from itself, and neither can Sliwa.
Only New Yorkers can save New York City by electing Sliwa. They will choose not to do this and we need to respect their choice, and let them learn from the consequences. But they can’t make the choice if Sliwa is not there to vote for. Sliwa dropping out means they get someone like Mamdani in four years as the Dems move farther left. New York cannot get less Leftist by voting for the Left. But the Left is what they want.
Neo, in answer to your question, I would vote for Sliwa. It’s important to let the winner know that they don’t have the support of all the people.
physicsguy:
But in your votes in Connecticut, have you ever actually been in a similar situation?
If I were in NY right now, I’d be voting for Cuomo. The winner in that particular 3-way race will know he doesn’t have the support of all the people, no matter how you or I would vote. It’s highly likely that even if Mamdani wins, his total will be under 50%, so of course he’ll know he won’t have the support of all the people or even all the Democrats. And he couldn’t care less, by the way.
I see your type of voting as Don Quixote-ish and mine as Sancho Panza-ish.
The problem with George Will’s approach to the every-twenty-years disastrous experiment with socialism is that we can already see the results on the left coast and in Chicago (and Minneapolis). I suppose he thinks New Yorkers are not familiar with those. “We must destroy the city to save it” doesn’t appeal to me.
Niketas:
Of course only New Yorkers can change things. We are speaking about our hypothetical votes. I don’t live in NY.
But see my response above this one. In addition, New Yorkers are so overwhelmingly Democrat that I don’t see anyone like Sliwa having a chance of being elected there for the foreseeable future.
The change will have to come from the Democrat Party as a whole. And I don’t see that happening any time soon, either. There is no indication of it. If De Blasio’s tenure didn’t change anything in that regard in NY, nor did Biden’s or Kamala’s disastrous campaign change the Democrats for the better nationwide. I don’t see Mamdani’s doing it.
And of course if it were Mamdani versus Cuomo, with Sliwa dropping out, we don’t know who would win. But if Mamdani wins I’d much rather have it happen that way rather than because Sliwa takes away votes from Cuomo in a 3-way race.
Re: Is it ego?
Probably.
Or identity. He has played the embattled idealistic outsider so long that he doesn’t know how to do anything else
However, this is probably the peak moment in his entire life when he has the most leverage that he can trade for whatever he wants for himself or NYC. I assume he is getting offers. Maybe even from the Master Dealmaker himself.
Perhaps Sliwa is waiting for the right price.
But pretty soon that carriage turns back into a pumpkin and the horses into mice.
Curtis Sliwa, Let’s Make A Deal!
Are you implying ranked choice voting would have increased Cuomo’s chances? I don’t see it that way. Most Mamdani voters would choose Cuomo second, and most Cuomo voters would choose Mamdani second although some would choose Sliwa. Sliwa would still have no chance. Mamdani’s lead would remain strong and I don’t think there would be enough Sliwa voters choosing Cuomo second to matter. Also, many Sliwa voters detest both Cuomo and Mamdani.
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The point of my post was that you would not face any dilemmas in how to cast your ballot were the ranked-choice system in use for general elections.
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If you’d like to ponder scenarios, consider the following.
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Posit that the electorate had the options of Mamdani, Cuomo, Sliwa, and Adams. You have ballots filled out for each. Each voter has his first preference and you have a line up of subsequent preferences. No candidate’s first preference votes constitute a majority of the tally. Adams has the lowest tally of first preference votes. Some of his voters do not mark any of the rest of the candidates in their preference line up and their ballots are laid aside and excluded from the tally. The remainder distribute their second choices between Mamdani, Cuomo, and Sliwa. Posit that with the addition of the 2d choice ballots, the ordinal ranking between the three remains unaltered (though not necessarily the gaps between the candidates). At this juncture, Sliwa is eliminated. Some of his voters have not placed either Mamdani or Cuomo in their preference ranking and their ballots are laid aside and excluded from the tally. The remainder are distributed between Mamdani and Cuomo depending on which had the higher rank on the ballot. On the final tabulation, you have just two candidates, so one will have a majority of the tally. Some of the quondam Adams ballots will go to Mamdani (directly, or with a stop in Sliwa’s column) and some of the Sliwa ballots will go to Mamdani (directly). Likewise, some of Adams ballots and Sliwa ballots will go to Cuomo. Question, will the difference between those landing in Cuomo’s tally and those landing in Mamdani’s tally exceed the difference between Mamdani’s first preference votes and Cuomo’s? Possibly but not necessarily.
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Now posit the runner up after Adams ballots are redistributed was actually Sliwa. Would Sliwa’s advantage over Mamdani in Cuomo and Adams ballots redistributed overcome Mamdani’s initial advantage in first preference votes? I would not think so, but I would not rule it out entirely.
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Mamdani would win if he could get enough second preference votes from Sliwa and enough 2d and 3d preference votes from Adams such that Cuomo couldn’t catch him. Possible, but not a slam dunk.
Whatever Sliwa’s motivation(s), he is right about Cuomo being Mamdani ‘lite’. On this issue, Niketas Choniates has the right of it, though with a caveat.
Re: “Only New Yorkers can save New York City by electing Sliwa. They will choose not to do this and we need to respect their choice, and let them learn from the consequences.”
But will they learn from the consequences? Look at all the other democrat run big cities in which the residents have for many decades voted to remain on the plantation.
Most of those who do move away bring their dysfunctional politics with them. Denver, Colorado is a fine example of it being ‘californized’.
Neo has often pointed out that “a mind is a difficult thing to change”. Certainly that was the case with me, in the mid-90s I can’t count the many times I turned off Limbaugh in disgust. I suspect I kept coming back to listen because I couldn’t reason my way past his positions and gradually he opened my eyes. Dennis Prager was also highly influential, his “I seek clarity… not agreement” resonated.
The motivation of those who repeatedly refuse to consider facts, reason, logic and plain common sense that questions their assumptions is twofold, moral cowardice to stand apart from the herd and pride. Cowardice is its own punishment.
The barrier to growth that pride erects was perfectly encapsulated in a bit of dialog in the iconoclastic Western “The Wild Bunch”:
Pike Bishop: “A hell of a lot of people, Dutch, just can’t stand to be wrong.”
Dutch Engstrom: “Pride.”
Pike Bishop: “And they can’t forget it… that pride… being wrong. Or learn by it.”
“If the blind lead the blind, both will fall into the ditch” Matthew 15:14 KJV
Cuomo should drop out, but won’t.
His pride & ego & being Mamdani lite, he’s lousy,
If Mamdani is terrible, he’ll lose the next election. Probably to a lousy Dem.
If NYC can’t vote for a Republican, they do deserve to get democracy good & hard. And maybe become a source of US example of failure of Dem elite ideas so more independents in all other districts do vote Rep.
Sliwa shouldn’t drop, but maybe he will be bought off, yet I doubt it.
Tom Grey:
If Cuomo drops out Mamdani wins in a landslide.
Sliwa’s campaign is not about winning; it is a grift.
– – –
That’s what it’s all about. — djf
I don’t know anything about the veracity of djf’s comment, though I’m rather certain that’s why Bernie Sanders runs over and over is because his wife makes a financial killing in each one. I wouldn’t be surprised if djf is spot on.
I would not say that “following the money” is always the most important thing, but I’m always a bit surprised that people rarely seem to pay attention to that adage.
@djf: Sliwa’s campaign is not about winning; it is a grift.
If Sliwa is a grifter, this is the time to cash out. He won’t get better.
@neo:And of course if it were Mamdani versus Cuomo, with Sliwa dropping out, we don’t know who would win. But if Mamdani wins I’d much rather have it happen that way rather than because Sliwa takes away votes from Cuomo in a 3-way race.
Last poll of likely voters has Mamdani at 52%, an increase of 5% over last month. I’d say Sliwa’s staying is not going to be why Mamdani wins.
Mamdani is going to win because he’s promised the radicals he’s one of them and he’s promised the non-radicals that he’s not really a radical. Of course he’s lying to someone. But all the Dem institutions have lined up behind him; either his antisemitism doesn’t bother them or they’ve persuaded themselves it’s a pose:
There’s really nothing to be done if NYC voters believe this guy and this is what they want. I’m afraid the only way they are going to learn, if they learn, is by finding out they were lied to….
I don’t think one can say that Curtis Sliwa is without integrity. He’s been on his self-driven mission his entire adult life. And I don’t think that anybody can say that he’s gotten rich off the Guardian Angels. I find it hard to criticize him. Not saying he’s pure, I’m sure his history has some spots but he’s a decidedly different cut from either of the others, who are clearly in it for power and money.
And as for bowing out, well…. Isn’t he running as a Republican? Why would he be so inclined, for the ‘good of the city’? How could somebody like Sliwa reconcile that, and talk himself into believing it? Just running it through my head, mulling the situation if the parties were reversed, would the lone Democrat bow out, out of some kind of sense of honor? Would his party exhort him to do the ‘right’ thing? Now that’s funny, right there.
Good and hard. That’s what’s coming.
I have my popcorn ready to celebrate as NYC out-Detroits Detroit. Who cares? Even the “regular” people have been voting left for a long time. FAFO.
If I were a journalist interviewing Mamdani, and I heard him say, coyly, that ‘I don’t have any opinions on the future of Hamas’, as he did today, I’d say directly, ‘I think you’re not being truthful’. Somebody, with his history and background and political identity, doesn’t have an opinion on this subject, at this time? What self-respecting journalist could bear being so brazenly lied to, could forgo calling out such an obvious gold-bricking of future accounting? Of course he has a position. He’s anti-Semitic. He just wants to get elected before he starts implementing policies according to his values. Because then, he would be called out for being a monstrous hypocrite. Easier to pretend to be a blank slate. And the journalists are helping him.
Denver, Colorado is a fine example of it being ‘californized’.
Not so fine
Should your vote be directed to your personal preference or to what helps meet your views of what is best for the polis?
Politics is clearly at attempt to achieve a sufficiently civil society that we can implement rules of law of some form, rather than continue in the very low trust situation of family vs. family and clan vs. clan vendetta and vengeance based systems of “justice”, often spiraling down the generations.
So I would say your vote should be directed to what you view as best for the polis or the society overall. But this just moves the value and strategy question back to which group’s values or positions you favor vs. what the folks in the other camp(s) or faction(s) would prefer.
And we know that the politicians often seek to confuse the voters as to just what group values or positions they do in fact prefer and would support once in office.
I am not sure if it would truly improve things, but maybe we should enact legislation as in Australia where it is mandatory for every adult citizen to vote. The the result can more honestly be claimed to represent the (closer approximation to) “will of the people”. But also that claim can be flawed if too many of the voters just do an eeny-meeny-moe selection without real understanding of the candidates’ positions.
We can try to educate people as to the merits of liberty over dependence and authoritarianism, but if they prove too greedy or lazy to do the work necessary to maintain our rights and privileges, we need to either kill them or move away from them.
R2L, wow! I didn’t know about Australia’s mandatory voting!
I never liked the idea because:
1) it adds to the ways election fraud can occur (– including inviting more selling or buying of votes than we have now)
2) people who resent the duty may just make a game of it, rather than basing on policies or principles.
I think I have more reasons, but not tonight. Lol.
Curtis Sliwa has zero chances of winning and his ego is so huge he is willing to help elect a Commie Rat faced ***** such as Mamdani.
We look at New York from the outside and think, “This is going to be a disaster. How could people want that?”
Because they don’t think it’s going to be a disaster. Mamdani supporters think their wildest dreams of equality and rainbows and friendship are finally going to come true (instead of Mamdani being either thwarted or co-opted by the real power in NYC, the Democratic Machine, i.e., the City Council). All the colleges on Manhattan Island held anti-semitic demonstrations/riots, and a guy like Mamdani being in charge is exactly what they want.
We on the outside know they’re wrong to want what they want. We know that even if they get half of what they want, they’ll hate the unintended consequences, which will hit them the hardest. Beyond the schadenfreude of seeing people finally understand the difference between theory and reality, it’s going to be bad. Lives are going to be ruined and foreshortened, and I don’t even think it’ll get better after it gets worse.
But you can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t arrive at via reason. I get that a lot of people still care about NYC, having lived there or thinking the city is an American achievement, but they’ve managed to squander much of the sympathy the country had for them just 24 years ago after 9/11. At least in my eyes. All I can do at this point is shrug.
@BrooklynBoy:Curtis Sliwa has zero chances of winning and his ego is so huge he is willing to help elect a Commie Rat faced ***** such as Mamdani.
Mamdani has 52% of likely voters. There is nothing Sliwa can do to change that. His tiny slice even if it all went for Cuomo, even if Cuomo weren’t the same thing as Mamdani but five years behind, won’t do anything. The Muslim Commie is what NYC wants, apparently.
Mamdani supporters are perfectly feckless and are not doing any thinking.
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Please note, the man is 33 years old, has a remarkably thin employment history, and has never held an executive position of any kind. Who would hire him to do anything which required exercising discretion? He either understands nothing about how anything works or he does understand and wants to wreck things for his own amusement. He also holds a scrum of creepy opinions that no ordinary person would entertain. It’s as if the New York electorate were composed of teenagers.
But you can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t arrive at via reason.
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True. What’s distressing is that the median age of the electorate is 42 years, maybe a tad less for core city electorates. Only an odd minority voting have the excuse that they have scant experience of mundane life. Idiocracy is now.
Not sure that compulsory voting encourages fraud. Never head that was a problem in Australia. It does compel people who do not pay attention to public affairs to cast ballots, and that’s not salutary.
NIketas:
Only one poll has Mamdani at over 50%. In others, he’s been consistently in the mid-40s.
It will be interesting to see what polling says post-debate.
Last night, Sliwa – the “Republican” nominee – refused to commit to letting the NYPD cooperate with the National Guard if deployed by Trump, but did agree that he would try to stop “asylum seekers” from being detained.
Bill Ackman is a Jewish billionaire hedge fund manager who owns a penthouse in Manhattan. He supports Israel and endorsed Trump in 2024. He watched the mayoral debate and had this to say about Sliwa.
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[Sliwa] comes across as a good man who cares and knows a lot about the City. But if he really cared as much about NYC as he seems to, he needs to drop out of the race tomorrow. A vote for Sliwa is a vote for Mamdani. Sliwa will hand NYC to Mamdani if he stays in. And I am concerned he will do so as he comes across as having a big ego, and he is out of touch with his place in the polls.
https://x.com/BillAckman/status/1979000490563432948
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Ackman had interesting things to say about Mamdani and Cuomo too.
–“FULL VIDEO | NYC Mayoral General Election Debate” (2:00:35)
https://www.youtube.com/live/133Gqfx1Ydg
Cuomo should drop out. He has failed in both the primary and general election. The people of NYC don’t want him as a Democrat or an independent.
@neo:Only one poll has Mamdani at over 50%.
Yes, the most recent one, of October 14th. There’s one that was October 7, but all the others showing Mamdani in the 40s are from September and earlier.
It will be interesting to see what polling says post-debate.
I doubt we’ll see much change. Much more important than any debate has been Mamdani’s meetings with the various Democrat interest groups in NYC, which seem to have been going very well. Like Obama, he seems to be good at passing himself off as not really being a radical, to those who need to hear that. And of course NYC voters are much more friendly to the Left anyway than the national median voter.
Niketas:
I don’t think one poll is all that definitive, especially when it is so different. As I said, the post-debate polls will be more meaningful. Of course, as I’ve also said, I think Mamdani has it in the bag. But unless Mamdani does hit 50%, I think there’s at least a decent chance that Cuomo would have won a 2-person race against Mamdani.
Apparently both of them did rather poorly in the debate.
This is a gift for conservatives, if they handle it right.
Here’s Victor Davis Hanson’s explanation for Mamdani’s likely victory in the upcoming election:
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It’s going to be an offseason election. The turnout’s going to be low. But for [Mamdani], he’s going to get every metrosexual yuppie upscale person who feels that their education or their titles or their the letters after their name should warrant a nicer place, a nicer lifestyle, and they can’t afford it in New York.
So they’re really embittered and they’re angry and they’re leftwing. So he’s going to win probably with 10% of the resident population of registered voters.
–“Cuomo FAILS During Debate to Stand Up to Mamdani and Challenge Mayor Race, with Victor Davis Hanson”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdmerqkfVU4
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I wouldn’t have thought there would be enough embittered, angry, credentialed, yuppie voters in NYC to swing the election to Mamdani, but if that 10% portion of angry yuppies in a low-turnout election can swing it, maybe so.
@neo:But unless Mamdani does hit 50%, I think there’s at least a decent chance that Cuomo would have won a 2-person race against Mamdani.
Using the older poll that you liked better, with 46% – 33% – 15%, Cuomo would have to have nearly 100% of those voting for Sliwa. I don’t think that mathematically is a “decent chance”, though it is a chance.
This election is not going to be lost because having a Republican on the ballot is a “spoiler”. It’s going to be lost because the electorate and the political machine of New York City is much more leftist and much less pro-Israel than it has been, and that’s a new reality that it’s better to learn from now and adjust to, than try to rationalize away.
I’m among the pro-Sliwa-ites. Partly because I don’t fear Mamdani so much as others do. Blue cities and states are all going down the same route; I don’t see him as much different than the rest.
And partly because I detest Cuomo, and think he’d be no better. Utterly corrupt, and almost as far to the left.
Granted, I’m from LI, and there’s a bit of schadenfreude involved.
Eeyore:
I think under Mamdani the police force will quit in droves, unlike under Cuomo. That will make the city far more dangerous.
I also think they are very different on the issue of Israel and Jews. There are a lot of Jews in NY and although I’m not sure what Mamdani would actually do, the general atmosphere would be a lot different than with Cuomo. Mamdani also said he’d arrest Netanyahu if he entered NY. Netanyahu can stay away, of course. But it’s quite a different tack from that of Cuomo.
Niketas:
I’m certainly not saying that but for Sliwa, Cuomo would win. I’m saying that Sliwa has no chance and yet will act as a potential spoiler, a possible spoiler.
And I think it’s obvious that the fact that Mamdani is slated to get any more than one or two percent of the vote is a very alarming fact about the current voters in NYC. But your statement “that’s a new reality that it’s better to learn from now and adjust to, than try to rationalize away” appears to be implying that I’m not aware of this new reality and that I’m trying to “rationalize it away.” I’m well aware of it and not trying to rationalize anything away.
Another reality of which I’m well aware is that both Mamdani and Cuomo are awful, as are the mayors of so many blue cities. It’s a very disturbing fact. Sliwa isn’t exactly the strongest representative of the right, either – but in NYC at this point not many Republicans are willing to waste their time running for an office they cannot win. New York City has a relatively recent history of electing some Republican mayors, although not necessarily conservative Republicans. It seems those days are gone.