Curtis Sliwa Vows to Stay in Mayor’s Race, Despite Push to Clear Field

Business leaders who hope Mr. Sliwa, the Republican nominee for New York City mayor, will suspend his campaign may find themselves disappointed: “No, no, no. A thousand times no,” he said.

By Jeffery C. Mays

Sept. 9, 2025, 5:50 p.m. ET

With eight weeks left in the race for New York City mayor, powerful interests — including New York City business leaders and advisers to President Trump — are feverishly trying to clear the field for a one-on-one matchup between Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, the front-runner, and former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.

But in an interview at The New York Times’s headquarters on Tuesday, Curtis Sliwa, the Republican nominee and one of the candidates facing pressure to exit the race, flatly refused to entertain the idea.

“No, no, no. A thousand times no,” Mr. Sliwa said. “I can’t be bought. I can’t be leased. I can’t be rented. I am not corruptible.”

As business leaders have lined up behind Mr. Cuomo since his loss to Mr. Mamdani in the Democratic primary, Mr. Trump’s advisers have discussed asking Mayor Eric Adams, who is running as an independent and polling at the back of the pack, to suspend his campaign in exchange for a nomination as ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

If Mr. Adams and Mr. Sliwa were to drop out, the contest between Mr. Mamdani and Mr. Cuomo would be much closer, according to a New York Times/Siena poll released on Tuesday.

But Mr. Sliwa, who founded the Guardian Angels crime patrol group and received the support of 15 percent of likely voters in the poll, said on Tuesday that leaving the race was not on the table.

And though Democrats outnumber Republicans in New York City six to one, Mr. Sliwa, who earned about 28 percent of the vote in the 2021 mayor’s race, said he saw a path to victory this year.

He said he planned to court independents, work to drive up Republican turnout and focus on what he believes is an underestimated population of voters who love animals (Mr. Sliwa and his wife have six rescue cats).

Unlike most other Republicans, Mr. Sliwa expresses little deference to the president. He said he was not part of Mr. Trump’s MAGA movement and he condemned the actions of the pro-Trump rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

A longtime populist, he is not close to the city’s business community, either, meaning there are fewer powerful figures who might hold sway over him, compared with Mr. Adams or Mr. Cuomo.

The one exception may be John Catsimatidis, the billionaire Republican grocery and oil refining magnate who has led the charge to consolidate the opposition against Mr. Mamdani and has spoken directly about it with Mr. Trump.

Mr. Catsimatidis owns WABC, a conservative talk radio station where Mr. Sliwa has worked for years, though he has taken leave during the campaign.

Yet Mr. Catsimatidis said Mr. Sliwa would most likely remain in the race for the long haul — and that he would not try to force him out.

“I would never do that. It’s not my nature,” Mr. Catsimatidis said in an interview. “The man has to do what he’s going to do.”

That hasn’t stopped the furious push by those who oppose Mr. Mamdani to clear the field.

Mr. Adams met last week in Florida with Steve Witkoff, a billionaire real estate investor and adviser to Mr. Trump. On Friday, Mr. Adams held a hastily organized news conference in front of Gracie Mansion to declare that he would remain in the race, even though he has privately said that he is considering other offers.

“I am running,” Mr. Adams said, “and I’m going to beat Mamdani.”

In an interview with the conservative radio host Sid Rosenberg that aired on Tuesday, Mr. Trump claimed he did not know Mr. Sliwa. Mr. Sliwa has said that Mr. Trump appeared on one of his radio shows and that the two men have occasionally crossed paths.

Mr. Trump seemed resigned to the fact that Mr. Mamdani holds a commanding lead in the race, saying, “We’re going to end up with a communist mayor in New York.” (Mr. Mamdani, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, is not a communist.)

Mr. Sliwa, who earlier this week announced he was spending $350,000 to place his first campaign ad of the race, said the $3.4 million he had on hand would allow him to be competitive.

But Tuesday’s poll suggests that he has a challenging road ahead. Just 56 percent of the likely Republican voters polled said they would vote for him, as did 20 percent of likely independent voters. And while 52 percent of those polled had a favorable or somewhat favorable opinion of Mr. Mamdani, just 31 percent said the same of Mr. Sliwa.

Jim Walden, a lawyer who last week suspended his long-shot independent campaign for mayor, citing his opposition to Mr. Mamdani in his decision, urged Mr. Sliwa on Tuesday to do the same.

“I know Curtis loves New York. Thousands of New Yorkers love him, me included,” Mr. Walden said. “But I implore him to reconsider by Oct. 1 if his polling remains stuck in the midteens. Too much is at stake for any non-Mamdani candidate to think different.”

Nicholas Fandos contributed reporting.

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