It’s election day in New York City, where New Yorkers are heading to the polls to cast their vote to decide who will be their next mayor. Among the candidates is Curtis Sliwa, who has gone viral for his many meme-able moments on the campaign trail and stories he’s told. Today, members of The Daily Campus Life section share their thoughts on the funniest Curtis Sliwa moments.
Dan Stark, Life Editor, he/him/his, daniel.stark@uconn.edu
The funniest moments of Sliwa’s mayoral campaign have come during the debates, where his sole mission has been to throw in one-liners. Lines like him telling Andrew Cuomo that “you have a difficult understanding of what the term ‘No’ is” and him saying, “don’t be glazing me here,” to Zohran Mamdani rank as some of the funniest moments I’ve heard in any debate. Whoever is helping him come up with these deserves a raise.
I also can’t forget to mention a TikTok video I saw where someone got Sliwa to say “6 7” and do the accompanying hand gesture. It’s absolute cinema.
Tomas Hinckley, Opinion Editor, he/him, tomas.hinckley@uconn.edu
All jokes aside, I think Sliwa is a scumbag. However, I can at least respect the fact he’s 10 toes down for his beliefs, so much so that he’s repeatedly stated in increasingly extreme ways how willing he is to die for politics. For example, “I’m not getting out of this race unless they figure out a way to put me in a pine box and bury me six feet under.” Or, similarly on the topic of dropping out, he said he’d only do it if “a Mack truck hits me, and I get turned into a speed bump, and they can’t recover me in the I.C.U.” Which makes me now realize how much he fantasizes about death… someone should check in on him.
Logan De la Rosa, Campus Correspondent, he/him/his, logan.de_la_rosa@gmail.com
Alright, on the topic of the funniest Curtis Sliwa moments, I gotta go with literally the first words he spoke during the NYC Mayoral Debate. When asked to create one headline illustrating his most important action as mayor if he was elected, his response was, “Curtis Sliwa is without his iconic red beret,” pause, “because I am talking to the people of New York City about the really serious issues of affordability, the cost of living and obviously what I spent the most of my life doing, which is public safety in the streets and subways.” Let me break this down, Sliwa: (1) speaks in the third person like a cartoon character, (2) immediately hyper fixates on the lack of his “iconic” headwear as though he’s lost of piece of his body, (3) switches to first person and (4) never even acknowledges the question. Sliwa’s mind is truly an enigma.
Thaddeus Sawyer, Staff Writer, he/him/his, thaddeus.sawyer@uconn.edu
While I may not hold very many political opinions, I am a diehard and highly opinionated New York sports fan. That’s why I can respect Sliwa’s dedication to the New York Yankees. Faced in a debate with the hypothetical question of what game he would attend if the New York Mets played in game seven of a World Series the same night as the Knicks played in game seven of the NBA Finals, Sliwa said that he would not go to the Mets game.
“True baseball fans only like one or the other,” Sliwa said, later referring to the Knicks as his team. While I’m not sure that I would want Sliwa to hold a political office, I wouldn’t mind catching a ballgame with him.
Sawyer Brown, Campus Correspondent, he/him/his, sabine.brown@uconn.edu
While I only recently learned about Curtis Sliwa, I can confidently affirm that he is quite a character. There are countless iconic moments and quotes to pick from as a favorite, but perhaps my favorite detail of his campaign is his adamance to defend New York City’s cat population.
Sliwa is quite an animal lover, housing a total of 17 cats in his 328-square-foot apartment. So, he clearly likes cats a normal amount. He is also a strong activist for putting these felines to work in the city as resident rat exterminators, specifically calling for feral cats to be unleashed in the city to replace more orthodox pest control options. He compares the feral cat population to Batman and Robin, calling them “Gotham caped crusaders at night” — which is an awesome visual. Not only this, but he went to bat for his furry friends against Trump’s criticism of his cat colony. Say what you want about his policies, but he clearly cares about animals.
Max Muller, Campus Correspondent, he/him/his, jyv24001@uconn.edu
My favorite part of “Slistory” has to be the story of how he earned his iconic red beret. In 1977, New York was experiencing a spike in crime, and Sliwa decided that he had to put an end to this. Unfortunately, Sliwa was just one man, but he knew if he could put together a team, he could make a real difference. Thus, Sliwa formed the Magnificent 13, a group of unarmed, Karate-trained civilians who patrolled the streets of New York and practiced citizen’s arrest on criminals on the streets.
Unsurprisingly, the mayor at the time, Ed Koch, was not a Sliwa supporter and understandably had the Magnificent 13 investigated by NYPD. The results of this investigation were apparently “so positive that the Guardian Angels will soon be awarded some sort of official status,” according to The Washington Post, which reversed Koch’s opinion of the organization. The Magnificent 13 still operates to this day, though ever since Valentine’s Day of 1979, they’ve gone by “The Guardian Angels”.