The New York City business community is finally opening its doors to GOP mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa – but will it open its wallets?
Following my Sunday column in The Post on Sliwa’s surprising strength in recent polls – and the fact that business leaders are ignoring him nevertheless – the NYC Partnership chief Kathryn Wylde held a meeting with the Guardian Angels founder on Thursday.
Sliwa didn’t disappoint, Wylde tells The Post. He left his trademark red beret at home and they immediately bonded over their mutual love of stray animals and his pro-business, anti-crime agenda.
Unlike other Partnership confabs with mayoral candidates, no other business leaders attended. But Sliwa’s recently strong polling in a four-way race has raised eyebrows, and a more formal sitdown with Sliwa and Partnership members is planned.
“Meeting lasted about an hour,” Wylde said in an interview. “He gave us his pitch which perfectly aligns with what the business leaders want in terms of public safety and a strong economy. We set the second meeting for early September because no one is around in August.”
Sliwa’s platform offers a heavy dose of crime-fighting to support big business and small businesses alike, tax cuts and slashing the city’s massive bureaucracy – including in the Education Department, which does a lousy job teaching basic skills but employs swaths of needless administrators.
Sliwa said Wylde indicated her members are increasingly concerned whether current mayor Eric Adams or former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, with all their baggage, will be able to beat back Zohran Mamdani, the 33-year-old former rapper turned socialist Queens assemblyman who crushed Cuomo in the Democratic primary.
“Initially an avalanche of business support was going to Eric but that appears to have stopped,” Sliwa said. “She said that it has leveled out, and now most business leaders haven’t made up their minds. She also said I must show them I can govern. They know I know the city; I need to sell that I can run the city.”
Sliwa was accompanied by Ed Cox, chairman of the New York State Republican Party and some staffers of conservative Democratic City Councilman Robert Holden, whom Sliwa has said would hold a position in his administration if he is elected.
The business community isn’t Gotham’s largest voting bloc, but it is important given its deep pockets for fundraising, which is where Sliwa trails. He has raised just $169,000 in the last reporting period, compared with $1.5 million for Adams even after a recent HarrisX poll put him in a statistical tie with Mamdani (26%) and Cuomo (23%) in a four-way race, according to the margin of error. Sliwa’s 22% share easily beat Adams (13%), the poll found.
Their fears about the future of doing business in the Big Apple have been compounded by the rise of Mamdani, the uber-leftist (some would say communist) pol with almost no employment history other than his brief foray into politics.
Mamdani — who met with the Partnership last week — has spoken about government takeovers of grocery stores, defunding the police and wouldn’t denounce the left-wing rally cry of “globalizing the intifada” despite its antisemitic overtones.
Business leaders expressed a high degree of skepticism after listening to him address questions on those issues. “Their meeting with Mamdani frightened the shit out of them. Can you trust a 33-year-old to run what is essentially a giant corporation,” one person with knowledge of the matter said.
A possible fundraising opening for Sliwa is that business leaders have yet to fully coalesce behind either Adams or Cuomo; Adams’ tenure as mayor has been marred by significant corruption scandals. Cuomo was forced to resign as governor in 2021 amid sexual harassment allegations that he has denied and were never prosecuted.
Sliwa brings different baggage. He has never held elected office (he lost handily to Adams four years ago running as a Republican). He is best known as a radio show host and for his decades of work leading the Guardian Angels, which made its name in the 1980s patrolling NYC’s crime-ridden subway system.
