Posted on 07/02/2025 7:34:24 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Sliwa, a radio personality, has a long history of slurs and stereotypes, many aimed directly at Orthodox Jews
Zohran Mamdani’s Jewish dilemma has dominated headlines, but the Republican facing the Democratic nominee in the general election for New York City mayor has his own history of troubling statements about Jews.
Curtis Sliwa said in an interview this week that apologizing is his strength and will help him overcome his own vulnerabilities with Jewish New Yorkers to defeat his Democratic rival.
The founder of the Guardian Angels volunteer safety patrol and longtime radio personality also said he’s not interested in the anti-antisemitism playbook deployed against Mamdani by both former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who came in second in the primary, and incumbent mayor Eric Adams. “Weaponized” identity politics turned out to be a dud, he said.
“Cuomo already dropped B-52 bombs on him that didn’t put a dent in him,” Sliwa said, referring to relentless attacks on Mamdani’s long record of anti-Zionism and strident criticism of Israel.
Mamdani officially secured the nomination on Tuesday after ranked-choice results released by the city’s board of elections showed him defeating former Governor Andrew Cuomo by 12 points — 56% to 44%.
Sliwa, whose trademark red beret is a familiar New York landmark, is running again after losing to Eric Adams in 2021 with just 28% of the vote in a heavily Democratic city.
Adams is seeking reelection as an independent, hoping to block Mamdani, a democratic socialist, from running City Hall. Sliwa is ignoring calls to step aside and consolidate the anti-Mamdani vote, even as recent polls show him drawing between 16% and 11% in a multi-candidate race.
Sliwa’s decades of brash talk radio have left a trail of controversial remarks that could complicate efforts to win over voters uneasy with Mamdani’s socialist views and stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He won a majority of the vote in the Orthodox-populated Borough Park neighborhood in 2021, but lacked support in other Orthodox neighborhoods, where Adams had cultivated close relationships. This year, Adams is running on an “End Antisemitism” ballot line. Some Hasidic sects that endorsed Cuomo in the primary have already indicated they would support Adams in the general.
In 2018, Sliwa portrayed Hasidic Jews — who vote in the Democratic primary as a bloc but typically support Republican candidates in statewide and federal races — as power-hungry, outside the bounds of “normal” American life and “buying off” politicians.
He also claimed that Hasidic Jews are “making babies like there’s no tomorrow” to collect government benefits. Sliwa, a Polish Catholic, told an Israeli reporter last year that antisemitism runs in his DNA as a non-Jew. “You need to wake up and understand that we always blame the Jews, no matter what happens,” he said. “I gotta catch myself from time to time.” (Sliwa has two Jewish sons who are being raised as Jews by their mother, Melinda Katz. She and Sliwa are no longer a couple.)
Sliwa had already expressed regret about his 2018 remarks. He reiterated his apology after allies of the embattled mayor resurrected his remarks on social media and on Hasidic community WhatsApp groups.
He called his 2024 comments about antisemitism being in his DNA a “poor choice of words” that he immediately realized were wrong. “The first person to confront me about that was my wife, who’s a Gentile,” Sliwa said. He clarified that he meant that antisemitic attitudes are often absorbed in non-Jewish homes from an early age.
Dov Hikind, a former Brooklyn assemblyman and head of Americans Against Antisemitism, defended Sliwa. Hikind said he hosted Sliwa and his wife, Nancy, for Shabbat dinner last month and understood him to be describing “the sad reality we are all watching unfold in America and around the world with Jew hatred,” that Jews must ultimately rely on themselves. “The guy is not perfect,” he said. “I’m not going to say he’s 100%, but he’s pretty close.”
Sliwa’s baggage
NYC mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa on March 17. Photo by Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels, the citizen group that has patrolled New York City streets for more than 40 years, is familiar with Jewish fears amid rising antisemitism.
Sliwa deployed the Guardian Angels to Crown Heights for a month in 1991, after a car in the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s motorcade struck and killed a Black child, sparking riots and the fatal stabbing of Jewish student Yankel Rosenbaum.
The unrest injured more than 200 people and caused major property damage, with Jewish leaders accusing Mayor David Dinkins of restraining the police and failing to protect the community — a factor in Dinkins’ failure to win reelection. The Guardian Angels returned to patrol the neighborhood in early 2020 amid a rise in antisemitic attacks.
Despite the patrols, many Jewish voters, particularly in the Hasidic communities in Brooklyn, fixate on Sliwa’s record of inflammatory rhetoric.
In 2013, he said that Jews need to be “tough” to survive, warning that those who aren’t will “get turned into speed bumps.”
In a 2018 speech to supporters of the Reform Party, which he once chaired in New York, Sliwa lashed out against the Hasidic community as controlling interlopers. “They don’t vote the way normal Americans vote,” he said. “They’re being told by the rebbe or rabbi, ‘This is who you vote for’… The politicians are rolling over for them. Why? Because they contribute, the big machers who write the checks and the checks don’t bounce.”
Agudath Israel of America condemned Sliwa and accused him of antisemitism.
He has also clashed with Orthodox leaders over yeshiva education. In a televised debate during the GOP primary, Sliwa said that he doesn’t think the Bill de Blasio administration did enough to enforce state guidelines requiring private school education to be “substantially equivalent” to instruction at public schools.
Speaking to the Forward after he clinched the nomination, Sliwa doubled down. “The rules are the rules for everyone,” he said. “If parochial schools and religious schools that are not ultra-Orthodox or Hasidic have to follow those rules, then everybody does. We can’t start making exceptions.”
Sliwa said then that he was shocked that Orthodox leaders would not meet him to consider his candidacy. “I would have thought that just out of respect for all that I’ve done in the Jewish community over the years, they would have at least provided me with the opportunity of making a presentation,” he said.
Related GOP mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa frustrated at lack of Jewish support In a 45-minute interview on Tuesday, Sliwa acknowledged that his decades as a talk radio host have left a trail of comments he regrets. “I’ve said a lot of things I shouldn’t have,” he said. “What I’ve learned in life is the art of apology. You have to understand the hurt that you cause people, and you have to apologize and mean it.”
He also said that he’s been forthright about his shortcomings and showed up when it counted. “When Jews were targeted by hate and people wanted to commit acts of violence, it didn’t matter where they were,” Sliwa said. “They could always depend on the Guardian Angels and me.”
He contrasted his public apologies with Cuomo, who reportedly “expressed deep regret” for singling out Hasidic communities for enforcement during the COVID-19 pandemic. “That was good of him,” Sliwa said. “I just wish he’d done it publicly.”
He added: “I am not perfect. But then again, when I get confronted, I don’t run.”
Staying in the race
Sliwa is staying in the race, predicting that Cuomo will mount a late summer independent bid. He touts endorsements from top New York Republicans, including Reps. Elise Stefanik and Mike Lawler, who have called Mamdani “antisemitic.” Lawler and Stefanik are both considering running for governor next year and have used their congressional pulpits to make a priority of the fight against antisemitism, particularly on college campuses.
Sliwa, in his campaign, has expressed support for Israel. He said in the interview that Mamdani must explain his defense of the phrase “globalize the intifada.”
mocrats say Zohran Mamdani’s Israel stances are cause for concern, but not panic “You must never let up on that,” he said, referring to the phrase many Jews see as a call to violence. “But don’t think that and that alone will cripple him.”
Sliwa credits Mamdani for securing a path to the nomination with his appeal to younger voters struggling to afford life in the city. Sliwa created a separate independent ballot line, the “Animal Welfare” party, to attract Gen Z and millennial voters who would not otherwise back a GOP candidate. A longtime animal advocate, he fosters more than a dozen rescue cats in a 320-square-foot Manhattan apartment and has called for a “no kill” shelter policy citywide.
For four years in a row, in the mid-1990s, Sliwa was the sour garlic pickle-eating champion of the world. He first won the title in 1994 while recovering from gunshot wounds, encouraged by 2nd Avenue Deli founder Abe Lebewohl to represent the Lower East Side. “I just kept eating,” Sliwa recalled, beating “monsters from Ukraine, Russia, and Poland.”
In 2002, Sliwa came in second place in the annual matzah ball eating contest at Ben’s Kosher Deli in Manhattan, only to be disqualified when he was caught squishing the matzah balls to get the liquid out.
He said he defended himself to Raoul Felder, the renowned Jewish divorce lawyer who was watching the contest. “I didn’t grow up eating matzah balls,” Sliwa recalled telling Felder. “I grew up eating meatballs. This is the way a gentile eats matzah balls.”
In a 2021 interview with the Forward, Sliwa did not hesitate when asked to reveal his favorite Yiddish word. It was schmendrick, a term used to describe a pathetic or foolish person. “It is my favorite word I love to use many, many times to describe politicians that I have to listen to,” he said.
he needs to go. but reminder of how lame it is for RNC/GOP to dismiss municipal elections in major big blue cities.
Eric Adams is the only real choice.
Zionist Organization of America’s Morton Klein and legendary Brooklyn Assemblyman Dov Hikind have both endorsed Sliwa.
There we go again. Get the Jewish vote! Never happen, the RAT party is the party of the progressive, socialist, commies, which will always get the Jewish vote.
Apparently he doesnt realize that jews always pick the worst possible candidates for some unknown reason.
In some ways Sliwa is a lot like Trump - who he apparently dislikes - in that he says whatever’s on his mind without worrying about political correctness. Trump has managed to turn that into an asset, but few are able to pull it off.
If you examine the controversial comments regarding Jews that are mentioned in the article, most are not really criticisms of Jews per se. He is a bit harsh on some of New York’s Hasidic community leaders, but that’s more a criticism of their politics than their religion or ethnicity.
His comment that “being anti-sematic is in my DNA” was actually an honest but somewhat awkward attempt at a mea-culpa on his part, acknowledging attitudes about Jews that he doesn’t intellectually agree with but was raised with and has to still guard against from time to time. But as usual, his political opponents don’t portray it that way.
And as the article mentions, he was in a long term relationship with a Jewish woman and has two sons by her, an inconvenient truth to those accusing him of antisemitism.
maybe jews are marxist first
Obviously.
Unless New Yorkers want a newer younger version of Barack Obama on steroids.
Adams is a Democrat.
He’s been on the radio since the 90’s. I remember hearing him back then. He’s also a wackadoo.
I guess we can’t blame them. Because they’re only 2% of the population. So a lot more gentiles are voting for these people.
silwa has zero chance of anything except perhaps siphoning enough votes from eric adams to get zohran elected ... period ...
“Adams is a Democrat.”
adams dropped out of the democrat party and is now running as an independent ...
There are a lot of stupid things one can say in 35 years.
Agreed
Good luck with that windmill
But I think the Jewish proportion in nyc ain’t what it was a generation ago
Someone educate me who knows
When I lived yonder “all over Manhattan “
Midtown was the most Christmas enthusiasm place I ever lived
Ironically I guess
It was so cool then
Usually cold and occasional snowy
But December in fifth and Madison and 57th was very very in spirit
I think boomer Jews from UWS and UES got old moved to Florida and Scottsdale
I don’t think they are now though some were obviously in 1915-1920 in the motherland
But they started as young Jews fearing and revolting against Czarist excess like pogroms by embracing anarchy ideology
Then Menshevik and ultimately Bolshevism
And the Trotsky obviously
And folks love to criticize them
But honestly if u suffered pogroms which were mini holocausts and then the real thing how would u react?
I’d sure fear the plural power and nationalism and whatnot given how its gone
You couple that with a frequent ambivalence or rejection of the hereafter and hence a focus on humanism and making the world better in their version
And tikun olam
And “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable” bent
You end up here so yes I give them a pass for what led them to this point but I can also wish to utterly defeat them to the dustbin ideologically
Without hurting them physically
It’s all in the nuance
Probably my favorite people to hang out with but so infuriating
I’m more fond of boho Israelis who though libtards culturally love the S out of Donald Trump
And yes the stereotype about Jewish gals is true
Good hair and bosomy
At least in my experience
Goldman
Schwartz
Winslow
Shulmeister
All occupy fond memories in my senior hearts corners
All but one Deep South Jews which is another species
More palatable but there is another rant
Anyhow La Chaim maybe we can turn a few
We sure got plenty here and most are well intended
One is in my top five pals here
“Adams was a registered Republican from April 1995 to November 2002, according to the city Board of Elections.”
He has been everything. Republican, Dem, Independent.
Comparatively speaking. That’s true. But we sully don’t vote for those sho,have persecuted us like the Jews seem to do for some unknown reason. They seem to go for the candidates that are hostile towards them. At least the liberal jews do.
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