In 2021, with a short-term understanding of the name Curtis Sliwa, you would be forgiven if you were to think of the Republican nominees of New York City as only the crazy Rode-Keret, wearing cats-loving angel leader withHardly a prayer wind.
Democrats surpass Republicans almost 7 to 1 in the city, and Sliwa is against Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, who is practically anointed by party leaders in the spectrum.
But those who know Sliwa say that it would be foolish to count him completely.) and an extraordinary talent to get attention.
"Curtis is mainly motivated by the number of ears listening to him and the number of eyeballs that look at him," said Kuby, a certain liberal lawyer.."
Since he won the Republican Primary in June, the unorthodox campaign of Sliwa has been characterized by attentive stunts and attitudes, including:
- To hold an event that the concept is attacking"Critical racing theory" in public schools.
- Protest against Mayor Bill de BlasioVaccineTo burst meals and restaurant.
- Twice in between - roles with cameras - as emotionally disturbed people disturbed press events, firstI Bronxone laterOp Penn Station.Liwa has made support for homeless and mentally ill a great focus.
- Himself like a big cat person with media hairsHis cat -filled houseInA first campaign -advertisem*ntWith one of his many cats saves.
- Pick up millions of views on TiktokThe official report of his campaign, who had more than 100,000 subscribers from the beginning of October.
The show is between now and November Choice.And Sliwa thinks he has a real shot.
"Nobody makes retail policy better than me because I love it," Sliwa told the city and was in his studio apartment, he shares with his wife, Nancy Regula and 17 cats."Although the registration differences are great, you should never go to sleep at Curtis Sliwa.
To help you understand the hard talking Republican nominees, the city dived into the events that built him in an Oddball New York icon.
The story of Sliwa is a wild and incredible timeline that is the pockmarket of stories that the candidate has now been made for his own win-like when he falsified his own kidnapping of the transit police or invented a rape on a train in Brooklyn.His episodes, which sounds like fiction, but is real, as when he was shot and almost killed by renowned employees of Mafia boss John Gotti Jr.
His many marriages and relationships with the public prosecutor of the Nu-queen, a husband of a former governor and a model-oriented TV journalist-al tabloid food.
Sliwa has also appeared as a character in some of the greatest controversy in the city, as when he became a free cheerleader for Bernhard Goetz, the notorious "Subway Vigilante" shooter who shoots four black teenagers in a center of 2 trains in 1984.
"Historically, Curtis has appealed and confirmed the feelings of angry white people," said Kuby, who is white and represented one of Goetz's victims of the court.
And there are the times that his brash speech has brought him into hot water, as when he was a distorted impression ofA Mexican personnew 1 again in 2011 or wasHung from the stationTo say that he wanted to have sex with the speeches of the then Melissa Mark-Viverito city council.
"There is no doubt that he is offensive. There is no doubt that in his attempt to entertain - he is an entertainer - goes overboard and is overboard," said journalist Gerson Borrero, the previous TV partner of Sliwa on NY1 and Radio.
Is the action and his actions, racist?
"Would a racist spend all his time helping people with color? It defies the definition. If something, a racist would say:" Stay out of this area.Have nothing to do with them, "he said.
Borrero described Sliwa just as many things-anthoying, provocative, a big mouth, but never saw him acting in racial bias or corruption, he said.
"People call him a clown," Borrero said."Well, he is a caricature. And I consider him a comedian."
"He did something good for the city. He did very well for himself. He has earned a lot of money on the radio. ... he remains relevant. How many people can say that?" Borerro added.
Early life
Sliwa knew how he could get a head from a young age.
In just 16 years old, Sliwa first appeared in Daily News - to collect a mountain of Garbage.Brooklyn -Teenager collected 5.5 tonnes of recyclable waste as part of an early recycling program, according to a report in the tabloid at that time.The story, printed papers throughout the country's name.
Only a few weeks later, in December 1970, Sliwa's hometown, Canarsie Courier, credited him to save the lives of six people in a fire that a 70-year-old woman killed, Sylvia Koofman.On the way to work as a delivery boy for daily news.
The Heroics won a pile of praise, an "international newspaper boy" prize and a visit to the White House.Aleta closes the piece with a somewhat careful quote about the future of her brother: "Maybe he wants to have a garden in politics - who knows he can even be president."
Here come the guardians
By the early 1920s, Sliwa had developed a preference for linking journalists and their audience.
As manager of a McDonald's in Bronx, Sliwa-Defter goes through the nickname "Rock" tea the employees of the restaurant in the so-called Rockbrigade, a voluntary Kitter-Cleanup herd.Hour "Marathon Fej" More than 140 miles of the city, starting with Staten Island and ending in the Rockefeller Center, according to a Daily News article from 1978.
By later that year, the group was converted into the "Magnificent 13", an ensemble and precursor of crimes with Guardian Angels.The Warriors, "The Classic Street Walking Movie, as Sliwa said glorified violence.
"This film will start a trend," he warned in an AP article.
The beautiful 13 is being expanded to Buspatrouilles in Brooklyn and Canarsie Courier are exceeding November 1, 1979, History of their efforts "Guardian Angels on our buses."Within a few weeks the group dropped their name for a new one: The Guardian Angels.
Sliwa and the angels quickly become tabloid arms.
"Curtis Sliwa knows every telephone number of every radio and television station, newspaper editor and reporter in the city outside the heart," William Mcknie told Transit Police Union - and one of the heaviest critics of Sliwa - on the Herald Statesmen in 1981.
Sliwa even turned his wedding into a press event.
Sliwa married twice after splitting Evers in the nineties and had two children with Melinda Katz, now Queens District Attorney, although the couple were never married.
His relationship is extensively covered in the press, with the exception of a: his first wife, a black woman he met 19 years old at a dance party in Stapleton houses in States Island, he said.
The couple received an apartment in Brownsville and then moved to Bronx because they "got a lot of hatred from everyone" in Brooklyn.
"If I was predominantly Black Brownsville, I would be destroyed [And] if I went back to Canarsie among the Italians ... I couldn't visit my family because it was dangerous. Company if I do that, cursed if I didn't do that if I didDid not do that, "he said."
Fake news
When Rock Brigade turned into the beautiful 13 and then Guardian Angels, Sliwa went more fake stories to increase their reputation.
In an interview from 1992 with New York Post-Geaten just a few weeks after he was almost killed in the bully-linked shootout-enlightened to six big lies.
Among them was a sacharin sample of returning a lost wallet with $ 300 in an older lady, picked up (reportedly) by one of Rock Brigade Street-Sweepers.City-Tabloids who printed the composite story in December 1978 and a businessman $ 300Donated to the group for their good deed.
In 1979, Sliwa created a fake rescue of a Bronx Crumad.
None of that was true, Sliwa admitted years later.
His biggest lie came in October 1980 when Sliwa in the middle of a feud with the police and then mayor Ed Koch-Sliwa claimed that he was abducted by the police of the Transit Authority near his Bronx house.
One of the journalists who released some of these high stories was Murray Weiss, who later confessed Sliwa in the 1992 interview.
"Nowadays there are people in public life who will recognize their violations, their manufacture, what will not, it helped to get them where they want to be," Weiss told the city.
Sliwa said about the lies: "I apologize for all of them. I have not justified them."
At that time he felt that he was in a "per war" where his enemies painted the Guardian Angels as a gang who "deliberately and created problems," he told the city from his apartment in the Upper West Side.
"I said this concept to survive, I have to buy some time," he said."Then I used some of these lies to give our cover ... and it was wrong."
Kuby, who first came into contact with Sliwa during the notorious Goetz right case in the mid-1980s, said about the lies: "Curtis had designed a world of truth well before it became a political movement."
Radiobame
From 1991 Sliwa started the course that would define a lot of his working life: Talk Radio Jock.
Over the years, Sliwa has mainly sent WABC - while he said jokes that "we always send Curtis" - with a short detour to WNYC and later versions in NY1 in the town hall.
His first show included a segment called "Mob Talk" about the continuation of Mafia. And an employee who is being sued in the incident, but has never been sentenced directly to the shooting.
All the time he continued to Leiden the Guardian Angels, who has become an international organization with thousands of members, he says.
For years, the Anglels and Sliwa appeared in full places, either called for patrol or appear for advertising.
They served as a security for "Restaurant Row" on 46th Street in the late 1980s and operated from a donated store.
John Blasco, a former organizer of the Fiere NYC group, who argues for LGBTQ Inches, so often Sliwas Guardian Angels in West Village when he worked in the neighborhood between 2007 and 2014.
For him, the group was there to bother.
"They responded to young people who guard the streets. They responded to what we knew as a 'quality of life' violations, which often meant to us, simply meant that they focused on black and brown young people," Blasco told the city.
Recently, the angels have patronized neighborhoods where temporary homeless hiding places opened on Upper West and Upper East Side.
Sliwa said the move was about 'protecting product, property and people'.
"You cannot allow anarchy to continue to exist, because then there are no consequences for actions. So we have taken a position," he said.
Political opportunities
Sliwa runs like a Republican, but he has not always been a member of this club.
Until five years ago, Sliwa said that he "to the electoral council is referred to as a" blank, "a person without a consequence - an independent voter."
Then he gave a third party a shot in 2016 and helped to take over the New York State Reform Party, a short company that died when the party lost its ballot papers in 2018.
Nowadays there are a lot in Gop who do not share his views.
For example, when Trump drove to the President in 2015, SliwaAttack the developerTo spread the racist lie that Muslims cheered in Bergen County, N.J., September 11, 2001.
"I hate Trump," he said in oneLast interview in 2019.
Nevertheless, Trump's still approved loyal lawyer Rudy Giuliani Sliwa the year-the-maker of Sliwa's support in the nineties.
Can Sliwa have part of the success of Giuliani and later Mike Bloomberg as Republicans in New York?
"After I saw Donald Trump the Republican candidate and became president of the United States, I have to place the figure just more than zero," he said.
Sliwa said that pessimists told him he had no shot in the primary.
"Even some of my followers would say:" Oh, it's it. "No, I've been in these neighborhoods for years. I don't agree," he said.
Sliwa won the Republican Primary with 67.9% of the voices in which he held the Livrei and Bodega owner Fernando Mateo.
Borrero thinks it's a steep uphill to win in general, but not impossible.
"There is currently no one in politics, mostly in New York, who knows New York City better than Curtis Sliwa," said Borrero.
