Curtis Sliwa for Mayor of NYC? – Angels Founder Throws Hat in Ring

By Ilana Siyance
There’s a new contender in the 2021 NYC race for Mayor.
Curtis Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels and shock jock for WABC talk-radio, announced on Sunday that he is throwing his hat in to the race. “I am the only candidate with the onions to take back the city,” Sliwa told The NY Post. “I have the street cred. I have bled in the streets. I’ve given seven lives. I have two left. I’ll use them for the City of New York.”
The 65-year-old has yet to file the official paperwork, but says he has already re-registered from the Reform Party into the Republican Party last month. He plans to run as on the GOP ticket. As reported by the Post, he hopes to tackle issues like the notorious bail-reform law, which the NYPD already says caused a spike in crime this year. He worries that NYC can fall back into crime-filled times. “It took us a long time to crawl out of the belly of the beast of the 1970s through 1990s. Bill de Blasio and the Democrats are bringing us back in,” said Sliwa. He says he would stop the plans to close Rikers Island, rather refurbishing it and would abandon plans to open jails in the boroughs. He says he would work to open more psychiatric facilities to aid mentally ill homeless people, adding that it’s an “absolute sin” to leave them on the streets. Sliwa would take his hard-liner stance to schools, as well, taking a strong stand against bullying. He says he would kick bullies out of public schools, but open more charter, vocational and trade schools to meet demand, restoring order in the education system.
Sliwa, a Catholic born and raised in Brooklyn, created the crime fighting guardian angels group 40 years ago to patrol the streets and subways when they were flooded with crime. They donned a military style red beret and white insignia T-shirt as the group uniform. In 1992, Sliwa was awarded the prestigious Courage of Conscience Award from the Peace Abbey, in Boston’s JFK Library. For the past two decades Sliwa has also been a radio broadcaster, sharing his conservative views.
The anti-crime activist admits he carries a lot of baggage, which would inevitably be brought up in a mayoral campaign. Long ago, when the Guardian Angels’ were first starting out, he confessed to filing fake police reports about being attacked, only to create publicity. Also, he is now on his fourth marriage, with a long history of spats with his ex-wives, and most notably with his former girlfriend District Attorney of Queens, Melinda Katz. Still, he maintains it’s all already out in the open. “The only skeleton I have left is the one under my skin,” he said.
Sliwa also has had more than his fair share of health problems, but says he is in fighting shape and ready for City Hall. In 1992, he was shot on the Lower East Side, and badly hurt. He blamed honcho John Gotti Jr. of the Gambino crime family, for allegedly arranging the shooting as revenge for comments he made on his radio show. Sliwa also survived prostate cancer, colitis and Crohn’s disease, which he also blamed on the gunshot wounds in his the stomach. “I feel great. I’m ready to go,” Sliwa said. “I took a licking but keep on ticking.”