{"id":4628,"date":"2025-12-01T00:00:02","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T06:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/memorialswordandshield.com\/?p=4628"},"modified":"2025-11-29T22:38:31","modified_gmt":"2025-11-30T04:38:31","slug":"curtis-sliwa-slumps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/memorialswordandshield.com\/es\/4628\/news\/curtis-sliwa-slumps\/","title":{"rendered":"Curtis Sliwa Slumps"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the night of the New York City mayoral election, Curtis Sliwa, the Republican nominee for mayor, could be found pretty much anywhere where his opponents weren\u2019t already. Supporters of independent candidate Andrew Cuomo had almost universally called for him to drop out, something virtually unheard of for a mainstream candidate so late in the race. Sliwa’s messaging remained clear: The “Sliwa surge” was coming, and he absolutely was not<\/em> \u201cglazing\u201d his voters.<\/p>\n

In the end though, Curtis Sliwa received just 7.1% of the vote<\/u><\/a>. Clearly, the Sliwa Surge had not come to fruition. A Republican candidate in such a major race losing to this degree is typically unheard of. In fact, Sliwa himself ran in 2021 as the Republican nominee, receiving 27% of the vote. How did a major candidate with so much positive press manage to earn such a small share of the vote?<\/p>\n

The 2025 mayoral race in NYC was an anomaly in many ways. At one point, two of the four major candidates were running as independents, something that happens rarely in our two-party system. For most people though, the choice came down to two people: Zohran Mamdani and Andrew Cuomo. Mamdani had beaten Cuomo in the Democratic primary, but Cuomo was instead running as an independent to try and win a second time.<\/p>\n

Despite this, it still seemed like Sliwa was going to get a good portion of the vote. Polls conducted close to election day found that Sliwa would receive around 24%<\/u><\/a> of the popular vote, a far cry from the 7% he actually won. Even polls that predicted a more conservative number showed that he\u2019d get around 15%<\/u><\/a>!<\/p>\n

Even with these poor showings that turned out to be overestimations anyways, Sliwa insisted that there was a majority just waiting<\/em> to crawl out of the shadows and vote for him. In public speeches, he continually spoke out against Cuomo, claiming that \u201cif you\u2019re under thirty, Cuomo\u2019s always flirty<\/u><\/a>,\u201d referencing the numerous allegations of sexual harassment against Cuomo, most of which were verified as accurate<\/u><\/a> by the Department of Justice.<\/p>\n

However, while insisting that Cuomo should drop out, Sliwa faced the exact same demands. In the minds of many Cuomo voters, along with Andrew Cuomo himself, he likely would have won had Sliwa dropped out.\u00a0<\/u><\/a><\/p>\n

Of course, this dilemma ignores the fact that Zohran Mamdani ended up winning over 50% of the vote, meaning that even if every single Sliwa voter had gone for Cuomo, Mamdani still would have won. For as overly optimistic as Sliwa might have been, Cuomo\u2019s hypothetical blatantly disagrees with the actual results of the election.<\/p>\n

Even though he was unpopular, Sliwa\u2019s catchphrases and usage of slang captured far more attention than his actual viewpoints did. His Instagram account, though not as successful as Mamdani\u2019s, managed to get hundreds of thousands of views per video, due in no small part to his personality, as opposed to his campaign.<\/p>\n

In fact, Sliwa became popular enough to become the internet\u2019s \u201cbabygirl<\/u><\/a>,\u201d which inspired debates surrounding whether it was ethical to create edits of him if the creator of those edits wasn\u2019t trying to express political support. Essentially, his popularity on sites like TikTok in no way translated to actual widespread support of his policies, despite many people expressing clear favor for him over Cuomo.<\/p>\n

In the end, Sliwa\u2019s campaign capitalized on his personal charisma as opposed to policy, something that didn\u2019t work out very well for him. Despite this, he maintained the appearance of strength even when it was clear he was going to lose. Even though he may not have had popular policies, the notion of a \u201cSliwa surge\u201d was representative of his faith in those who supported him.<\/p>\n

After all, with everything he\u2019d gone through, who could blame him for glazing his voters a little?<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the night of the New York City mayoral election, Curtis Sliwa, the Republican nominee for mayor, could be found pretty much anywhere where his opponents weren\u2019t already. Supporters of independent candidate Andrew Cuomo had almost universally called for him to drop out, something virtually unheard of for a mainstream candidate so late in the…<\/p>","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":4633,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[323],"staff_name":[290],"class_list":["post-4628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-december-25","staff_name-ellie-andrews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/memorialswordandshield.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/memorialswordandshield.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/memorialswordandshield.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/memorialswordandshield.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/memorialswordandshield.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4628"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/memorialswordandshield.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4632,"href":"https:\/\/memorialswordandshield.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4628\/revisions\/4632"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/memorialswordandshield.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/memorialswordandshield.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/memorialswordandshield.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/memorialswordandshield.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4628"},{"taxonomy":"staff_name","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/memorialswordandshield.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/staff_name?post=4628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}