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POLITICS DEP'T. What Has Curtis Sliwa Got to Lose?TODAY'S NEW YORK Post and New York Daily News both used their front pages to call for Curtis Sliwa, the city's Republican nominee for mayor, to drop out of the general election. "JUST WALK AWAY, BERET!" the wood on the Post commanded, while the Daily News put its message in the form of a request, in a banner reading "CURTIS, 'LOVE' CITY AND QUIT" (the wood went with "NO BREAK FOR PERV GRAMPS"). The papers were appealing to what they claimed was Sliwa's sense of public spirit, arguing, as the Daily News put it, that he needs to "do what is best for the city he loves and step aside," to try to help former governor Andrew Cuomo in his independent campaign against the polling front-runner, Zohran Mamdani, who beat Cuomo in the Democratic primary by more than 120,000 votes. The Post adopted a near-identical message: "It stinks, but for the sake of the city you love so deeply, Curtis, please swallow this bitter pill." Along with its plea, the Daily News also delivered what read as a roundabout threat, citing "John Catsimatidis, one of the Republican Party’s biggest players and the owner of WABC radio, where Sliwa has had a show for decades" delivering his own version of the talking point: On his own station Monday morning, Catsimatidis said: “Curtis would make the best mayor of all the candidates … but Curtis has to realize that he should love New York more than anything else.” He wants Sliwa to make the hard choice: “It certainly looks like Curtis should pull out right now. We cannot take a chance on Zohran winning and every common-sense New Yorker feels the same way.” Radio host Sid Rosenberg agreed.
Behind the posture of hard-eyed realism—"we’ve got to deal with the facts as they are, ugly as they are," the Post editorial board wrote—was a desperate bit of speculation: a new AARP poll this week found Mamdani leading Cuomo 43.2 percent to 28.9 percent, but when the poll asked about a two-way race without Sliwa, Mamdani's lead shrank to 44.6 to 40.7, which put it "within the margin of error." Add in the poll's report that it had found the "vast majority of undecided voters age 50 or older," and there was maybe almost possibly a way that the city's fading tabloids and reactionary talk radio could conjure an anti-Mamdani surge among their people. But only if Curtis Sliwa would cooperate. So far he has shown no signs of doing any such thing. Mayor Eric Adams may have swallowed his earlier declaration that "Andrew Cuomo is a snake and a liar" and abandoned his own independent reelection bid in late September; the Post's editors may be craven enough to try to pull off a particularly cynical Murdochian reverse ferret on the subject of Cuomo ("No one will confuse this page, or The Post as a whole, for Cuomo fans," they wrote, pausing in pleading with Sliwa to plead with their own readers). Sliwa appears to have too much self-respect—and too much sincere loathing for Cuomo—to yield his position. And why should he? As Sliwa pointed out in the debate, Andrew Cuomo already lost to Mamdani. More specifically, Cuomo lost to a broad coalition of other Democratic candidates who agreed to support one another in the ranked-choice voting with the specific collective goal of making sure Cuomo wouldn't win. Sliwa, meanwhile, as he also pointed out, is the nominee of a major political party. Admittedly, Sliwa got the nomination running unopposed. The Post tried to spin this as a regrettable error (though it evidently wasn't the fault of the city's leading right-wing local newspaper): If the Republican Party wants to be a viable alternative to the Democrats for citywide office, it has to do better.
Sliwa has worked hard in this run, getting well-briefed on all the issues, showing up every day all over the city and even setting aside his proud red beret.
But he is an oddball, with a sometimes-shady past and zero experience relevant to running the behemoth that is city government — yet the GOP’s county bosses lined up firmly behind Sliwa.
It's true enough that Sliwa is an oddball with a shady past. Yet his past also includes winning the 2021 Republican mayoral nomination—in a contested primary, that time around—and collecting more than 300,000 votes in the general election. He remains the closest thing to an embodiment of the will of Republican municipal voters, whether John Catsimatidis likes it or not. If Catsimatidis wanted the voters to feel differently, maybe he shouldn't have given Sliwa a live microphone all these years. And Sliwa's point of principle also contains a practical truth. New York City elections, isolated in off-years as they are, are perverse and unpredictable by design. But no matter how the would-be anti-Mamdani front may wish to arrange the race, it can't be the clean two-way contest between Mandani and Cuomo envisioned in the polling. The ballots are already set. If Sliwa were to declare tomorrow that he's dropping out of the race, voters would still get a ballot with his name in the second position, right next to Mamdani's name. That ballot will still have Eric Adams' name on it as well, on his chosen "Safe&Affordable/EndAntisemitism" ballot line, because Adams missed the official deadline for removing himself. Before Adams, it will have Irene Estrada on the Conservative Party line, and Mamdani again on the Working Families Party line, and Sliwa again on his own "Protect Animals" line. Cuomo has the eighth slot out of nine, with his "Fight and Deliver" ballot line down on the second row, sandwiched between Joseph Hernandez's "Quality of Life" line and Jim Walden's "Integrity" line. That's where the niche candidates and vanity campaigns go. WEATHER REVIEWS New York City, October 20, 2025★★★★ The morning was dim, then bright, then dim again. The rain had been a passing noise in the night, as yesterday's warm humidity blew out and a raw dampness took over. The sky was in light grays and silvery whites, with lower clouds moving so fast that the higher ones seemed to be moving in the opposite direction. Ginkgo fruits had been left on the ground in lumpy yellow-pink piles, their nuts evidently harvested. Sparrows crashed along loudly through the loose dry fallen leaves; ducks plashed and dabbled audibly over the hiss of the wind through the trees. A catbird and a robin hopped around the branches full of tiny crabapples, now bright red. The sun found a way through the clouds to light up a flame-toned drooping branch of red maple and its reflection on the water. EASY LISTENING DEP'T.HERE IS TODAY'S Indignity Morning Podcast! Here is the Indignity Morning Podcast archive! ADVICE DEP'T.HEY! DO YOU like advice columns? They don't happen unless you send in some letters! Surely you have something you want to justify to yourself, or to the world at large. Now is the perfect time to share it with everyone else through The Sophist, the columnist who is not here to correct you, but to tell you why you're right. Direct your questions to The Sophist, at indignity@indignity.net, and get the answers you want. SANDWICH RECIPES DEP'T.WE PRESENT INSTRUCTIONS in aid of the assembly of the final sandwich selected from Buffalo Cookery: A Collection of Choice Recipes Carefully Selected, by St. Luke's Sunday-School Ladies' Auxiliary, Buffalo, Wyoming in 1916 and available at archive.org for the delectation of all. CLUB SANDWICHES
Mrs. M. E. Colgate Bread
Bacon
Cold chicken
Salad dressing
Lettuce Toast as much bread as needed. Spread with butter. Lay lettuce leaf on it, a slice of thin hot bacon, a slice of cold chicken, a little salad dressing, another lettuce leaf, then a slice of toast and serve at once. If you decide to prepare and attempt to enjoy a sandwich inspired by this offering, be sure to send a picture to indignity@indignity.net . SELF-SERVING SELF-PROMOTION DEP'T. Indignity is presented on Ghost. Indignity recommends Ghost for your Modern Publishing needs. Indignity gets a slice if you do this successfully!
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