STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — Curtis Sliwa, the sole Republican candidate for the 2025 New York City mayoral race, visited the Advance/SILive.com office Wednesday afternoon to discuss his vision for the Big Apple.
As the self-proclaimed “mass transit mayor,” the 71-year-old delved into a variety of topics concerning Staten Islanders and their residential counterparts in the wider boroughs.
He vowed that if elected, public servants who know the ins and outs of their position would be added to his administration — regardless of political affiliation.
“I don’t trust politicians. I don’t trust billionaires. I trust people,” Sliwa emphasized.
Here’s what Sliwa said on the following issues:
Mass Transit
On the way into the Advance/SILive.com office, Sliwa took an express bus; the second he had taken during the week. Unimpressed with the app functions, he told the Advance/SILive.com Editorial Board that he had to wait 45 minutes for an express bus to arrive on Sunday.
“MTA, [is a] money taking agency; they love to take your money, promise you everything, and deliver… bupkis,” Sliwa said.
He says that both voting proponents and voting opponents complain that the “express bus sucks.”
“I think Staten Island residents, the forgotten borough in so many ways, are more dependent on the express bus than most boroughs. And I’ve never, ever heard anyone — not to suggest that that’s been my primary conversation on Staten Island — praise the service. They always use this term: It’s a dollar short and a day late,” Sliwa continued. “You would have to pressure, pressure, pressure [the MTA], and you would have to use the bully pulpit of the mayor and target them.”
Regarding public safety, Sliwa accused city officials of manipulating crime statistics and called for more police presence on subway trains. “The cops are never on the trains,” he said, adding that he would prioritize “the safety of women and the elderly.”
Furthermore, he would remove bike lanes after six months of nonuse and would remove street cameras.
North Shore
When asked about Staten Island’s politics, Sliwa said he felt the “North Shore is often ignored.” He voiced his support for John Shea, a Republican challenger for North Shore City Council, over incumbent Councilmember Kamillah Hanks.
“[The] North Shore is an abomination. Bay Street…You got the stadium. People won’t come to it; a lot of it is fear of crime. You got the mall next door, which might as well be turned into storage,” he said.
He pointed to the lack of tourism coming from the Staten Island Ferry, as well.
“They [tourists] get on the North Shore side, and they turn around, they come back. There’s nothing that keeps them there. You go up into those hills, those Victorian mansions — they should have like, ‘Old Staten Island,’” Sliwa suggested. “When I first came over, when there was no bridge and it was all Dutch Reformed churches, and [I asked,] ‘Is this New York City, mom?’ ‘Yeah, Staten Island.’”
He joked that he spent more time on Staten Island than Pete Davidson, too.
President Donald Trump
Trump recently mocked Sliwa in an interview, remarking that, “I’m a Republican, but Curtis is not exactly prime time… He wants cats to be Gracie Mansion… The magnificent home of the mayor. It’s beautiful… Now, we don’t need to have thousands of cats.”
The cat comment refers to Sliwa and his wife’s work rescuing cats from the streets of New York City and the kill shelters within it.
Sliwa, unperturbed by Trump’s comments, claimed that the president’s mockery of his cat rescues sparked an influx of local donations from who he claims are mostly from Democratic women.
“The president did me a really big favor when he lambasted me and my wife because of the cats that we raise and rescue from the shelters who are going to be euthanized,” Sliwa said. “The president is welcome to his opinion. I agree with him in some measures; I disagree with him in some measures. But the people are going to make the determination: Not the president, not the political class and certainly not the billionaires.”
ICE Raids
The conversation steered towards ICE and the raids being carried out across the country. Sliwa nay-ed the quota implemented by the Trump administration to arrest a specific number of migrants a day, crediting that toward the hostility the American people feel towards ICE agents today.
The quota, to him, is reminiscent of the stop-and-frisk quota.
He additionally said, “there’s a sort of hypocrisy” when it comes to Republican business owners who support the deportation efforts, but hire migrants to work in their businesses.
“I understand the desire to send the non-legal people back, but yet 20 million, maybe more? You’re never going to send them all back, and now many of them are essential workers. Certain businesses cannot operate without them and a lot of them are Republican-owned businesses,” Sliwa explained. “There’s a sort of hypocrisy there.”
City of Yes and Animal Welfare
On housing, Sliwa strongly opposed the City of Yes initiative, calling himself “the only person who’s opposed to the City of Yes.” He argued that 100,000 apartments currently sit empty throughout the city and should be addressed before new construction.
The empty space, additionally, could be used to house New York City’s abandoned or stray animals, Sliwa said.
He vowed to abolish the Animal Care Centers of New York City, which are kill shelters. They halted intake this summer due to overcrowding in the kennels.
There is one ACC location on Staten Island on Veteran’s Road in Charleston.
Mental Health
On homelessness and mental health issues, Sliwa advocated for removing emotionally disturbed individuals from streets and subways for their own safety and treatment. “Who the hell can make an argument that emotionally disturbed persons should live in a subway, a park, or a street?” he said.
Anti-Semitic Comments
Addressing past controversies, Sliwa acknowledged making “many mistakes” and apologizing for anti-Semitic remarks in 2018. “I make many mistakes. I apologize. I believe if you mess up, you fess up,” he said, contrasting his approach with other politicians who “never apologize.”
He noted that two of his sons are Jewish.
Income
Sliwa, who worked as a talk show host on WABC for 35 years, said he receives no salary from his campaign and relies on his wife, Nancy, an attorney, to support their household. “When you announce that you’re running, unlike everybody else who’s a politician and keeps getting paid for jobs they don’t even do because we know they don’t do their job, they’re running for office. That’s it. Salary suspended,” he explained.