The number one<\/span> thing everyone at the Curtis Sliwa election night watch party could agree on was loving Curtis Sliwa. The number two thing was hating Andrew Cuomo. Aside from that, it was kind of a mixed bag.<\/p>\n Last night, dozens of Sliwa supporters packed into the basement of Arte Cafe, an old-school Italian haunt on the Upper West Side, to mark the end of a historic New York City mayoral race. Sliwa\u2014the cat-loving<\/a>, red-beret-sporting<\/a> Republican nominee for mayor, best known for founding the vigilante crime-fighting group the Guardian Angels in 1979\u2014was always a long shot for Gracie Mansion. Still, he stayed in the race until the bitter end, resisting repeated calls (and, he claims, offers for up to $10 million) to drop out.<\/p>\n The day before the election, President Donald Trump urged his supporters to hold their nose and cast a ballot for former Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo, claiming that a vote for Sliwa was a vote for \u201cCommunist Candidate Zohran Mamdani.\u201d<\/p>\n Sliwa supporters in the room decried socialism but couldn\u2019t muster as much hate for Mamdani as they have for Cuomo.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n Partygoers at Arte were unfazed by Trump\u2019s Sliwa snub. Supporters bought \u201cOur Heart Beats for Curtis\u201d T-shirts at the merch table. Former Republican Gov. George Pataki showed up, swarmed by news crews and fans. And some <\/strong>danced jubilantly by the bar before the results rolled in. (Not everyone enjoyed this decision: \u201cThis is an election party, not a dancehall,\u201d one onlooker grumbled.)<\/p>\n At first, the event felt like a portal to the recent past: an idealized vision of a big tent Republican Party, pre-MAGA takeover. A man in a navy suit tapped my arm to thank me for helping him identify Pataki. \u201cThanks to you, I was able to get a selfie with him,\u201d he said. The man told me his name was George, and he\u2019d canvassed for Sliwa in Queens. <\/p>\n George wasn\u2019t concerned about his candidate\u2019s likely loss, because, he said, he was a Christian and he voted his conscience. \u201cWe need to be concerned about the poor, the homeless, regular people\u2014not just billionaires and millionaires,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n George, like several people I chatted with at the party, wasn\u2019t a fan of Trump.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s doing bad shit, like shooting up boats that he says got drugs on them,\u201d a man named Brad in a God Bless America baseball cap told me. \u201cLike you can\u2019t do that. What if they\u2019re just fishermen or something?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Others said that they didn\u2019t like Mamdani but were disappointed by Trump\u2019s last-minute endorsement; they could not fathom voting for \u201cKiller Cuomo\u201d who \u201clost his own primary.\u201d (There were plenty of red berets, but not a red MAGA hat in sight.)<\/p>\n Still, some attendees sported idiosyncratic merch. I saw a shirt that said \u201cAnti Mamdani Social Club\u201d and a red yarmulke with Trump\u2019s face on it. Akiva Mandel, a 30-year-old accountant from Beverly Hills who is now based on the Upper East Side, told me he\u2019d purchased the latter item in Israel. He was \u201cscared shitless\u201d of Mamdani and his supposed threat to Jews in New York City, because the democratic socialist has said he\u2019d arrest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes if he visits.<\/p>\n Mandel admitted that he did not know much about Sliwa\u2019s policies. But his father, a native New Yorker, had instructed him to vote for anyone<\/em> but Mamdani. Still, he just couldn\u2019t bring himself to turn that into supporting Cuomo.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of my best friends happens to be an African American woman. Her father was in a nursing home,\u201d Mandel said. \u201cHer father was unfortunately literally killed because of Andrew Cuomo.\u201d (Cuomo has maintained that he followed federal guidelines when responding to the Covid-19 pandemic. New York\u2019s Attorney General found<\/a> that his administration undercounted nursing home deaths by several thousand.) <\/p>\n Mandel called himself a \u201cdie-hard\u201d Trump fan, but said he would \u201ccall [Trump] out when [he doesn\u2019t] like what he does\u201d\u2014like when the president said there were \u201csome very fine people\u201d on both sides of the white supremacist Unite the Rally in 2017.<\/p>\n I asked Mandel if he\u2019d heard about Mamdani\u2019s pledge to increase funding to combat hate crimes.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAnti-hate? This dude is full of hate,\u201d Mandel said. \u201cHe doesn\u2019t like gay people. He doesn\u2019t like Black people.\u201d <\/p>\n I was confused. I asked Mandel what Mamdani had said about Black people. He turned to his friend, Russell Miley, who is Black. \u201cYou wanna get this one?\u201d Mandel asked. \u201cBecause I don\u2019t remember.\u201d<\/p>\n Miley also didn\u2019t remember.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cOkay, fine, never mind,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m not Black, so I can\u2019t comment.\u201d<\/p>\n I eventually pieced together that Mandel and Miley were part of a sizeable cohort of people at Sliwa\u2019s watch party who knew each other from counterprotesting at pro-Palestine events and drag queen story hours. Some had been arrested alongside Sliwa at the anti-migrant shelter protests in 2023; Brad, who didn\u2019t agree with the Venezuelan boat strikes, told me he\u2019d tried to stop the migrant buses from arriving in New York City because they were filled with people who he believed to be rapists and criminals.<\/p>\n Many of the counterprotesters were introduced to each other through a woman named D\u2019anna Morgan, who was at Sliwa\u2019s event, too. When I met her, she enthusiastically complimented my bangs and I was later disturbed to discover that she\u2019d been arrested in 2022 for breaking into the apartment building of a New York City councilmember and vandalizing his office building with homophobic messages.\u00a0<\/p>\n As I spoke to supporters, a guy from Infowars circled the room like a vulture. I saw a man in a Hot Wheels baseball cap chat with a blonde woman wearing red leather fingerless gloves, blue eyeliner, and a fur-trimmed jacket. A second person complimented my (normally unremarkable) bangs. Then, I was suddenly pulled into a three-way conversation with Shery Olivo\u2014director of membership of the Washington Heights\u2013based Dominican American Republican Club\u2014and an energy healer named Marilyn, who was holding a chihuahua in a little red coat.\u00a0<\/p>\n Olivo told me she\u2019d helped start the club to give a voice to the conservative members of her community and demonstrate, \u201cYou\u2019re not born a Democrat or Republican. These are decisions you make based on your values.\u201d I asked her to describe those values.<\/p>\n \u201cFirst of all, we believe there\u2019s two genders,\u201d Olivo said. \u201cWe don\u2019t believe in all these genderologies.\u201d She told me she supports Trump because of his policies on immigration. \u201cI won\u2019t allow the Dominican Republic to open its borders to Haiti,\u201d she said, by way of explanation. Then her brash demeanor shifted, becoming more somber. \u201cI lost my nephew eight months ago to gun violence, due to illegal immigrants that crossed the border and are in New York,\u201d she told me. \u201cThe people that killed him are out there committing other crimes, while my sister cries every day.\u201d<\/p>\n In light of all this, I asked Olivo how she felt about Trump endorsing Cuomo. \u201cAt the end of the day, it\u2019s all politics. Whatever the president does, why he betrayed his party, I have no idea,\u201d Olivo told me, adding that, \u201cTrump is smart, and instead of having a communist, he would\u2019ve preferred Cuomo.\u201d So, I pressed her on whether she ever considered voting for Cuomo herself, if she feared having a so-called communist in City Hall.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAbsolutely not. I am a woman that respects herself. I know my worth,\u201d she said. Marilyn nodded along. \u201cI would never vote for a man who disrespects women. I have no respect for a man who doesn\u2019t know where his hands belong.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
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