Republican New York City mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa said he’d rather die than work for Andrew Cuomo, as he faces pressure to bow out of the race to help the former governor beat Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani.
In an interview Wednesday on conservative talk radio station WABC, host Sid Rosenberg asked his longtime friend and colleague about Cuomo’s interview earlier this week, when the former governor told the radio station that he would offer Sliwa a job in his administration, should he pull off a surprise victory in the general election.
“Sid, remember the scene in ‘Braveheart’: Mel Gibson, at the end, when the executioner was impaling him?” Sliwa, a conservative radio host, responded.
“If, all of the sudden, the executioner would have stopped — and I was on that gurney — and said, ‘Hey, you can work for Mayor Andrew Cuomo,’ I would say, ‘Finish the job. Impale me,’” Sliwa said.
“That will never happen,” he added.
Although Sliwa used to work at the station, the interview was contentious, as he accused his former colleagues at WABC of “ganging up on” him in “every conceivable way to prevent” him from winning the election, adding that he would not return to work at the station.
Rosenberg blasted the Republican nominee for focusing his energy on criticizing Cuomo, when Mamdani is the front-runner in the race and a far more progressive figure.
Sliwa told Rosenberg that criticism over his refusal to leave the race was putting his life in danger.
“Let me tell you, I’m talking to WABC now: I’m hurt. I have armed security guards now protecting my life and Nancy’s life,” Sliwa said, referring to his wife. “I’ve been bribed by the billionaires to drop out of here.”
“If anything happens to me or anything happens to my wife, because of this frenzy that I hear constantly, coming from some of your colleagues here at WABC — it’s on you guys and you gals,” he continued. “My life is on the line here, Sid.”
John Catsimatidis, a Republican donor and supermarket magnate who owns WABC, has been among the loudest voices calling on Sliwa to quit the race.
Sliwa responded to his former boss during an appearance Tuesday on CNN.
“There’s nothing complicated about this. It’s called democracy. The people’s right to vote. And the billionaires don’t want the people to make this decision. I trust the people, not the political elite and not the billionaires,” he told CNN’s Jake Tapper.
