The campaign was over. The beret was back on.
Curtis Sliwa, New York fixture, anti-crime activist, rescue cat enthusiast and Republican mayoral candidate, on Tuesday night admitted to a crowd of his supporters what many of them had already accepted: that he would not be the next occupant of City Hall.
His losing run had been grueling.
Mr. Sliwa bucked an intense pressure campaign and repeated scorn from the most powerful figure in his party, President Trump. He fought more bitterly with Andrew Cuomo, who had been spurned by the Democratic Party and ran as an independent, than with the eventual winner, Zohran Mamdani.
He even — from time to time — shed the ubiquitous red beret of the Guardian Angels, the volunteer patrol that he founded decades ago in a bygone New York.
“So we have a mayor-elect,” Mr. Sliwa, 71, said, sounding less than thrilled as he addressed dozens of people at an Italian restaurant on the Upper West Side. “Obviously, I wish him good luck, because if he does well, we do well.”
It was 9:24 p.m., and most major news outlets had not yet called the race for Mr. Mamdani, the 34-year-old democratic socialist who was soon to be elected the city’s next mayor.
It was one of several times that Mr. Sliwa’s concession speech did not follow the traditional conciliatory contours. He did not congratulate Mr. Mamdani on a well-fought campaign and never once mentioned his name.
And even as he offered a perfunctory show of support, Mr. Sliwa suggested he had no intention of watching silently if Mr. Mamdani pursued policies he opposed.
“Let me warn our new leader: If you try to implement socialism, if you try to render our police weak and impotent, if you forsake the people’s public safety, we’re not only organizing, but we are mobilizing,” Mr. Sliwa said. “And we will become the mayor-elect and his supporters’ worst enemy.”
It was an unconventional note for a campaign-ending speech. But Mr. Sliwa, a brash character and sometime shock jock, was never a conventional candidate.
After getting trounced four years ago in an overwhelmingly Democratic city that thoroughly rejected him, Mr. Sliwa returned, hoping to draw on lessons learned from that failed bid.
Trading his characteristic red bomber jacket for a set of suits, Mr. Sliwa softened his edges — somewhat, kind of — to convince voters familiar with his decades of headline-grabbing antics that he was mounting a serious campaign. He tried to assemble a coalition of voters opposed to Mr. Mamdani to back him despite long-shot odds.
But in a city where Democratic voters vastly outnumber Republicans, his campaign never gained traction. Though his idiosyncratic delivery and oddball stories won him attention during debates, Mr. Sliwa was never quite taken seriously.
Mr. Trump mocked him on national television. Fellow Republicans urged him to drop out. Mr. Cuomo, who stood the most to gain from Mr. Sliwa’s departure, called him “a spoiler” whose campaign would ensure Mr. Mamdani’s victory.
In the end, it was unclear whether Mr. Sliwa’s 7-ish percent of the vote would have made a difference.
At his election night party, Mr. Sliwa’s supporters dismissed Mr. Cuomo’s criticisms. As they walked past a table with T-shirts that proclaimed “Our Heart Beats for Curtis,” attendees said that Mr. Sliwa was a major party’s candidate — there was no reason for him to stand aside.
“There is always an excuse when someone hasn’t won,” said former Gov. George Pataki, a Republican who stuck with Mr. Sliwa. “You can always blame it on someone else. But ultimately, my experience is look in the mirror.”
Mr. Sliwa’s party felt like it was over before it started. Even as dozens of people packed into Arte Cafe before the polls closed, several wearing red berets, most of those interviewed knew where their nights were headed.
“He’s probably not going to win the race,” Akiva Mandel, an accountant from the Upper East Side, said before Mr. Sliwa arrived. “I’m a realist, for lack of a better term.”
Others had backed Mr. Sliwa for years, and they had no intention on giving up on him now.
Stephanie Cabonargi, who said Mr. Sliwa was her youth group leader in the Canarsie neighborhood of Brooklyn, said that she was proud of his refusal to back down.
She had been at his election night party four years ago, she said. If he ran again four years from now, she’d be at that party too.
“100 percent, I’d vote for him again,” Ms. Cabonargi said. “He loves New York. And he knows what the city needs.”
Michael Gold covers Congress for The Times, with a focus on immigration policy and congressional oversight.
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